How to Promote Yourself Without Destroying Your Premium Brand

as a freelancer, have you ever avoided advertising your services because you were scared that it might cheapen your image or ruin the brand you built, even though you kind of know you need it?

Brian: Today I'm gonna show you why Running Ads doesn't damage a strong creative brand. Why that fear is so common with some of the most talented creative that I've met and talked to and how you can advertise without ever diluting your aesthetic or your reputation or the perceived value you have, and obviously without hurting your.

this point, I've worked with hundreds and hundreds of freelancers who have built their reputations through word of mouth. Then they all hit a wall. The moment word of mouth wasn't enough anymore.

and I'll show you what exactly works for getting leads, getting clients that doesn't kill your brand. then near the end, I'm gonna share a lesson that you can take from luxury brands who sell $300,000 handbags.

If you're new here. Hi, I'm Brian Hood. Happy New Year. Glad to have you here. This is the six Figure creative podcast. It is a podcast for creative freelancers who want to earn more money from their creative skills without selling their souls.

If you want one central place where you as a creative can get business advice from lots of different sources, lots of different industries, lots of different people, And not the boring, homogenous, sterile pool of generic business advice you see out there for freelancers, then you're in the right place.

I've been doing this podcast now for

over eight years. I just had to do the math,my fingers. ' cause I still count on my fingers like a 5-year-old. Over eight years at this point. I'm coming up on my ninth year now.

Over that time I have grown. I have learned things the hard way. I've learned things the easy way. I've worked with a lot of different people. I've hired employees. I've built a team here.

And over this time I've heard a lot of different toxic beliefs that freelancers have.

Now, the first thing and the most obvious I wanna talk about when it comes to this belief of like protecting your brand, protecting this baby you've built is.

That fear of appearing desperate. I'm predominantly talking about paid advertising in this episode, but this pertains to really any sort of marketing that goes outside of what your paradigm is. For normal. Every niche has like what they're prescribed, one or two ways of getting clients that's acceptable and pretty much without fail.

Anything outside of that is considered weird or desperate, or just not how we do things in our industry. and while there are some genuine things that work in some industries that don't work in other industries, That mindset is toxic.

It's garbage. Get it outta here. So I'm talking about paid advertising because that's the thing that I work with so many freelancers on because it helps so many freelancers. It's the thing that I think is the fastest path to results for most people that don't have large networks, aren't in large cities, don't have tons and tons of past clients.

And then, if you have capacity, you can still take on more clients. Paid ads still has a place in your business, sothat's why I'm talking about it here. And the thing that comes up time and time again is that protecting of the brand and part of that protection is that fear of appearing desperate.

I talked about this last week, episode 3 95 as a whole episode, just talking about that fear of desperation.

But when it comes to paid advertising in freelancers minds, advertising signals that you are hungry for clients. Or I think the word I used last week was thirsty. And if you're hungry, you're thirsty. For clients that contradicts the positioning you've cultivated for your brand over the years through word of mouth that you are in high demand, that your time is scarce.

And if you are in high demand and your time is scarce and you truly do have a waiting list of people waiting to work with you, this part of this episode's not for you. Most people that have that fear do have availability. They're not in massive high demand.

Maybe you have seasons where you're insuper high demand, but that is not your default. The people who are actually selective don't rely on appearing selective. The people who are selective are the ones who consistently have more demand that they can fulfill on.

And we'll talk about more of this later when we talk about brand that has like a six year waiting list for their stuff. But even the most high status brands use paid traffic and advertising and other marketing methods of, course,to create a control demand instead of just relying on word of mouth.

For luck, which is what most freelancers rely on, they're using it as a tool to raise the demand above the threshold that they can actually reasonably fulfill on. Many luxury brands do, and even outside of luxury, you are trying to balance supply and demand.

I've got two things that I want you to remember throughout this whole episode. I really wanna drive these two points home to you. Advertising, or really any sort of marketing does not hurt strong brands. It strengthens those brands by creating more demand. The more demand a brand has, the stronger the brand is, and that is universal to all brands.

There are no brands in a capitalistic world where less demand equals a stronger brand that does not exist. That's the first thing. And advertising can be used to increase the demand so that you are in more demand and you have more need for your services, especially more services than you can possibly fulfill on.

