How To Create Customers Who Only Have Eyes For You

You can’t just be pretty anymore to rise above your competitors. You need brains too.

Chase Fade

We’re in a golden age of content where you can’t get away with just being pretty to hold a customer’s attention.

Instagram helped steward the age of pretty — functioning as the prime home where pretty content could live. It has, however, now evolved into a platform where you have to be pretty and have brains to stand out.

You have to be witty, funny, influential, inspiring, or entertaining or you’ll exit out of someone’s attention while they’re on their daily scroll. This is good though, it means that businesses have to get better at creating content that’s attention-worthy, persuasive, and has sway.

I like to think that we’re now in the midst of a Renaissance of content — as an audience, we’re becoming pickier, fishing for more quality content.

Now that the age of pretty is over, what kind of content do businesses need to deliver to a new breed of audience that’s hungry for pretty and brains?

How do you create content that stops a wandering eye and keeps a customer fixated on you, and less on your competitors?

Here’s a simple breakdown on how you can guide content for your business that’s aligned with our current content Renaissance.

Have a pick-up line that starts a conversation

This pick-up line is a hook conversation that you’re known for, or a conversation that gives others an impression of what the brand’s about, right away.

My pick-up line for my business is: “I create moneymaking brands with womxn entrepreneurs who refuse to settle for mediocre.”

Through this pick-up line, I communicate pretty quickly that I’m here to make you money, and I’m for the entrepreneur who’s extremely discerning about creating a no BS brand that rises above the rest.

This pick-up line isn’t a straight description statement, it’s a statement injected with personality, a little bit of attitude, and written specifically for one person — the womxn entrepreneur who refuses to settle for mediocre.

Similar to a cheesy pick-up line that starts with “Are you an angel? Because…” you need your brand’s pick-up line to start a conversation with one person, while delivering it in a way that’ll evoke an emotional reaction (love or hate).

In an age where good looks aren’t enough to spark a conversation, you need a pick-up line that shows your audience a quick snapshot of what you’re all about.

To create a pick-up line for your brand, start by

1. Identifying what you do. Even if you sell a full suite of products or services that are all different from each other (so do I), think about your entry or most popular product, or the essence of what all your products or services help your customers do or accomplish.
2. Identify who you do it for. Niche down very specifically to who this customer is, and double down on the “who” definition by adding a personality dimension or characteristic that clearly helps your customer recognize themselves in your pick-up line. There’s nothing more flattering than being personally pointed out as the center of someone’s attention.

Have a voice you can pick out of a crowd

Let’s say your pick-up line caught someone’s attention. Now that you’ve hooked them, you have to show them what you sound like when you talk.

Are you funny? Smart? Witty? Inspiring? You have to mark a line in the sand of who’s in your sandbox and outside of it.

Since we are now in a bite-sized content age via Instagram, Tik Tok, Twitter, etc. — your voice needs to echo throughout all of your content.

You can’t just post content with a caption you made a few minutes before posting — your captions need to be thoughtful and on-brand because it’s likely that it’s the only content that the majority of passerbys will see. Our individual content posts are now fragments of a larger picture we’re adding to our bigger brand.

Screw this up enough times and your brand starts fragmenting out into mini-islands where no one in your audience knows who you are because your face becomes unidentifiable.

It’s your choice whether you want to evoke a love-at-first-sight reaction or an immediate scroll past your content. For brands that want to throw their hat into the love ring, follow these rules:

1. Think of your brand like a person. Who are you and why do you stand out? Fully occupy the personality of this person through your voice. The more polarizing you are, the better.
2. Never stray from this personality. Embody them fully through every channel of your brand. Just like any person, there are multiple layers to them — for extra credit and a dash of special sauce hit on these layers through your voice and content.
3. Have an opinion. No one falls in love with the guy who answers “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure” every time they’re asked a serious question. We all love personality and people who have spent the internal time to articulate something important to say. Those who spark something in us whenever they talk are usually those we remember and want to hang around.

Have go-to topics you like to talk about

You may have noticed this on podcasts if you’ve heard someone who’s about to release a new book do an interview on multiple podcasts. They usually talk about 2–3 core conversation topics repeatedly, across multiple podcasts.

This is done intentionally to establish a presence and reputation as an authority or figurehead on those topics. They become “known” for something. When you become known for something, you are easy to categorize, easy to name (“hey, it’s that girl that talks about…”), and easy to remember.

People think of you immediately, and maybe even quote you when you’ve crafted a narrative that’s uniquely yours on a specific topic.

A huge part of falling in love with a brand is falling in love with how they see the world. Manic pixie dream girls are widely the main source of affection in so many indie romance flicks for this reason — they’re “known” for something they say all the time, they’re easy to categorize, and their eccentricity makes them hard to forget.

To create your go-to topics, simply:

1. Brainstorm a list of topics you have a unique or strong perspective on.
2. Write out salient points and an extended narrative you can use when speaking on 2–3 of your strongest topics.
3. Repeat these topics and their narratives across multiple platforms of your brand including, but not limited to your: website, social platforms, email marketing, podcast marketing, and wherever else that’s relevant.

Want to turn your startup chase into a victory lap? My Friday morning emails will help you get over your Crux.