Not-So Kind Regards

How to use our audience schemas to blow up your sales

• Maddy Birdcage & Caroline Moss • Season 3 • Episode 9

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Humans make sense of the world through stories. In today’s episode, Maddy Birdcage and Caroline Moss are going to teach you exactly how to use marketing psychology to craft stories that instantly connect with your audience through Birdcage Marketing’s™ Audience Schema framework.  

Keep listening for real life examples to help you master this concept in your content and marketing messages.  

Whether you're a marketer, business owner, or just curious about psychological strategies in marketing, this episode is packed with insights and practical examples. Enjoy!  

Episode Highlights: 

  • Introduction to audience schemas and their role in marketing. 
  • Explanation of psychological schemas and their influence on audience behavior. 
  • How audience schemas can serve as shortcuts to building connections. 
  • Real-life examples of applying audience schemas in marketing strategies. 
  • The process of identifying and leveraging your audience's dominant stories. 
  • Differences between psychological and audience schemas in marketing. 
  • Practical tips for using audience schemas to enhance your marketing messages. 
  • Insights into common misconceptions and best practices for marketers. 
  • Case studies of successful application of audience schemas. 
  • Discussion on how to create content that resonates with your audience's schema. 

 

Resources:  

Where To Find Us:  

  

 

To work with us, book your discovery call at https://www.birdcagemarketing.com.au/start-here

To discover the school, visit https://birdcagemarketing.com.au/

Speaker 2:

Welcome to the Not so Kind Regards podcast. I'm Maddie Birdcage and I'm Caroline Moss.

Speaker 1:

We are done with the digital fluff and pleasantries, and we're here to talk straight about brand building, digital marketing and personal growth.

Speaker 2:

This episode is, of course, brought to you by Birdcage Marketing, the forward-thinking business growth and digital marketing brand that started this all. If you are a small, medium or large size business, don't know how to get started or need to tighten up your digital marketing efforts, we are currently taking on new strategy and virtual marketing manager clients. Let us shape your strategy, give you the action steps you need to implement and then hold your hand as you and or your team implement the exact process that will take you from where you are now to where you want to be. To get started, book your discovery call at birdcagemarketingcomau and let's do this. Now back to the episode.

Speaker 1:

Hello, maddie. Hi, I'm so excited to have another episode of Not so Kind Regards podcast with you today. Oh, me too, I'm really excited for this one. So today we are talking about our audience schemas, which are in our strategies. Any client who works with us in Birdcage Marketing or any student in Birdcage Marketing School will now know what an audience schema is, and so we're going to tell you why it's important, why you need to know it, and how we got to this conclusion of using it in our audience strategies. So, maddie, can you tell us a little bit about what audience schemas are?

Speaker 2:

Audience schemas are what I like to say, shortcuts to connection. They are humans love stories. It's how we make sense in the world. Even back cavemen, ancient tribes, we always derive meaning through stories. Now, because of that, psychology shows us our human brains are storytelling machines. That is how we understand the world. We create stories around situations, around events that happen, in order for them to make sense within our brains. Right? So we are all walking around as humans, telling ourselves stories about how the world works.

Speaker 2:

Now, if you are trying to get someone to notice you, or to build trust, or you're trying to get a connection with someone, the easiest thing you can do is become part of that story, and so our audience schemas are basically five categories of different types of stories that humans will tell themselves. They're dominant stories about how they believe the world works. We've identified what they are, so you, as a brand, can tap into that and you can start becoming part of that story with your audience in a very quick period of time. As opposed to as opposed to trying to change the story that they are telling themselves, we are actually working with the stories that they are already telling themselves.

Speaker 1:

A hundred percent. So there are humans don't change that much in you know for thousands of years of how how our brains work. Basically, we have fight and flight mode. We're always trying to survive. Our brains want to keep us safe. They don't necessarily want to make us happy. All of these things are true and we can dive really deeply into behavioral science, but we're not going to get into that today. But this is one little piece you can take from that and use it to work for you in your marketing, in your content. So I would love to know, maddie, what was that light bulb moment that you said we need to start using these with our clients.

