Using Personality Profiles For Marketing

Hey, thanks for joining me on this edition of the podcast. I'm your host, Jason Brown, the co-founder of SERPWoo. I got an exciting talk for you guys today. And I just wanted to mention that yes, it's been a long time since our last podcast. Took a hiatus, some time off. But I'm back with the podcast, as well as even some blog articles.

Before I get into the talk though, for the podcast, I wanted to bring up a few things, because I always try to get some tips or some notes at the beginning of these podcasts that are different than the main message. And I just really, want to stress on how great it is to have multiple tools sometimes, because lately, I've been battling with a lot of distractions. When I work on one desktop or laptop I might have emails that pop up down in the corner. I might have Skype messages. I might have my cell phone next to me and I get a text message. There's always some kind of alert or distraction going on.

So, been battling lately some productivity issues, and I've kind of, overcame a few of them with some real quick easy tips. One of them was that if you're able to have multiple devices, you should probably dedicate one of those devices to work and work only. Make it a distraction-free device. And in my case, I happen to have a MacBook laptop. It's an older laptop. And primarily, I work on a desktop. And on this desktop that I have, I've got Skype running, I've got my Thunderbird, which collects all my emails and gives me a little pop-up down in the corner, I get desktop push notifications. There's always something going on that's distracting me with my desktop. And I found it very hard to concentrate and keep effort on one task at a time, whether that was coding, whether that was writing for marketing or writing for an e-book, whatever it may be.

So, it ended up taking my MacBook and making it a work machine where the only thing my MacBook does for me now is, I use it as a writing laptop. And what that means is, when I'm writing articles or I'm writing an e-book or possibly writing an email, whatever I'm writing, I use the MacBook for now. And I've taken off, because the MacBook did have this before. But my MacBook also had an email client, it also had Skype, it also had various other pieces of software on it that were distraction-type software and communication software.

All that's gone. The only thing that I have on my Macbook now is purely stuff for writing, which includes Hemingway and Grammarly, and a few other pieces of software. And it's made a world of difference to be able to write blog post articles, even do some coding actually, with it and not be distracted. Several hours of the day I'm dedicating to just using this MacBook just for those activities. And then I might switch to my desktop when I need to either check email or look at Skype and so forth.

Been a complete game changer. As well as setting my cell phone off or away in another room, being able to close the door to my office and be distraction-free. By far though, the most productive thing I've done is be able to take an extra device I had, which just happened to be a laptop, and assign that laptop a specific duty. And when I'm on that laptop nothing else can distract me unless it's something in my physical space, like maybe, my wife or one of my kids.

But other than, if you're able to do that, I highly recommend it. I've also got several iPads, older iPads that my kids once had and then they upgraded to newer iPads. And I took one of those iPads and actually, made it into a Kindle reader. And the only thing that this iPad has again, I took off all the other apps to it. The only app that this iPad has is a Kindle reader. And I've actually got Blinkist as an app so that I can do my reading on it at night.

That way I'm not having to read at my desktop or read on my laptop. I can actually, take my iPad with me, read at night. That has made a world of difference making that device having a single task, which is solely for reading. It does have Evernote on it, but only because with the Blinkist app I can actually highlight parts of books, parts of text, and send it directly to Evernote so that I have it later. And then Evernote is tied to my desktop, so if I need to research those notes later, I've got them handy.

But again, the core advice that I'm giving you is that if you've got extra devices, assigning those devices a task, and then when you use those devices you start building up the habit that, this device is just for writing. This device is just for reading. Or maybe this device is just for coding. Whatever you've got going on in your life. And again, I know that might be hard for some people because you might not have multiple devices, but if you do and you have any type of distraction or productivity issues, that's what I found recently to work for me.

Now, as far as anything else going on, before I get into the main message, I found a wonderful book that I started reading by Robert Cialdini. A lot of you all may know Robert Cialdini because he's the best-selling author of "Influence." But he has another book called "Presuasion," And it's actually, about how marketers use questions and wording to reframe your mind to actually pre-persuade you into a certain way of thinking. And kind of, a example of that, I'll actually read off of the notes I have here.

But, they go into things like, when a stranger approaches you and asks you a certain question, like, if you feel unhappy, there's a good chance that that really isn't an innocent question. In fact, it's the kind of question that a Colt recruiter would maybe, ask you. And questions like these are part of a positive test strategy. Those are designed to take advantage of your natural tendency to focus on what is present rather than what is missing. To phrase it another way, we look for hits, not misses.

So, if someone asks, "Are you unhappy?" it prompts you to search for the presence of unhappiness, not the lack of unhappiness. Colt recruiters aren't really the only ones who exploit this human tendency. Telemarketers do it, pollsters, salespeople, they all take advantage of it. It's a seamlessly simple question, but it's known as a single shoot question, which can manipulate you into confirming the very thing they're trying to prove.

