Amy Dix: The Psychology of Modern Marketing with High Rise Promotions

Is your company in need of marketing help?

Amy Dix is the co-founder of The Positive Light Company and the founder of High Rise Promotions.

Amy is an innovative digital marketer with over a decade of corporate management experience and franchise ownership.

Amy Dix is also an international speaker, a two-time No. 1 International Best-Selling Author, and a Positive Psychology Practitioner.

Learn more about how High Rise Promotions can help market your business by listening to this episode of The Thoughtful Entrepreneur above and don’t forget to subscribe on  Apple Podcasts – Stitcher – Spotify –Google Play –Castbox – TuneIn – RSS.

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0:00
Welcome to the thoughtful entrepreneur Show. I'm Josh Elledge, founder and CEO of up my influence.com. We turn entrepreneurs into media celebrities, grow their authority, and help them build partnerships with top influencers. We believe that every person has a unique message that can positively impact the world. stick around to the end of the show, where I'll reveal how you can be our next guest on one of the fastest growing daily inspiration podcasts on the planet in 15 to 20 minutes. Let's go. Amy Dix, thank you so much for joining us. You're the co founder of the positive light company which we're going to talk about and also the a the founder of high rise promotions. Thank you so much. Thank you. So Amy, explain what what your expertise is what you do and tell us what your companies do.

0:53
Okay, so perfect. The high rise promotions, which is the marketing company, you know, I always say like, I'm out revolutionized the branding world, because there's so much out there where people have an idea and they want to start a company, but too much communication and less connection. And we want to flip that, right? So we want the world to have more connection with our businesses and our companies and less communication. So that's that side. And then the positive life company is the other side. And that's a startup company that we're growing right now. And, you know, we always say like, we're in search of the most positive people in the world, and we want to bring together the most positive people in the world so that we can make a difference in the world. Yeah, you talk about the difference between communication and connection and so in the world of online marketing, social media, email, etc. explain the difference there and and, and help us help guide the person who's listening to move more toward that connection. Perfect. So I think it's very much a part of psychology. And I think you have to have like this conversation about what I would say like the old way of marketing versus the new way of marketing. Or you can call it traditional if you want traditional marketing versus the new way of marketing. But if you think about like, the old way of marketing, like, let's just break that down for a second. So 20, 25, 30 years ago, like how did we market right? We had billboards, we had the Yellow Pages, newspaper, radio, well, some of those things still exist and can still work for people. What we were doing back then is we were just putting our message out, right? Like we were just communicating our message like forcing our message into the marketplace, hoping that somebody will just grasp on to it or have some sort of interest in it. And what we need to move more towards with the new way of marketing, like the thing that you can do with the new way of marketing that's different than the old way of marketing is you can talk People, especially when we talk about like this digital online world. And so that's truly like making that connection, right? Like, using psychology to dig deep. So, you know, stop talking about like, Oh, my audience is women 35 to 45, who have at least three kids, like, that's okay. But that's very foundational, right? And like, we need to get beyond the foundation, because that's not where the connection happens. So we have to do a better job of digging deeper. And in order to do that, we have to connect in their unconscious mind. So we have to figure out who our target buyer is and connect with them in their unconscious mind. And you know, how do you do that? Well, we use a lot of research from Carl young, famous Swiss psychologist who you know, if you do anything with like archetypes, that's all his like recently Search. But connecting in the unconscious mind means, you know, understanding beyond the demographics like what are their fears and frustrations and their hopes and aspirations, and what are people's values, behaviors and lifestyles. And I think that that's a good starting point in understanding psycho psychology in your target audience, because when you can connect with somebody in their conscious mind, it's like, Hey, get you, right, they get that, that you get them, and they understand that you understand them. And when people feel understood, they'll make a decision instantly.

4:41
So Amy, what does this actually look like? You know, because I know we're kind of talking philosophically right now. Um, help me help someone apply this print these principles, then like, what can they do today? So either they can shift, is it the type of content that they're sharing? Is it that they're understand, so they're under Standing their audience better.