Speaker 2:

We were already using these without even realizing that we were using schemas, and it wasn't until I had a session with a psychologist that I was seeing for a period of time through our employee assistance program, which ended up being more sessions just talking about psychology in general rather than actually therapy sessions for myself. But I got a lot out of it because she's the one who introduced me to schema therapy and this idea of psychological schemas and what schema therapy? I'm going to butcher this explanation, but what it is on a psychological level. It's basically getting clear on what stories you are telling yourself about how the world works, so that you can potentially rewrite those stories if they are unhelpful for you, right.

Speaker 2:

So if you, for example, a psychological schema could be like abuse, mistrust, right, they're all quite negative. So this is why we've kind of shaped them to be a bit different for us. But abuse or mistrust is a psychological schema. So if you grew up experiencing like neglect, for example, from your primary caregivers, you most likely have an abuse mistrust schema because you don't believe you can trust that people are going to come through for you, that you're going to have your needs met, all of those things, and so that then lends into cognitive bias, where the brain then seeks out examples in our real life that then support that story that we are already telling ourselves.

Speaker 2:

In order to keep us safe, in order to keep us safe, in order to keep us in a space that we know.

Speaker 2:

What our subconscious brain believes is that what we know is actually better than what we don't know, even if it's objectively not the case.

Speaker 2:

So, even though it's not a great thing to have an abuse, mistrust, schema and believe that everyone's going to let you down because that's what's familiar, your brain will continue to seek out circumstances which support that idea and that's why you see repeated generational patterns of you experience. You know your parents having an abusive relationship. You have a high chance of ending up in a similar circumstance because that's your safe zone, that's your comfort zone, that's what you know and it's the whole better the devil you know. It's that whole aspect. So when my psychologist introduced me to schema therapy and I learned more about these schemas, a light bulb went off for me where I was like, let's just ignore my own schema therapy that we're working through right now. I've just figured out a framework around something that we've been trying, that we've actually already been working with intuitively in our strategies for years, and that is this idea of how do we leverage the subconscious brain of our audiences and work in with that.

Speaker 1:

It's like when I first taught it and this wasn't even that long ago when I first taught it, I felt so out of depth and already, just working with this, I'm seeing light bulbs go off in my mentorship clients' heads of like oh, like that's what that means and then that's how I communicate better and I was using kind of this schema over here and that's why that wasn't really working that well. Like I'll give you a quick example. So I had a client who does marketing with some beauty education brands and she said we were really trying to tap into this is a community, this is, this is what you care about. And it just wasn't really hitting the mark with their students. And when we went through this process she was like, oh, like that might be on like their fifth list of things they care about. But actually I've identified that they actually really care about this schema right here.

Speaker 2:

I knew this was a winner when I used it on our own brand strategy for Birdcage and I'm like, oh, half of our content's been talking to this schema and no wonder it felt icky and it didn't feel right, because it's not actually right, it's not the right schema, so I wouldn't mind running through the psychological ones.

Speaker 1:

I've got them here too, okay. So I'll list all nine. So stick with us here. It'll all make sense in a second. We're going to connect some dots, but first I'll give you psychological schema. So we have abandonment, instability, then we have mistrust, abuse, then we have emotional deprivation, then we have social isolation and alienation, then we have enmeshment and undeveloped self, then we have defectiveness and shame, and dependence and incompetence. So that was and dependence and incompetence, and then we have vulnerability to harm or illness, and then we have success and failure. So that is nine psychological schemas.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and you can see they're pretty heavy, like they're pretty depressing if you think about it, and we also felt there was a bit of overlap as well when it comes to then marketing. Obviously, for psychology and for schema therapy, you need the individual ones, but for the purposes of our marketing and we always want to try and simplify these rather sophisticated ideas as best we can we then condensed it into five audience schemas.

Speaker 1:

So I'll read our audience schemas now and then we'll get into what this means for your marketing and your messaging. So we have security and trust, we have connection and community, we have self-acceptance and growth, we have safety and wellbeing and we have empowerment and achievement.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so you can see, we've flipped the script a little bit more and we've made it what they're probably striving towards rather than what they're actually dealing with. But when you do a strategy with us or when you do the school, for example, and we have this, what I love is that we've developed this multiple choice quiz in the school, because I knew this was going to be a sticking point for people and if we didn't make it easy, people would get, I'm afraid, and not try and do it. I don't want to make a mistake. Success failure schema. So each of these nine psychological schemas will fit into one of the five audience schemas. So some of the audience schemas will have two to three psychological schemas within them. Just to simplify it, because we do notice a lot of overlap.