And then you are in a wonderful place as a freelancer where you get to say, no, I don't wanna work with you. No, I will not do it at that price. I do it at this price. You can start to raise your rates. Now you are truly premium because you are truly in demand and you are truly turning people away. That is a strong brand and ads can aid in that.

the second thing to know about this is ads don't cheapen your brand. Poor messaging cheapens your brand. And so I think that we have all seen thisis why so many freelancers and creatives in general have a bad taste in their mouth when it comes to paid advertising is we've all seen the cringey stuff on the internet when it comes to marketing, especially like 2015, 16.

the Tai Lopezs of the knowledge.

That is merely messaging. You can run paid advertising without cheap messaging.

Bad ads can ruin your business, good ads can help your business. So that said. There's another part of your identity that advertising threatens that needs to be addressed before you'll ever really fix this.

And that's that identity that You are a creative, you're not a marketer.

And running ads for your creative business lumps you in with all those marketers and those business people. all the people that I've spoken with, paid ads feels beneath them. It feels inauthentic to them, to who they are.

If you think about paid ads as a strategy for a freelancer, That's probably the attitude that you have, at least atsome level, either unconsciously or maybe you consciously think that maybe you don't feel like it's beneath you. Maybe you feel like it just isn't for you.

But my counter to that is this, The second you decide to sell something for money, anything for money, you have created a requirement for marketing. It is a requirement for marketing. I'll give you an example. That is in no way, shape, or form, a creative niche, a creative thing, something we can all relate to. You're moving. Now you gotta get rid of a bunch of random shit that you have to get outta your house so that you can move, make room for the new house.

you're purging the old stuff. So you throw some stuff away, you donate some other stuff. But then there's like a collection of things that are too valuable to just throw away or just donate.

And those things you gotta sell. and now that you need to sell something. That is when the need for marketing raises its head up. and no matter what you sell or how you sell it, marketing is gonna be a part of this, equation.

And marketing at a basic level just asks a few questions. Who needs this? Why do they need it? What makes it valuable? How can we get in front of them?

So let's say you, you have a treadmill. You're trying to sell a big thing, something you may not want in the next house. You're selling it for whatever reason. Question is, who needs this? ' cause if you answer that, anyone who walks regularly, especially indoors, why do they need it? Because it's 10 degrees outside in the wintertime, or it's 95 degrees outside in the summertime.

And they'd rather get their steps in indoors. What makes it valuable? Well, They can still get their walks in and stay healthy even though it's too hot or too cold outside. Or they can walk in situations where they couldn't normally walk, like on meetings, on Zoom calls.

On top of that, what else makes it valuable? What's literally a thousand dollars treadmill if you buy it brand new? Then the final question is how do we get in front of. There's a bunch of ways you could do that. Your mind's probably going to a few things right now, but an easy solution is just Facebook marketplace.

It's easy way to sell stuff. used to be Craigslist. That was the big thing you could easily sell things on. Before that, it was classified. It's on newspapers, but that's the easy way of getting junkie. Gotta sell in front of people.

So what happens now? Remember, this is an example that I,I want you to just understand ' cause I'll equate it back to you as the creative, the freelancer, but multiple factors will determine how fast that treadmill gets sold and at what price.

first. What's the demand for the treadmills? Is it,in high demand right now because it's too hot or too cold? Is it in load demand right now because everyone's outside, it's spring or fall. the second thing that determines how fast it gets sold, if it gets sold at all, and at what price is, how confident are you that you can get what you're asking for If you list it for $800 and you're like, I don't feel super confident about that, and people start low balling you.

You'll probably be pretty willing to drop the price 'cause you weren't confident to begin with. But if you're like, I can get 700 bucks for this. I know I can get 700 bucks for this. This takes a thousand dollars every day. I've seen six of these things already sold for $700. You're not gonna budge off 700 bucks.

So that can be a factor. Your confidence in whatyou're charging. Another factor is how many people are actually reaching out to you? How many inquiries, ah, you're gonna ahead of myself.How many people reach out to you for this,treadmill?

If there's a lot of people reaching out for this treadmill, can you play people against each other? Can you play scarcity? Can you play a,an urgency play on there? What's your skill level of negotiation or sales?But what if no one's reaching out? What if you have very few people reaching out for this treadmill? At a certain point, you might have to face reality.