5:04
Yeah, understanding your audience better but and understanding who they are in their unconscious mind, right? So, I mean, we could go really, really deep and say, the way that we do it is we connect people's target audience with their archetype. So what is their branding archetype and it all starts with your brand. So let's just say for example, that your brand archetype is the lover. So with the lover, then you know how you need to talk to them within your content, you can identify what your brand voices we know through color psychology, what colors you should be using to subconsciously connect with your audience. So you have to start there, like you have to start with the psychology. Because otherwise what we do is and what we see people do is like they start a company and they say, Okay, here's the name of my company, my favorite color is purple. So let's make sure that the logo has some kind of purple in it. And let's rock and roll. Right. And then they they use some sort of brand voice that could be like a mixed of like who they are and who other people that work for their company are, etc. But they needs to be a consistent brand voice so people know who you are, and they can connect with that. So those are just a couple of examples, but that's where I would start.

6:26
Okay, is there is there an exercise that I can take her there? How does someone figure out what that that that personality is like, who they are the archetype that they are?

6:38
Yeah, so we have we have a quiz on our website that you can take and it's a matter of two questions. But and then it kind of drills down there's 12 different archetypes so you know to go through them all right now would probably take a good 1015 minutes, but you can you can figure out that way. I've also got it you know in my book happy to give you the information that you can post for the listeners where it just is the easy flowchart. Like you don't even have to go to the website, you just say nice questions from the flow chart. And then boom, you've got you know who your archetype is?

7:14
Do you have an easy way to someone could access flow chart right now? I mean, grab, we'll put a link in the show notes and stuff. But yeah, yeah, I go to your website. Where do I find it?

7:23
We don't have we don't have it uploaded on our website, unfortunately.

7:26
Well, that's good. Actually, I do see, discover your brand archetype. Now, if I'm on high rise promotions.com

7:35
form to get to the archetype. You know, but hey, I'll tell you this, when it comes to branding and like branding, so important to us, right? We are actually, we don't just talk about it. We are actually in the middle of a rebrand. So we just got our new colors and logos and everything designed. And so the next step, that website is gonna look very, very different here in a couple weeks. But we'll make sure to get it back up on there. But I will definitely

8:02
give it to you for sure for the show notes to your branding company that takes your own brand pretty seriously. I like that.

8:10
You can't just let it get go stale.

8:13
Yeah, maybe one thing that I'll commonly share with people in regards to branding is how it will help you attract if your branding is on point. It will, it will help you attract your dream clients so much better. So I'm going to do a visual which works really well for podcasting. Okay, but I'm, I'm holding my hand right now, but I level and I say Listen, if you want to attract clients that are at that level or above, and your branding is right here, like it's going to be really really hard. So the clients that exceed your level of branding, like the you know, the ones that you know, you'd love to be working with, but for whatever reason, they don't seem to be resonating with you. A lot of times It's your branding like they are not. And when I went and will, I'm going to have you define branding here in just a second, like what that means. But I'll just tell you that, you know, a very successful individual or someone that has a really, really big budget or like you'd really love to be working with. If they feel like you're not quite yet ready at their level, they're, you know, they're not going to tell you why. They're just not going to be feeling it. Like don't look at your stuff and be like, it's not resonating with me. And so they'll be off and they'll be working with a potentially like, a much more established firm or expert or you know, freelance or whoever it might be.

9:44
Yes, so true. And you know, I'll just go back to the what we were talking about earlier with the whole rebrand, right, like businesses evolve and as you evolve, so should your brand. Our brand when we initially start It needs a up level because we started as a promotional products company. That's all we did. Yeah. And then once my first book got released, then we kind of started getting this whole brand will kind of got into it a little bit beforehand, of course, but but then it kind of like transpired into digital marketing and just a bunch of other stuff. But that brand does not reflect that audience anymore. Yeah, that brand does not connect with that audience anymore. And so as you grow, and as your businesses grow, so does your brand and need it? Absolutely. It has to reflect who you are at every stage in the game. And I'm not suggesting that companies rebrand every two years or every year change their colors or, you know, but you can certainly up level who you are and refresh your brand. And that's important.

10:56
You know, before we went through our rebranding and we changed we actually change The name of the company, we worked with a brilliant designer to kind of redo our logo. You know, we went through an exercise where we figured out what is our purpose? What is our mission? And what are our values? And we use that to define what our brand is that kind of one of the earlier stages for you.