And it kind of, goes into a study done in 1993 where two groups of Canadian College students were asked very similar questions. One group was asked whether they were unhappy with their social lives. The other was asked whether they were happy with their social lives. So, you have one that's unhappy, one that is happy with their social lives. Those were the questions. Remarkably, the members of the first group who were asked if they were unhappy were proved to be 375% more likely to report unhappiness than those in the second group.

So, the first group was asked if they were unhappy. The second group were asked if they were happy. That first group, 375% more likely to report unhappiness. And when a question like this is asked, it's to influence how someone pictures themselves before asking them to make the decision. This is what's called as presuasive questions. These are very good tools for marketers. You can influence whether or not potential customers maybe, might make a purchase.

There's a lot that actually, goes into this than what I'm telling you. But if you really want to learn the art of influence and what Robert Cialdini is calling in this book, "Presuasion," this is definitely a book to read to understand that, to learn how to frame questions, to learn how to write marketing copy, to really get people into the right frame of mind.

So, now onto the core message of the podcast. This podcast is really personal to me because I kind of, went through a process where for a while I thought maybe that I was depressed or maybe that, I didn't really feel aligned with myself. And in that kind of journey, I kind of, took some personality tests, different types of personality tests, different types of strengths and weakness tests. And went through one popular personality test that basically, at the end, tells you if you're an INTJ or an ESTP. It was at 16personalities.com.

Essentially, what it broke down to is, after answering a bunch of questions, they come back and tell you, "This is your personality type. These are types of careers that you would be good for." You've maybe, tooken a test like this that was similar on Facebook, with a Facebook game. Or maybe you did in high school to determine what kind of career that you would be good in before you went into college.

What was really surprising was a lot of this stuff that this personality test told me, I kind of, knew internally. But finding out afterward was really validating, because not only could I confirm and kind of, validate all of these things about me that I always wondered about, I was able to see that there's other people like me out there who have these qualities.

At the end basically, what the test told me was that I was an INTJ. And basically, those are about 2% of the population, and they have certain traits, certain abilities, certain values about them that are radically different than 98% of the rest of the world. And, it was really surprising because as I took that test, I took another one that was an Enneagram test and that Enneagram test is slightly similar.

And that came out that I was a 5W4. Now, what a 5W4 means is basically, it's sort of like the INTJ. And what's different about this test is, if you take it you'll get your own score. Maybe you're a 1W9 or a 6W7. And you'll find out what those are if you take the Enneagram test. Essentially, taking that test, taking the personality test and then taking a Gallup strengths test, which you can find from the book "Strengths Finder 2.0." Taking that test and the Builder test that you can get with that book, really opened up my eyes to, "What are my strengths?" Also, "What are my weaknesses?"

It even touched on careers for particular people who came back with my Enneagram test number, or my personality test, which was INTJ, careers that fit them. It also came back with desires. It came back with fears that these people typically have. And it was just really, groundbreaking and kind of, earth shattering. And I was able to kind of, take all this information and look at my core values, what are really my core values, what I want to aim for with my goals, and how I can achieve my goals with my core values.

Because once I understand my core values and I really know what makes me a unique individual, I can play to those values to end up making a mission statement. Now, this would be a personal mission statement. And then I can take that mission statement and I can look at my priorities, what are really important to me in my life. And I look at my priorities, I look at my goals, I look at my mission statement, and I look at my core values, and I can start making a path to, "How do I achieve this goal? Maybe I'm gonna make new goals."

Maybe I'm finding out that I'm doing activities that aren't aligned with my core values or with my mission statement or with my priorities, and I can then cut those out. And, what's really exciting is, is that at some point, you really start getting aligned with who you are. You start aligning your goals to that and your priorities to that. And it's gonna make you a much happier person.

Now I know a lot of you might be thinking I'm talking a lot of mumbo-jumbo, waving crystals in the air and stuff like that. It's totally, not that at all. To give you an example, when I took the personality test for INTJ, it came back and it had career choices. And it said that good career choices for me would be things like an architect, computer programmer, database analyst, an Internet marketer, an author, a lawyer, a judge. And what's surprising is, I've actually, done a lot of those in my life and never even knew that these would be good careers for me. I just liked the idea of those careers and jumped into them.

I have been a computer programmer, I have been a database analyst, I have been an online marketer. I still am an online marketer. I am writing a book. I've always thought that I would be a good lawyer or a good judge. Now, I haven't done that, but I always thought that, that would be an exciting profession. It also came back and said that being a personal finance expert or specialist or analyst would be a good fit for me, too. And oddly enough, I had told my wife a few years ago that maybe I would like to look into that and maybe, get certain licenses so that I can be involved with personal finance. I definitely have a huge interest in stocks and 4X and financial instruments in general.