Speaker 1:

And what we have is an actual matrix. And that matrix walks you from audience schema through to what your audience is seeking, through to the marketing message, through to desired traits that they're looking for in your brand, and then it goes all the way to brand archetypes and we're not really going to get into brand archetypes too deeply in this episode, but we will soon. But just go and Google brand archetypes and see what some major brands brand archetypes are and you'll start to get an idea of it. But basically, what the goal of this is is to go this is where my audience sits and this is who I need to show up as, to meet them where they are, and that's that shortcut to connection that Maddie's talking about.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly what she said.

Speaker 1:

So let's talk about how you then use these audience schemas to create your marketing messages. I've got some examples. If you'd like me to kick that off, yeah, you go first. Okay, so I just fresh in my head. I have we have coaching calls that are offered through Birdcage Marketing School and I love those because I love that I don't have to teach this stuff and that people are learning it through the school and then coming to me with their ideas and saying I just need this complex idea sorted out, Like that's my favorite thing.

Speaker 1:

So I had a coaching call with someone who has an established business brand and is also trying to establish a personal brand and she was going okay, how do I, how do I know which content goes on the business brand and which content goes on the personal brand? So we dove into her audience schemas for the business brand and I said does that resonate with your personal brand? She goes not at all. And she goes so when I'm creating, you know, I'll just give you an example. So it was a beauty brand and then she's wanting to do business coaching, and so those are two very different audiences. Audience sits in the security and trust audience schema because they're actually. They come to her and they go. I've tried a bunch of other people in this industry and I just don't trust any of them. I've been watching you guys for like six months and I'm finally ready to work with you. I really trust you. And then they become a customer for life. So she's identified that they have a lot of mistrust and they're looking for like safety and security in who they're working with. And then on the flip side, for her personal brand, she wants to be a business coach and she has offered some business coaching.

Speaker 1:

So we didn't fully identify her audience there, but we narrowed it down to empowerment, achievement or success and failure. And then I asked her to go through the quiz again and feel free to hop in chess club and ask me some more questions once she does that. But you're going to have two very different audiences who are looking for beauty treatment, and even within beauty industries you're going to have very different audiences. And then for a coach, you're going to have an even different audience and I think a lot of coaches think it's going to be success failure. People are driven by money. But, just like Maddie was saying, that's who we thought our birdcage audience was. Yeah, and then we got into this and realized they're actually looking for like self-development, personal growth, things like that, and that's the messaging that they resonate with more.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, that's right, because I always had this thing in my head. I'm like, obviously I like nice things, right. And so I always thought, looking around, looking sideways which I don't recommend you do I always thought that, oh, I need to be posting you know luxury lifestyle type of content. I always felt a bit funny doing it, but I'm like, oh no, this is what gets the people going. And then when I first developed these and I remember writing these in the office and I was like, oh my God, I'm so fucking smart, I figured it out.

Speaker 2:

Like I love sitting there and giving myself props when I think, when light bulbs go off in my head, but when I I was like this, I think I've, I think I've cracked it guys, and I took us through it. And then I'm like, no wonder the luxury lifestyle stuff never works for us. And it makes me feel funny because that's not my schema either. Our schema and the schema of our audience is actually self-development and growth. Our audience wants success, but not at all costs. Our audience wants success in alignment with authenticity and with who they are. That's very different. Messaging to stop it not like hustle, stop at nothing to get your success versus here's how you can be yourself and still gain that success.

Speaker 1:

And our audience isn't just looking for like the fastest way to cash quick get rich quick scheme.

Speaker 1:

They want to build a business that they're proud of. They want to have personal growth on the way. They want the mindset stuff. They want to grow as a human being along with their business. And so that just starts to give you an example of how you can use these to craft better marketing messages, why your current messaging might not be hitting the mark, how you differentiate brands and sub brands based on these strategies, and how you can build connection with your audience to then make more sales.