11:20
Yeah, I mean, I think that that's all really, really good as and then once again, I would say that's foundational. So the next layer above that would be the audience piece of it, right? A lot of people want to talk about avatars and create, like, Jill is my avatar and here's what she looks like. And here's what she does. And I think that that's okay. I'm just challenging everybody to take it one step further in understanding like that, Jill, the 30. I'll just go back to the same example Jill, the 35 to 45 year old mother of three or whatever it is, is still very demographical so while you created an avatar, and you can see maybe picture who this is, there's still so much more to it right there, you we have to get, there's three kind of stages of the mind. There's your unconscious mind. And, and as I'm saying this, I'm kind of like using my hands as a level. So like, think of like at the very bottom is your unconscious mind. And then the next step above that is your personal unconscious mind. And then above that is your conscious mind. So how I like to kind of explain it is if you're going to dig deep, which is down where the conscious mind is, that's the psychology piece that's connecting with your audience. And if you don't do if you just do that foundational work, you're up in the conscious mind area, and this is where like, society comes into play. And people ask themselves like, Well, what does my mom think I should do? Right? Am I cool if I purchase this product or service? What do my friends think? What's the value? Is it too expensive is It not too expensive. That's the conscious mind working, that is a much tougher sell than if you can connect with someone in their, in their unconscious mind.

13:09
Yeah. How important? Amy are things like having a good headshot these days?

13:16
Well, I think of this what you said, right? If somebody looks at something, and they're about to drop whatever amount of money with you, and you haven't even invested in some of those things, why should they invest in you? Right? Um, one of one of the things that like makes my skin crawl is when businesses have like non vectored images or, you know, pixel, I'll just say this field and vector is like, pixel images uploaded on their website. It's like, come on, that was like 1995 maybe, you know, we're in 2019. Like everybody should be able to have access to that stuff. And you know, it doesn't take it doesn't take a $30,000 investment to get a great headshot, but you need to look the way that portrays you. So that's the question I think to ask yourself,

14:08
you know, I tell people, we live in a in a swipe left swipe right world. And and all you're doing with every bit of your branding, your photography, your logo, your signature and your email your profile on your social media platforms. I mean, all we're doing is is, you know, giving them the evidence to ask for a few more seconds of their time, because at any point, you know, this add audience which we all are now, they can absolutely bounce out of there in a heartbeat if another shiny object comes along. And so so long as we can keep that audience engaged and interested. You know, we happen to believe really, really strongly in authority. Like if if you learn things like you know, okay, well Josh is spoken for Tony Robbins organization, he's done this other stuff like I'm gonna Oh, I should probably listen to what he has is you're going to give me maybe another few seconds until I you know, I can earn you know, I can earn I could keep earning a few more seconds. I don't need to, because just because we're kind of running out of time but what do you do to like how do you grow and scale your business? like where do you get your clients from and how do you attract more?

15:21
Yeah, so you know, I just told you we kind of started as a promotional products company we're not kind of I mean we did and so for and I thought that was what that's what we were going to be you know, I never the time I wasn't like oh, we're going to start doing digital marketing and all this other like fun stuff, it just kind of through through seeing the need, and through hearing what people were asking for we filled that need and I think that that is so important because to scale a business I so often it's like I want to be at whatever x y z Okay, so like, down The road, I want to be wherever. And so we start out and then we we try to get there, we try to get there immediately. And for us, it worked very well to start with that base, and then be able to listen on what people were asking us and find the correlation between promotional products and how that correlates with your brand, you know, so we made that correlation very, very quickly. And then we started adding services from there. And of course, like the industry has changed too. So if you want to keep up with the industry, but too often, I think that maybe we just want to get from A to Z in two days. And realistically, that, you know, may or may not happen, Probably not, but to listen to the market is the most important thing. Yeah. I mean, otherwise, you're just just hoping.

17:02
Yeah, it's it's really interesting how and I would imagine, you know, as you just shared, your businesses evolved quite a bit in terms of the products and services that you offer. I mean, we started off with, you know, just kind of like education around how to become a media celebrity. And then people started asking, yeah, but can you help me like him? And we're like, well, we probably could, you know, so we started it, and it took a few, you know, it took us a few tries to kind of figure out exactly how to do that. And, you know, after what's really great is, you know, you know, trust the market, really, truly the market will tell you what they want, the market will tell you what they're willing to pay for how much they're willing to pay, and how much you know, how willing they are to stick with that. You know, it's kind of like we offer services now. Like, we offer influencer introductions, like, I would have never thought of that at the beginning four or five years ago, but it's, you know, you start developing these assets. It's this experience and expertise and you know, people, your customers, as long as you are engaging with as many people as you can, and you're listening to their needs, and you're having conversations, and you finding out what their pain points are, and then you ask yourself, Is it possible that I could help them in some way? Right? You know, go ahead and, you know, work pro bono for a little bit, you know, just to see, do I have the skill set? Can my team do this, and that's what we've done. And then you're like, Whoa, we're actually really good at this. And, you know, people desire to pay willing to pay, you know, ability to pay, you know, that all kind of aligns. It's, listen, it's I think it's just such a great time to be, you know, to totally geek out on something, either whether it's branding or PR authority, sort of thing. And so, you know, that's one vibe I get from you, Amy is like you're you're kind of you know, you're a branding nerd. Right. And, and I say that affectionately. Already NPR nerd like I just like I'm okay putting on the funny glasses. Yeah and I think what

