How to Implement Personality Marketing with Your Ideal Client

Who Are You?

The more you discover about yourself, the more you learn about your strengths and your weaknesses. As you uncover those secret, deep-down fears that motivate you in everyday life, you can learn how to handle your negative emotions and keep them from consuming you. And for our purposes here today, the more you learn about yourself, the better able you are to connect with the best possible clients you can work with.

From a marketing perspective, you want to spend your time and energy helping people who are most open to the approach you take, and who energize you rather than drain you. These will naturally be those people who have personalities that are like yours.

But, we covered that last week. This week, I want to show you how you can implement personality marketing in your marketing strategy.

Personality Tests

If you haven’t taken any personality tests, I recommend you do. There are a ton of them online. You don’t necessarily need to pay for a professional version, but it could help.

Here are some popular ones that you can uses as a framework when you implement personality marketing:

• The “Big Five” (O.C.E.A.N.)
• Myer’s-Briggs
• D.I.S.C.
• Enneagram

Typically, once you’ve taken a test online, your score will generate your personality type. You can then read about it for insights.

Don’t feel bad if it doesn’t seem like a good fit. After all, there are times when you might choose one answer over another based on what’s going on in your life at the moment. Feel free to disagree.

Nonetheless, it’s best if you familiarize yourself with all of the personalities for any given test. That way you can get a feel for how your personality fits into their scheme. Overall, personality testing is a fantastic way to start you down the path of self-reflection.

And that’s what I want to emphasize: self-reflection. No personality test is perfect. But any personality test can offer helpful insights (even if the insight comes as a result of disagreement).

You can use any of the above tests as the basis for your personality-marketing endeavors. All you need to do is familiarize yourself with how they work and tailor your marketing materials to address the personality type you want to target.

Let’s Use the Enneagram to Implement Personality Marketing

Today, I’m going to work with the Enneagram for a couple of reasons. First, it will demonstrate how you can tailor a test to your marketing strategy. Second, it will offer us a simple, yet effective, framework to work with.

(If you don’t already know your Enneagram personality type, you can go here to take a test. It will give you your personality number and some basic information. If you want more, you will have to buy the report.)

The Enneagram identifies 9 personality types. The approach begins with an understanding of humans as wounded creatures. These wounds create deep-seated needs. These needs lead to patterns of perceiving and behaving that are subconsciously designed to meet those needs.

I’m not going to get into the 9 personality types. That’s more information than we need. But I do recommend you learn more about the 9 types so you can learn more about the system as a whole (and yourself!) works. Here’s a link to The Enneagram in Business website, which has a lot of great information. Also, feel free to do a Google search to find out even more information and perspectives on how you can use the Enneagram.

The first thing we want to do is simplify the system as much as we can. Working with 9 personalities is overkill, so we will tailor it for our needs. Let’s focus our attention on the 3 triads.

Each triad includes three of the Enneagram’s 9 personalities. Grouping the types in this way helps us to focus on the general personalities you want to connect with, while keeping your net wide enough to reach more people. After all, You don’t need a “perfect” match. You just need a sufficient match to fall into your sweet spot.

Each triad is a personality center. This center identifies how we relate to ourselves, and therefore how we relate to our environment. Each center identifies key fears and how people in the triads compensate for them.

Here are the 3 triads of the Enneagram

• Instinctive triad (personality types 8, 9, and 1)
• Feeling triad (personality types 2, 3, and 4)
• Thinking triad (personality types 5, 6, and 7)

It’s important for you to identify which triad you are in. After all, that is where you are going to focus your marketing language.

For example, I’m in the feeling triad. For those who want to know more, technically I’m what’s called a “four with a five-wing”. It will help if you know which of the 9 personality types describes you, but for now, you should be okay with just a general idea.

Here are some key characteristics of the 3  personality centers

• “Instinctives” struggle with an intense fear of being helpless and are driven by a need for empowerment. They tend to be aggressive, as is typical of the “natural leader”.
• “Feelers” struggle with issues of shame and self-image. They need to be liked by others and seek status. Typically, they are extremely supportive and nurturing.
• “Thinkers” struggle with intense insecurity. They need to know they are going in the right direction so they think everything over before they act. They tend to be very orderly and methodical.

Knowing that I’m in the feeling triad tells me is that I’ll work best with are those who are also in the feeling triad. So now, I need to start adapting the way I present my marketing materials to connect with those with similar personalities.

Speaking the Language of Personality

Once you know which personality center you want to work with (which is the same as you) and have a good idea of what motivates it, it’s time to start crafting your language so that it fits.

You’ve heard time and time again that you want to focus on the emotions of your ideal client rather than trying to appeal to reason. This remains true when you implement personality marketing. But this approach allows you to identify what kind of triggers will trip their emotions best.

Lets’ work with a practical example. Pretend you are selling your services as a speed-reading coach. Here’s how you might present the headline of your offer.

If you are marketing to an instinctive audience, your ad may sound like this:

Gain Winning Knowledge at Speeds that Leaves Your Peers in the Dust

Learn how to speed read and become the best at what you do practically overnight

Notice especially how it portrays the client as being able to dominate in whatever field they are interested in, which is incredibly competitive language. You are giving them the empowerment they crave.

If you are marketing to a feeler audience, your ad may sound like this:

Never Feel Sidelined from a Conversation Again!

Here’s the Secret to Being Able to Talk About Anything and Impress Anyone No Matter Where You Are

Now, you are promising the ability to not only fit in but to become the life of the party. Acceptance and admiration are potent motivators for this personality center.

If you are marketing to a thinker audience, your ad may sound like this:

Learn How to Speed Read and Be Prepared for Any Situation

Triple Your Knowledge Base in 30 Days and Become a Walking Library for Everything

Ah, the promise of security. What more could a thinker ask for? Plus, it has a sense of structure by offering a timeline, which implies a clear, step-by-step method to get through the program.

Look Within to Implement Personality Marketing

Part of the beauty of implementing personality marketing is that you have the secret to marketing to your audience right inside yourself. Because you are essentially marketing to your own personality, you can step back and ask how you feel about what you’ve written? Does it really grab you? Or does it make you say, “meh”?

What you’re doing is far more natural (and therefore less stressful) than trying to write content that appeals to everyone. And since “like attracts like” you are far more likely to get the best clients for you on your calendar. It’s a fantastic way to amplify your voice to connect with just the right people. And the more you enjoy working with your clients, the more you will enjoy your business.