“Who am I?” is always on people’s minds. People want to know how they fit into the world. People want to know how they stand out in the world. People want to know their identity. It’s a search that starts when you are young. You pay attention to every time someone says “You’re good at this” or “You’r not good at this.” You crave to know what it is that makes you unique. You can’t stand it when you don’t know what group you are part of.
It’s a primitive desire to know our place in the world. Evolutionarily, you would die if you didn’t have a place in the group you were born into. And today, those ancient brain cells are still firing with the same ferociousness. Quite literally, if we don’t know how we fit in, and we don’t know what makes us needed in the world, we feel like we are going to die. Because for most of history, if you didn’t know why you were needed, and you didn’t know what made you differentiated, you would actually die.
So it’s absolutely shocking to me that every business treats all of their customers the same. Every message, every piece of content, speaks to the audience as if they were all one person. Perhaps this is hangover from the advice that was given for so many years of internet marketing. The advice to “Speak to one person.” But that’s just simply bad advice.
People are not the same, people don’t want to be the same. People feel like they will die if they are all the same.
What I’ve been observing the last three years, is an accelerating interest in knowing who you are. The first time I saw this was from Harley Jordan. Harley teaches people how to build communities. She made a reel that went totally viral. The reel was about the different types of community builders. The call to action was to take a quiz and find out which type you are. 50,000 people took that quiz and joined Harley’s email list.
Then it happened again with Carly Banks. Carly is a health coach. She made a reel showing you how to identify which body type you have. Then she told people they could take a quiz to find out which type they were. 27,000 people took that quiz and joined her email list.
Then it happened again with Erin McGoff. Erin offers career and life advice. She made a reel showing what it felt like to be in the wrong career. She showed people what it was like to live out of an identity that is not theirs. Then she prompted people to comment to receive her career type quiz. 140,000 people took her quiz and joined her email list.
The pattern keeps repeating itself. Creators make content showing people different identities. They make a quiz that helps people find their identity. People watch the content and see all the identities. Or they watch the content and see what it feels like to be living out of the wrong identity. Then they take the quiz to find their identity.
This is a nearly impossible system. It is viral in nature. Because people instantly connect with the identities being shown. And it is a customer acquisition funnel. Because those people take the identity type quizzes and join the creators email list.
Speaking to people’s identity is powerful. When you call out identity it gets people to take action. They want to know their identity. They want to know which identity actually fits them. They want to know how they can fit in. They want to know how they can stand out.