19:04
is I love that and I'll take that compliment every day I think what's really important about what you just said to which was very obvious that you were talking but I just want to point out because it might not be so obvious when people heard it which was yes listening to the market but seeing it almost this way like it's about them and it's not about you. And when you you may or may not consciously or subconsciously even be realizing that you're thinking Me Me, me me. But when you stop thinking Me Me, me me and you start thinking like how can I help

19:36
judges everything right right I I've shared this before that you know when you wake up in the morning and I've been there like I know what it's like to suffer you know, with cash flow issues and that sort of thing. Oh, trust me. I know that a big way. Yes, yeah. You know, but when when when you do make that shift and I know that this is a real challenge for people but you know if you can wake up in the first thing in your the first thought in your mind is Who am I going to sell to today? That's really hard. Like it's very stressful. If you can't like Do whatever you got to do take care of the bills, right? But your mind your mindset must shift to Who can I serve today? What value can I bring in? And you know, God gave me a gift for I have these gifts universe whatever you gave me these gifts like I have, I have a moral obligation to make people's lives better. I'm telling you to the person who doesn't quite yet believe that in their heart like intellectually they may be okay Josh, I'm with you. And truly, act like that and live like that. And believe me, I truly believe in your heart. When you make that shift, your life will completely change. It's gonna take a couple months, but when you just you keep at it day after day after day after it's amazing. Like, you will see your income will rise, people will naturally be attracted to you. And so Amy, I listened we're kindred spirits like I love you know you also by the way I need to mention this, you also have a it's the positive life and that is at the positive life co.com. And you have a five day positivity challenge, where you're helping people, you know, crush their goals, increase their happiness and positivity. It looks like you've built up a really fun community. And you're doing really, really great work.

21:25
Well, thank you. Yes. I certainly love everything that's going on over there. And you know, you want to talk about helping people and just having people be at the forefront. That couldn't have been more true from day one. And in the attraction that we've gotten through the positive life company is more than I'd ever imagined. And really, it's it's helping and sharing story and finding the most positive people in the world and bringing them together because we believe that through that we can change The world. And you know, I wholeheartedly believe that happiness is the ultimate goal in life. I know it takes work.

22:09
Yep. Yep. I totally agree. If you ask people, what do you want? What do you want? What do you want? What do you want? And you keep on like you like, why do you want that? Why do you want that? Why do you want that? And ultimately, you're going to get to the answer. I remember Tony Robbins talking about this is like, well, because I just want to be happy. Like, yep. So, you know, I think I, you know, my philosophy is begin with the end in mind. The end is we want to be happy, and so do the things that truly make us happy. So, all right, Amy, you are wonderful. You are found on the web at Amy the speaker.com of course, high rise promotions.com and as I mentioned, the positive life co.com where people could take the five day positivity challenge. Amy Thank you so much. And by the way, you're just up and running. Jacksonville too. We just

23:03
love Florida. Hey, all survived the Hurricanes just to live in Florida.

23:07
Yeah. It's worth it. It's worth it. All right, Amy. Have a wonderful day. Thanks so much, so much. Have a good one. Thanks for listening to the thoughtful entrepreneur show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit up my influence.com slash guest. Now you've got something out of this interview. Would you share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or posted on the socials. A few do that tag us with the hashtag up my influence. Each month we scour Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. We pick one winner from each platform and you get crowned king or queen of that social media now what do you win? We're going to promote you and your business to over 120,000 social media fans. Totally free. Now, can you also hook us up now in your podcast player right now, please give us a thumbs up or a rating and review. We promise to read it all and take action. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. Your feedback helps us fulfill that mission. And while you're at it, hit that subscribe button. You know why tomorrow? That's right, seven days a week, you are going to be inspired and motivated to succeed 15 minutes a day. And my name is Josh Elledge. Let's connect on the socials. You'll find all the stuff we're doing at up my influence.com Thanks for listening and thank you for being a part of the thoughtful entrepreneur movement.