How I’m Building a Brand From Scratch (Step 2 Results)

Recap: Last week I told you that I’m going to attempt to replicate Shane’s success with his Quit by Healing and SmoothieCrush channels.

I told you how Shane blew up these channels really fast…

…and how I’m going to share my entire process (step-by-step) of doing it myself.

And I told you that this week I will-

…what? what is it?

OHHH!

You’re right!

I didn’t tell you about the SmoothieCrush channel, did I?

My bad!!

I only told you about Quit by Healing.

That's my mistake!

Well, SmoothieCrush is a channel where we’re sharing our best smoothie recipes.

High quality production meets delicious smoothies 😋

However, there is another reason why I didn’t tell you about SmoothieCrush.

And it's not what you think.

The reason is: we stopped posting on it.

NOT because it wasn’t getting traction…

…but because we literally don’t have time to run the SmoothieCrush channel right now.

We made 10 videos for it and this is what happened:

Here are the 10 videos we made:

Check ‘em out here, if you like.

Some solid smoothie recipes.

Also, congrats if you noticed it 😉

In case you missed it, our Liver King Smoothie video is the one that blew the channel up and really took off.

It is hilarious and even though we posted it like a month after the whole Liver King drama…

…it still did well 😊

Here’s the point of all this:

You Only Need ONE Video to Take Off

And that one video can kickstart your brand and channel growth.

Question is… how do you know which one will take off?

Short answer: you don’t.

It’s like timing the stock market.

Nobody can do it.

Then the next question becomes: how do we increase the odds that a video could take off?

Bingo!

That’s exactly the question to ask.

You don’t want to be on the Content Treadmill to doomsville lol.

Pouring in ALL your energy and still having things go nowhere.

This is where our Message Testing comes in.

In my last post, I told you that I will be message testing for the two brands I’m building in front of you.

Now with the success of SmoothieCrush and Quit by Healing in front of me…

…I am fairly confident that I can do it.

If not, then…

I’m fine with the experience as well.

It’s bound to pay off someday lol.

So, in pursuit of Excellence or Experience, let’s begin.

Message Testing Step-by-Step (What I Did)

The first thing I did was brainstorm 65 messages.

1. Strong Finisher: 40 Messages
2. Better Man: 25 Messages

Now in these messages, each of them were grouped into themes:

1. Strong Finisher: 40 Messages
   1. Consistency — 15 Messages
   2. Goals — 10 Messages
   3. Motivation — 5 Messages
   4. Focus — 5 Messages
   5. Distraction — 5 Messages
2. Better Man: 25 Messages
   1. ALL messages were based on Masculinity and the difficulties of being a man in the today’s day and age.

I picked these themes by brainstorming and coming up with whatever I could think of.

This was the best I could do.

The themes we could pick are endless.

Try and pick the ones that make the most sense for your topic and your intended audience.

Here are a few examples of my messages.

They’re short enough to be headlines.

And have only one idea in them.

That’s important.

Because we don’t want people be confused when they see our messages.

We want them to instantly understand what the message says.

There is a reason for this.

It is something that I have come to realize on my own…

…and have not seen mentioned in any marketing book I’ve read.

The reason is how our attention works.

There are 2 Levels of Attention:

Level 1: The Attention We Consciously Control.

We use Level 1 Attention when we consciously choose what we pay attention to.

Watching a movie.

Working.

Reading.

etc.

This is the attention we use to focus on things.

And then there’s a second level of attention.

Level 2: Autopilot Attention

It's like scratching an itch intentionally (Level 1) and scratching without thinking about it (Level 2).

Level 2 happens beyond our conscious control.

When our Autopilot Attention is triggered, we realize that we're paying attention to something after we have already been paying attention to it.

In other words: our attention gets hooked.

For example, any of these scenarios will hook our attention whether we choose it or not.

1. A yellow Lamborghini Merciélago drives by (or whatever your favorite car is).
2. A very attractive stranger enters the room.
3. You overhear people gossiping about you or someone you care about.

In all 3 of these scenarios, you don’t consciously choose to pay attention to them.

You realize that you're paying attention to them.

Something happens in your environment and your attention gets hooked.

This is the level of attention that advertisers and marketers operate in.

Think about the last Coke ad you saw.

How long did it take you to realize you were watching a Coke ad?

Takes a while, doesn’t it?

Isn’t it funny that most of their ads don’t actually show their product?

If anything, Coke is an afterthought in their ads.

What do they show instead?