Maybe people aren't looking for treadmills right now.

Like I said, maybe the weather's perfect. No one's looking for a treadmill. Maybe your price is just way too high for what they get. or maybe you we're just bad at marketing it, positioning it so you have some options at this point. You can keep dropping the price to get whatever number.

You can possibly get just to get the hell outta your house 'cause you're desperate. Or you can try other methods. You can take better photos. Rewrite the Facebook marketplace listing. To have a better description, take a screenshot of the thing that's a thousand dollars on Amazon, which is called price anchoring.

out to friends, see if they need a treadmill post in local groups. Put up signs promoting a yard sale. Have a yard sale. There's a bunch of things you can try. Instead of just lowering the price. But let's, go back to you, Mr. Or Mrs. Creative,

you might feel like you are a creative. You are not a marketer. The problem is if you are selling your creativity as a service, which, if you are at this point in this podcast, I gotta imagine you sell. something for money. It's probably creativity. Your creative skills for money. 'cause that's what this podcast is all about.

We do have some weird people who are like in other niches that aren't at all creative and that's fine. I like you people here too, but you're selling something. So the reality is You are a marketer. You're just a really bad one. You're just a dog shit marketer, if I'm being honest with you. And the fact that you identify only as a creative means that you have spent all your time, all your effort, all your energy honing your creative skills, but the second you start to sell anything, the requirement for marketing now exists. And remember, because you don't identify as a marketer in any way, shape or form, you've put no time, effort, energy into honing that skillset. So you are a dog shit marketer,

and if you fail to accept that. Fail to improve yourself as a marketer, which paid advertising can be a valuable part of. Then you are deciding to face a battle in a war with an arm tied behind your back. And I don't know about you, but I don't wanna do that. I do not want to go charging into a battle where my life is on the line where I have a single arm to fight with and another arm behind my back.

I don't wanna do that.

until you really understand who needs your services, why do they need your services, what makes you valuable, how can you get in front of those people who need your services? Until you understand all of those things and have great answers for it, become a better marketer. You are at war with one arm behind your back, and if you lose this war, you go outta business.

You go to a day job, you go into debt.

So go back to the treadmill example. You had the treadmill to sell. You had, the thing you had to sell. Your mind is,

oh, I can just throw up on Facebook marketplace. And sometimes that works. Sometimes that doesn't. And some things are easier to sell than others, and some places have dedicated marketplaces like Facebook Marketplace to sell the things. Just like there is Fiverr for freelancers. There is freelancer.com, there is Upwork.

I think there's other ones out there. they're all like half a billion dollar a year companies because most freelancers don't wanna think about this.

But most freelancers treat their freelance services, like it's a one-time thing you're gonna sell on Facebook marketplace one time, but if you're trying to launch a real business and you sell fitness equipment, you're not just listing yourself on Facebook marketplace and calling it a day. That's not a real business.

Maybe you can get some leads from that, whatever. There might be some strategy there. But you run your business like it's Facebook marketplace, you decided to sell your services. Who needs your services? Oh, shit. Anybody. I'll sell to anyone with money. how can I get in front of them?

I'll just, I'll text my friends. I'll text my family. I'll DM people. I'll meet them in person. You'll get a couple gigs. Some people refer people to other people to you. You'll always put the word out. You'll get a rush of new clients. And then what? You just sit around waiting for referrals to magically appear.

You have tapped out your options.

The reason I like paid ads so much is that when that train ends, you only have so many options. If you haven't built up a brand of any real sort on social media, on YouTube, you don't have a podcast, you have no way to reach people, you have no email list. You've tapped out your network, you've reached out to all your past clients.

Now your options really are limited. You can either find a system around going to networking events, you can do cold outreach consistently. Good luck with that.

You can build a great system around cold outreach with a team and hire around. Now that becomes paid advertising or you can just run paid ads. The key to advertising your services without ruining your brand is to just, get good noob.That's all I can say. Just get good. You're a noob. Get good.

takes some time, effort, energy, and care and put it into the marketer side of you because that part has to exist. You have a marketing department in every business. Especially at scale, but for your little old freelance business, it is a atrophied, weak non-muscle arm that's just bone and skin tied behind your back because it's never been used.