So, it was very cool to see this. And it was able to tell me careers that I should stay out of, also, like not working retail. There are certain personalities that would be great for retail, but mine just would not be. Being a teacher would not be a good profession for me, especially if it was elementary school. So, even though these were things I kind of, knew, this kind of, reinforced it. And what's really special about this test and the other test I took was, I was able to see what core values of people that are INTJ or 5W4 really value.

And what was surprising was, I had did some core value tests before I ever took the personality or the Eannegram test. And I already knew what my core values should be, and after I took the personality test and the Eannegram test, I looked at what those values that they said would most likely fit me, and they were almost a 95, 98% match with what I had already written down. And, it was just exciting to see that, to validate, to know that I had did that core values test correctly.

Another cool thing about this is that, what I really would like to use it for is, I would really like to use it in my marketing, whether it's pay per click ads, maybe social media ads. Maybe it's copy on my landing pages, once you actually hit the landing page Or copy in my email. Because, what really struck me is, I looked at this personality test and this Eannegram test, and also this strength-finder test, and I really got to understand, "This is me. This test is correct for me, because I answered these questions honestly."

I really got to understand what my fears were, what causes those fears, and what my desires are, as well. And as marketers, we all kind of, hear these sayings that have always been around, like, as far as everybody's interested in their health, and their wealth, and their relationship, everybody's interested in core needs, like wanting to be loved and to have shelter, stuff like that. But for some people, they don't understand why that is. Why does somebody care about their health, wealth, or relationships or their need for shelter or their need for love, their need for sex?

And, that's great to know that, but really to be an effective marketer, you need to know why. And part of this INTJ test and this 5W4 reading from the Eannegram test was that, my basic fears were being helpless, being incapable. I got to learn that INTJs or 5W4s, they really love to teach. They really love to connect with people with their intelligence. And it's really special for them that when they share their intelligence the other person connects with it, and it's like an "aha" moment for somebody like me.

And what's really interesting is, once you start reading into that and you start reading into these fears, like being incapable or being unloved or being useless, you start to understand why that person may be interested in health, wealth, and relationship, because in health, wealth, and relationships maybe I'm trying to suppress my fear or overcome the feeling of helplessness or uselessness or incapableness.

Because, part of the way that INTJs and 5W4s deal with the world is, they use their knowledge and their intelligence. And they feel that gaining more knowledge and more intelligence will make them more capable to be able to overcome their goals, and to overcome their fears, and to overcome anything that is an obstacle in their life. So, the more that they become a bookworm or a nerd or study their environment more, they feel that they can overcome any obstacle that is related to health or wealth or relationship.

Now, I'm not saying that, that's true that that person will overcome that. I'm telling you what the personality is, but with the desires are. And knowing that is extremely beneficial to you. Now, that's just the INTJ story, and that's the 5W4 story. There's 16 other personalities. And the INTJ only makes up 2%. So I'm just telling you from my point of view what I know about myself and other INTJs. There's 98% that make up the other 15 personalities out of the total of 16.

And what's unique is that right now, I can look at this and I could say, "You know what? I could write marketing material to other INTJs if I can find them. I can write marketing material to other INTJs and in this marketing material I can speak their language because I understand it. I get it. And I can write them marketing material that talks about being incapable, that talks about being useless and helpless. I can talk about trying to absorb all the knowledge around me whether it's in books or self-study, and trying to use that information to overcome your obstacles."

And that can be a part of my sales letter, that can be a part of my ads. I can frame my emails that way. And that's basically, gonna work, to people who are INTJs or 5W4s. That's not gonna work on the other personalities types as well. But, the clue is, or I guess, better yet, the question is, "Well, if this only works on INTJs, how do you find those people?" And that's where the careers section of these tests really give you a lot more insight. Because not everybody who is an INTJ will always fall into those careers, but a lot of them will.

And basically, the people who fall into those careers, the careers that they pick are more than likely going to be architects, personal finance analyst, maybe stockbrokers, lawyers, judges, Internet marketers, computer programmers, database administrators. There is a lot more that goes into it. There were some careers there for INTJ that specialized in certain medical fields where they work alone, like maybe, it's a neuroscientist, an ophthalmologist.

And essentially this, just as one example, let's say that you're in digital marketing agencies and you specialize only in attorneys or legal matters, you could basically, go to all the attorneys local to you and write your ads and write your copy to them that you can provide them SEO Services or pay-per-click services or content marketing services or web design services, the same way that you could go around to dentists, because the INTJ 5W4 dentist was a career choice. You could go to all the dentists and be able to speak their language and tell them how a website is gonna help them. And you can really hone your language to their desires and fears.