Speaker 2:

I wouldn't mind jumping into a few more examples, because I've got one from a webinar I hosted. And then last night I was chatting in the DMs with a Birdcage Marketing School student and we're also building her website. So this is a student who is launching her own business for the first time and she has just started posting content. She hasn't started selling yet, they're not ready to purchase yet, but she started posting content and she has burst onto the scene. It's like I can't stop watching it.

Speaker 2:

The confidence level that's there I get goosebumps talking about it the confidence that's come through from her. The quality of the production. I even said to her like how long did this take you to make? Because you could definitely like drop the production value even in the interest of getting more content out. But she's like no, it's gone actually really quick. She even had her wisdom teeth out yesterday and she's like I've just got some B-roll content lined up. She's just doing it. But she literally said and this was without me even fishing for the compliments this was her coming out and saying it. She's just like I just feel so confident with who my audience is and what I need to say to them. There is no procrastination, that happens. I know exactly what I need to say, which is like wonderful. And then she said this to me a couple of weeks ago. And then last night she was DMing me and she said hey, can I quickly ask you a question, which is a little bit cheeky, but I'm here for it, I can't help myself. And she's like so my schema is also security and trust.

Speaker 2:

She said she was struggling to use the security and trust schema at the top of funnel, which is what we recommend you do. Create content that reflects that schema at your top of funnel to get attention. It doesn't need to be about your brand. Now, what she said she struggled with was because it was security and trust, and middle of funnel is about building trust. How do you separate that? And I said your top of funnel stuff should not necessarily be about your brand. If you think about it, if your audience has security and trust as a schema, it means they are looking for surefire solutions to things. They want to feel like they have finally found the answer to what they're looking for, that this is not going to let them down again, and that goes across all aspects of their life.

Speaker 2:

Well, she actually then said what you recommended she post. So we actually ended up writing, but you just said it in a much more clear and articulate way, which is literally what Caroline always does. She takes my paragraph and puts it into like five words. I said you need to be showing, you know, like day, like morning routine, like no fail morning routine, or like things that you do in your life that guarantee that have a good result for you. And then what she said you recommended to her through the one-on-one coaching she booked, was high maintenance things. I do to be low maintenance and I'm like, ah, caroline, she always just like gets it, it like I feel like I get it 70% or 80% of the way there and then you just get it over that line.

Speaker 1:

That was just something I heard or saw and take. That was just something like got stored away.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it wasn't my original idea but it's like that makes sense, though, because if you think about it for a security and trust thing, it's like I want something that I know works, and so she used the example of like brow lamination, so like these permanent or semi-permanent beauty treatments that can be done to be showing up as your best self, because it's like it's not just some shitty little mascara or like eyebrow gel that's going to fail after a few hours. It's brow lamination that stays on for six hours, or whatever.

Speaker 1:

Actually, that's funny because that's like the second like completely different brands. But they're both brands like kind of in the beauty industry niche, but completely different brands. But security and trust that's the second like beauty brand. That's in this. And I told my other coaching student who's in the beauty business. I said, like this is where you need to be like well, actually this was her idea reviewing like makeup, reviewing, um, like giving honest reviews about other beauty things. And I said, what about like skincare and stuff as well? And she goes oh, like, we actually do facials and I don't even talk about that on my social media.

Speaker 2:

We don't only work with beauty brands. No, we work with lots of brands. I don't know why. I think beauty is just it looks so fluffy from the outside but there's actually so much to it because, if you think about it, you're dealing with a lot of the time and, like, if it's a service, you're dealing with face-to-face number one. Then number two, you are dealing with people's appearance, like their face, actually their face. If something goes wrong with a product or a service on someone's face, they're going to be very upset.

Speaker 2:

I mean, I feel like they are really starting to regulate the industry now with a lot of things, but there is a lot of dodgy shit that happens in beauty because it may attract not as educated people.

Speaker 1:

If there's no necessary certificates or qualifications, which there are.

Speaker 2:

There are. But I feel like beauty has this and kind of like marketing, digital marketing, social media yeah, it has this unfair reputation that it's an easy access industry, like let's just say, you didn't know what you wanted to do, or I'll just go into beauty.