Let's talk about how to actually advertise without ruining your brand. And I'm gonna put that in quotes without ruining your brand.

This episode actually comes up because, I recently brought on a client who's doing like close to a half a million dollars a year as a freelancer. That's a lot. As a solo freelancer, I think you might have an assistant or something, but still it's a lot of money for a solo freelance business with maybe just a part-time assistant.

As much as they were making as many clients and projects they were working on, they still had room to take on more clients, and this was actually one of the hardest clients that I've seen to get over the finish line to close. Than the average person, despite the fact that they make more money than the average client that we work with.

We've had a few clients who are larger than him, butstill, if you make a half a million dollars a year, our investment for coaching is not a substantial amount of money to you.

So it's not a pricing issue with him. It's also not a trust issue. It's not.like he just found us through paid ads, which can be an issue. can be hard to get over that trust hump and build trust with people who just found you, not impossible, but harder. This person has listened to a lot of our podcasts, has been in my network for years, has actually been on our podcast.

I'm not gonna name names, but he's been on our podcast.

And this person was so resistant to running ads because he didn't wanna damage his brand.

So this is a common thing. This is actually a even more common thing for people who have actually built brands. I'd say for him it's a legitimate concern that he has, not something he needs to be concerned about, but aa concern he actually has because he has built up a good brand and has a good reputation.

But the people who I also see are the ones who don't have a brand, don't have a reputation, are still scared. That's usually a desperation thing or some of the other things I'll talk about in this episode. But let's talk about what you can actually do here. What you can actually do to run ads without ruining your brand. The first thing is, and this is something we've talked about at great length in the podcast before, I've done a webinar on this recently, like in the last couple months. It's called the direct Offer. you actually go back to episode 330, what's working now for client acquisition?

It's a guide for freelancers. That episode is largely still relevant. That process still works.

it's an episode worth listening to. But I wouldn't just go blindly follow everything in there because things have changed a little bit since then. But that give you an idea. long story short, that process covered in that episode is just you straight up offering your services directly through paid ads.

Even brands like Rolex, who is arguably one of the most notable known luxury brands that've been around for fucking ever, they spend a hundred million dollars per year directly advertising their watches a hundred million dollars a year just on advertising I am gonna go back to the same thing I said earlier in this episode.Ads do not hurt your brand. Bad messaging hurts your brand. If Rolex can spend a hundred million dollars on paid ads, what is so special about user free Answer that your brand is going to bedamaged.

It's going to net loss at your business just from running ads. It is a preposterous, preposterous thing to think that that is the case for youryour little business. Chances are most people don't think about you. When they look at you, if they see an ad for you, they're probably not even registering.

You would be so lucky for someone to see your ad and respond to it in any way, shape or form, positive or negative. The chances of anyone even thinking a second thought about you when they see your ad is just so close to zero. It's a rounding error.

The reason paid ads work is because at scale you're finding the 3% of people who are in need of your service. Right now, that's a ballpark number, but if you. Ask someone a question. Are you in the market for X right now in a room of a hundred people? About three people, or raise their hand?Are you in the market for buying new jeans right now?

three people. Are you actually looking to buy a new car right now? couple people. Are you looking to buy a house anytime soon? a number of people might not be 3%. 3% of people are probably not buying a house all the time, but maybe it would be, I don't know. But there is a segment of people who are in need of the service right now, and that's what Direct offer ads work well on.

The other approach is something that I have seen work, but is much more difficult to actually make work. But this is what Hermes, how, how you say that? Hermes Birkin bags, if you've ever heard of a Birkin bag, this is how they approach things. So if you don't know what Birkin is, they just sell $300,000 handbags, purses.

They have a six year wait list. You can't even just go into the store and buy one. Even if you had $300,000 in your bank account, you cannot just go into a store and buy a bargained bag.They don't promote these bags. They don't advertise these bags. They don't run paid ads for these bags.

Matter of fact, the price alone is so extreme that has a lot of the marketing for them. The word of mouth that a $300,000 bag exists probably more at this point, and I'm sure there's copycats at this point as well, but Bergen is the first ones that I ever heard of doing this.