And you can do the same thing with architects. Maybe you've got an e-book that's just for architects, because you're an architect yourself. And maybe you know how to pass this one certain exam, and you're writing an e-book for other architects. Again, there's multiple ways to do this. Maybe you're selling a training course to other online marketers about how to pass the Adwords exam. You can now use your knowledge of which you know about being an INTJ and learning about the fears and the strength and the weaknesses and their desires to write that copy now to those people.

Now, here's where it really starts shining. If you're able to commit the time to learn about the other 15 personality types that make up 98% of the world, you can now start figuring out how to craft your product or service, craft its message to each one of those people. And if you're really smart, you can use something like Facebook, where you can dive into the demographics. And you can make an ad. You can make a landing page just for architects, just for dentists, just for Internet marketers.

And each one of those pages, they're gonna be very similar because you know their desires. They're all INTJs, they're all 5W4s, possibly. You know their desires. You're just going to change out maybe, architect or dentist or Internet marketer or computer programmer on that page. But if you're a company whose product can reach everybody else, now you can create a different landing page possibly, for the stay-at-home mom, or the elementary school teacher who is going to be a different personality type.

And you set your ads up on Facebook to target stay-at-home moms, to target elementary school teachers. And then that landing page is going to fit that personality type and their language, and their desires, strengths, and weaknesses. Your ad is going to also, have that same language. And you're gonna be much more able to get your message to these people because as they read the copy, they're gonna go, "Aha, you know me. This is specifically for me. It's like we've been best friends for 10 years." And they're gonna connect on you on a deeper level.

This is really the core message of the podcast, is being able to understand these personality types, use them to not only better yourself, but also to write your marketing message. Listen, I'm not denying that everybody wants health, wealth, and relationship, or the need for sex, the need for shelter, the need for love, the need to better themselves. But you really have to understand why, and you have to be able to use language that connects with these people.

Writing a stay-at-home mom, trying to connect with a stay-at-home mom, but using language that's for an INTJ, it's just not gonna work. It's just not gonna connect. But when you understand what their personality type is and you write to those fears, and you write to that language, you now connect with them, and you're gonna get your message to them. You're more likely to either make a conversion or a sale, or some type of lead generation. Your gonna be able to get them into your camp, or into your tribe, so to speak.

And this is really what I want to hone on, so this was something I started out on myself to more understand myself and to better align myself with my goals and my core values. But, I was able to realize that, hey, if I study these other personality types and I understand what makes them tick, and then I look at the career choices, now if I'm on Facebook and I'm at a marketing agency and I want to get in touch with lawyers or dentists, I know exactly what I'm gonna say to them.

If I'm somebody that is trying to reach elementary school teachers because maybe, I've got a Teespring campaign that's all about teachers and how cool teachers are on all these T-shirts, I'm gonna be able to reach teachers better if I know their language and I know their desires and their fears and so forth, and I really understand them. And there's different ways that you can do this. It doesn't have to be commerce, it doesn't have to be lead generation.

But whoever you're writing to, whoever you're speaking to, you really need to understand who they are on a core level so that you can write to them and get them to really feel like you're one-on-one with them. You're gonna get a much, much better result out of that. And if you're a company that has a product and you're looking through your customer profiles, maybe you could identify that, your customer profiles.

Say, for example, if you got a software app as a service, like SERPWoo, SERPWoo is going to cater to a certain type of individual. It's mostly going to be Internet marketers. That's not the only audience we have, but a core part of it is Internet marketers. And Internet marketers, they're gonna make up some of the demographic that is INTJ. They might also make up some of the demographic that is INTP. And those are very similar. And we can write part of our core message to those people.

Now, there's other demographics that will cater to, maybe the small business owner. And that message is gonna be slightly different, but kind of in the same language. We'll be able to reach that guy. So, even if you've got a software as a service and you're able to identify, "Here's our top two demographics. Here's our top three," I used to work for another company that I had equity in called Underground Cellar, and they basically, sold wine online. And there was two types of demographic. There was the older lady that was typically, wealthy. And then there was the younger millennial who was kind of, hip. And those personality types are different than INTJ. They're definitely different to each other.

So, writing the marketing messages to a hip millennial compared to an older, wealthy lady is definitely something that off the top of your head you could probably think, "Oh, here's how I'm gonna craft this message and that message." But once you really understand their personality type potentially, who that older, wealthy lady is, and this younger, hip millennial, once you can kind of, break that down just a couple steps further to get their personality type potentially, you could craft a whole new message that connects to them on a deeper level.

So, that's the core message of the podcast. I'm gonna to keep it short and sweet this time, under 32 minutes, hopefully. And, if you have any questions, thoughts, or concerns, please leave them in the comments below. And, I'll talk to you next time. Thanks a lot. Bye-bye.

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