Speaker 2:

Like it just seems like this easy kind of accessible thing, whereas we know from working with clients that, like, it's not easy, it is hard work and it's highly competitive as well. Yeah, I don't know, I don't know what it is about beauty. It's not easy, it is hard work and it's highly competitive as well. Yeah, I don't know, I don't know what it is about beauty. It has this illusion of being this easy, fluffy thing, but it's actually there's so much to it.

Speaker 1:

I think that's where people in the beauty industry if you're listening and you're in the beauty industry that's where you can kind of like buck the status quo and show like just how smart you are, just how much you have to offer, just like and even talk about the misconceptions about beauty industry businesses.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So another example that I gave in a webinar that I hosted recently was security and again, security and trust. But when it comes to gardening pesticides, right, I made up this brand gardening pesticides. Now what I like to do is show the difference between what this like based on the scheme, is how that would shape the marketing messaging, right. So let's just say you have a gardening pest brand that you own or that you manage. You have decided the audience schema is security and trust rather than success and failure. So let's just say your schema was success and failure. Your marketing messages would then result in language like guaranteed to work, like it would very much.

Speaker 2:

And this even leads into product development. It's like you're going to develop a product like roundup times a hundred that just kills anything that comes in its path because it's guaranteed to work. It must work at all costs. That is what the success and failure schema is about. It's about success at all costs because if you don't succeed, that means you've failed. That's what that is. And so if you've got a pesticide company, it's going to be like this is guaranteed to work on everything. There's nothing that this won't kill, right? If you've got a security and trust schema. You're going to have a very different product with very different messaging. That's more about you can trust this product that it will keep things safe. It will keep your family safe, your pets safe, your surrounding plants safe. Like this is a safe product that you can trust to use around important environments.

Speaker 1:

And then you might even like break down your ingredients and like visually show the ingredients or something like that, because your audience is like they're a little skeptical. They need like a lot of convincing, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Whereas if you have the success failure schema, your visuals even are going to be like before and afters. Well, I mean, before and afters work well for both, but it's going to be like very dramatic, like there was a tree here and now there's no tree.

Speaker 1:

I know I'm picturing like people who want to win some kind of like lawn competition, like have the better lawn than their neighbor, like they feel like they're always competing against people.

Speaker 2:

It's like high powered, like high stress, high stakes, whereas the security and trust, trust, it's going to be like families, pets, organic food, even I don't know like growing your own vegetables.

Speaker 1:

So I hope this really gives you an understanding of how you can craft your marketing messages to meet your audience where they are rather than like where you think they should be, and how to create those shortcuts to connection to then create sales, help people, help more people, impact and influence people through whatever your business is based on.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and also just figure out. It's very enlightening when you then figure this out and you're like hold on, I've been talking this over here, which is completely wrong. It's very validating and it's very clarifying.

Speaker 1:

And it's a very good way to shift it into the other gear and find your right people. Yeah, maybe you were speaking to one schema and it was bringing in the wrong people, so now you need to be actually that's. That's another example of a client that I just worked with. She's been speaking to her audience, getting them into this online school and saying I just don't really feel like we're vibing. I want to attract this person. That's not who I'm attracting. So we're like well, we need to talk to your ideal client. Yeah, not who you're bringing in, the unempowered, disempowered person. We need to talk to the empowered people because they're out there. Yeah, you have to have faith that they're out there, a hundred percent. Well, thanks so much. If you want to learn more about audience schemas, head to Birdcage Marketing website. Check out Birdcage marketing school. We've got so much in there for you to learn all about how to do this and connect with your customers yeah, thanks, guys, thanks bye.

Speaker 2:

Thanks for listening to this episode of the not so kind regards podcast. We hope you enjoyed it. If you did, we would really appreciate if you left a review, on whatever streaming platform you are using. It helps us to grow as a brand new podcast and to help many more business owners and content creators reach their goals, just like we hope this brought you one step closer to yours. Remember, connect with us on TikTok, at Maddie Birdcage and at Birdcage Marketing, and the same handles on Instagram again, and if you really want to learn how to work with us, make sure you head to our website and book a call. We would love to speak with you.