But Hermes does use paid ads to sell these bags. And here's how, and this is what freelancers can take away from this. They advertise the more accessible two to $300 items like scarves or leather goods or whatever that get people in the door to make them spend thousands and thousands of dollars on regular items before they're even offered a chance to buy a Birkin bag.

think Ferrari is a similar thing as well. Ferrari has a similar type of process where you have to get the, privilege of buying a Ferrari.

And they're so protective over their brand that if you even paint the car, they'll ban you from ever buying a Ferrari again. So this is how this applies to freelancers. You can advertise your accessible entry point, whatever that means to you.

It could be a foot in the door service.

for example, we'll have people that do like full brand design and websites and, you know, X, Y, and z, everything to get their brain off the ground. Even some of the marketing on the backend copy, things like that. They'll have like apretty large offer,but they might put a,foot in the door offer that's just 200 bucks, 500 bucks, a thousand bucks, something to get the foot in the door.

So that they can then open up to the wider selection of things. There's also things like lead magnets or any sort of thing that they're opting in for that's not actually selling anything. You're just providing value to them. In this situation, you're letting the premium offering stay behind the gate, for lack of a better term, behind a qualification process to maintain your superiority amongst all the plebs beneath you.But allows you to still use paid advertising to your advantage. And again, if Birkin selling $300,000 bags is able to make this work, and you feel like your brand is just so powerful and so potent and so pure that the plebs beneath you couldn't possibly beane to look at your ads,this could be the method for you.

I wouldn't do this, by the way, this is not the method that I suggest. it's the thing we don't really work with many of our freelance clients on. It's harder to make work than just directly saying, Hey, you need this. I got it. Please don't say that in an ad either. But the real issue at the end of the day isn't this, it's not the ads, it's that growing beyond your limit.

another way of saying it is Scaling your business, which is growing beyond what feels comfortable.

Requires that you are findable by people who don't already know who you are. They don't like you, they don't trust you, they don't know you're good. They don't have any really context to your superiority and your market. And for the average freelancer or even the above average freelancer who's actually good, that's a terrifying prospect because you've never had to prove yourself that way before.

But if you are at this plateau, and you've said, I can't get past this plateau because I have now hit the point where my word of mouth and referrals. No longer grows my business beyond this point. As a matter of fact, it might be shrinking. And now I either have to face a shrinking business, a dying business, or I have to face the fact that there are people out here that could use my services, but they don't care about me. They don't know who I am. They don't like me. They don't trust me. I have to sell myself to them. You've never had to work this hard in your life, I had lunch with somebody yesterday who was in this same exact position. They were in a city where they were in high demand.

They had a waiting list. They were turning people away. They were taking off four months a year because things were so good. He moved to a new city, had none of those old things, and what he did there does not work here.

He got so complacent with what worked up there, which was super easy for him, that now when he's faced with this different scenario, those things don't work anymore. He's having to reprove himself. That is a very difficult position to be in. All I can say to you is this, if you need help, ask for it. Take the help.

This is something that we have been offering again and again on this podcast for people who want to implement this strategy in their business It's January 6th now. I think if this episode came out when it's supposed to,This is the best time of the year to make paid ads work for you because we just got through the Black Friday rush, the Christmas rush where paid ad costs get skyrocketed, and then they plummet January and February. All I can say to you is if this episode resonates in any way, shape, or form, then I encourage you to go apply for our coaching program, talk to us, see if it's a good fit and if it's not, we'll part ways we won't even offer coaching to you.

But I've seen this work again and again and again for people who are on the brink of giving up.

Because word of mouth just wasn't doing it for 'em anymore. So go to six figure that link takes you to a,short video. Watch the video and just get the gist of how our coaching works if you're interested in it. But on that page, A six minute video. There's a email address underneath that.

Put your email in. The next page is an application. Fill that out. From there, we'll look at your application and see if it's a good fit or not. This again, that's six figure creative.com/coaching.

not be the person who ignores the obvious life raft The obvious floaty in an ocean where you're drowning the obvious help because you're too stubborn or too proud or feel like you're too special for this to work for you.

there's a lot more that goes into this. So if you're still not convinced, I have more episodes that I'll be covering some of these like. Reasons people don't buy into paid ads. As a freelancer, this is just such a common thing. But, stay tuned for these next episodes.

I've kind of planned out for this. thanks so much for listening to this episode for the six Figure Creative Podcast. See you next week. And peace,