They show a sense of community, family, joy, happiness, togetherness…

…and coke bottles here and there in the picture.

In the background.

An afterthought.

The reason they do that is because they know we don’t care about sugar water.

And they know we care about all those things I just mentioned.

My guess is they’re hoping to remind us of our own fond, family memories and associate Coke with that feeling of happiness and joy.

Here’s a Coke ad that does this:

Level 2 Attention beats Level 1.

This is the reason why most people are addicted to social media and their phones.

Ask anyone how much time they would like to spend on their phone.

I guarantee you it would be a LOT LESS than what they actually do.

One last example to drive this point home.

Have you seen The Matrix? (one of my favorite movies!)

Do you remember this scene?

Morpheus is explaining to Neo what The Matrix is and how they have to save everyone.

And how they can’t save everyone until they're unplugged, etc.

Neo is consciously paying attention to Morpheus.

He knows how serious a moment this is and he’s learning about all his responsibilities as The One…

BUT…

...the woman in the red dress walks by and Neo completely loses track of what’s going on.

Which gets Morpheus asking:

“Were you listening to me Neo? Or were you looking at the woman in the red dress?”

This is a perfect example of the 2 levels of attention at play.

We can do our best to choose what we pay attention to…

…but our attention can still be hooked away from us.

Here’s Why This Matter to You

If you want to create videos that take off and build your brand…

…you have to know how to hook people’s attention.

To know how to hook their attention, you have to know what message specifically hooks their attention.

This is where our message testing comes in.

So far we’ve made our best guess for what we think will hook our audience’s attention.

Now we test and find out what actually does.

How I Ran My Message Testing

Here’s what I did:

1. Come up with a bunch of messages (shown above)
2. Create striking Color Block images out of them (these will be our ad images)
3. Create an FB Ad Campaign with Traffic as the Objective
4. Create an FB Ad Set with Broad Targeting
5. Put all my ads under this Ad Set
6. Set a budget for $2 per ad
7. Run the test for 2 days

The Goal of Message Testing

Our goal is to find the messages that resonate with our audience the most.

The way to do that is by seeing what message gets the most clicks.

That’s your winning message.

You’re looking for messages that give you a Cost per Click (CPC) of <$0.50.

If you have messages that get you this CPC, you are sitting on a goldmine.

Results from My Message Testing

This is a screenshot of the top 5 Masculinity and Strong Finisher messages.

In total, 14 Better Man messages had a CPC of <$0.50.

These are all winning messages.

I also have 18 winning messages for the Strong Finisher brand.

ALL of these messages are hooking people’s attention.

Getting this information is the most crucial part for creating our brand.

Because we will use these messages to create our videos.

How I Will Use These Messages to Create Videos

This is the next step in our Brand Building process.

The easiest way is to use each of our winning messages as the hook for our videos.

Here's what I'm going to do next:

1. Create 3-5 hooks per winning message
2. Write a short script per each winning message
3. Record + Edit videos
4. Post to TikTok every day (or every other day)

From here we will start gathering data on what videos are working for us.

I’m going to write my scripts later this afternoon (right after I send this article to you).

Then I’m going to record these videos and start posting them.

In my article next week, I will give you an update on how everything is going on my end…

…and I’ll answer any questions you have about the process thus far.

I’ve dropped quite a bit on you today.

It’s ok if it takes some time to digest and understand it.

If you have any questions, drop them in the comments below and I will help you out 😎

Cheers,

Abhi

PS. Out of curiosity, do you struggle with an inner critic too?

I developed mine as a child.

I was always told that anything I did wasn’t good enough.

I was a straight A student.

Amongst the top 3 kids in class.

Got tons of awards for academic excellence...

…and I was told: “you are not good enough.”

As a child I took this to mean: "you are not good enough AND don't deserve to be loved!"

So I always ran after the next win... and the next, and the next..

...but it was ever good enough.

A lot of this came from my parents, as well.

I (now) understand that they just wanted to help me become the best I could be.

I don’t blame them.

I had serious potential (still do).

But I think I would’ve gone much further in life if I didn’t grow up with crippling anxiety and low self esteem.

And a constant inner critic bashing me and reminding me every waking second that:

“Hey Abhi, you suck! You’re NOT good enough… no matter what you do.”

I am not completely over it…

…but I have resolved a TON of these issues and made peace with my inner critic.

I used the strategies Shane shares in the Silence Your Mind program here.

If you’re someone who struggles with an inner critic too, I know this will help.

Use code PEACE at checkout for a 25% off.

Discount ends this Sunday.