Two archetypes for the Social Blueprint LIVE | One Day Workshop. The Network Investor is a company whose dealers, distributors, or franchisees represent them. The Independent Business Owner is the operator who sits in the room. Both buy. Both need to hear different things.
Two archetypes. Both buy under different conditions. Both need different things from the day.
The Network Investor is a company with a network of dealers, distributors, brokers, franchisees, or members who represent them in market. When the network looks good and sells more, the company wins. When the network is invisible online, the company has a problem. Mitsubishi and their diamond dealers is one version. A franchisor with their franchisees is another. A supplier with their builder network is another. The company funds the workshop because it lifts the people who lift them.
The Independent Business Owner is the trade or service business operator who sits in the room on the day. They run the work, answer the phone, do the quotes. Most of their work comes from word-of-mouth and being good at what they do. They have tried social, given up, and aren't sure what to do differently. They are always the end user. Sometimes they pay. Sometimes their Network Investor pays for them.
The workshop has to satisfy both in the same room. The Network Investor needs to see their network shipping content and looking professional. The Independent Business Owner needs to leave with content already filmed and a plan they can act on by next week. Get one wrong and the day fails.
Each archetype is a person, not an organisation. Decisions are made by people, fears are felt by people, wants are protected by people. Read each card with a specific human in mind.
A company whose customers' success is the company's success. They have a network of dealers, distributors, brokers, franchisees, or members who represent them in the market. When their network looks good online and pushes product, the brand wins indirectly. When the network is invisible, the brand has a credibility problem dealers can't fix on their own. The Workshop is funded by the company because they need their network to be visible online, and most of their network is not.
"Our dealers represent the brand. Most of them aren't doing anything online. We need them to know how to do it themselves. We can't post for ten different dealers individually."
Voice sample, Network InvestorTrade or service business owner. Five to thirty years in. Phone rings because people know them. They tried Instagram once, got their niece to do it for a few months, twelve followers, gave up. They watch younger competitors look more polished online and quietly worry about it. They don't have time to be a content creator. They know they need to be on social. They don't really know what "on social" actually means in practice.
"I've been doing this twenty years. My phone rings. I tried the Instagram thing once, my niece did it for a bit, twelve followers, what's the point? Mate, I don't have time to be a content creator."
Voice sample, Independent Business OwnerEvidence-based where the transcripts and source material support a claim. Where data is missing, the row is flagged as an assumption. Use this to validate against actual conversations.
| Dimension | Network Investor | Independent Business Owner |
|---|---|---|
| Age | 32 to 52, mostly 35 to 45. | 35 to 60, mostly 40 to 55. |
| Role | Marketing manager, brand manager, channel manager, dealer relations lead, or programme director. | Owner-operator. Founder. Sole trader running their own crew. |
| Where they're based | Capital cities. Corporate office most days. | Australia-wide. Outer suburbs, regional centres, growth corridors. Rarely inner-city. |
| Income | $110k to $180k. Higher in larger organisations. | Owner income $120k to $300k. Business turnover $500k to $5M. Most cash goes back into the business. |
| Network or business size | Network of 30 to 300 operators. Organisation revenue $5M to $500M. | 1 to 15 staff, most commonly 2 to 5. Founder works in the business, not on it. |
| Family | Often parents of school-age kids. Time-poor outside work. | Family-balancing. Partner often handles bookings or admin. Kids sometimes drafted in to "do the social media." |
| Where they spend time online | LinkedIn during work hours. Industry podcasts. Trade publications. Conferences. | Facebook personal, business reluctantly. Instagram passively. YouTube for trade content. WhatsApp constantly for jobs. |
What each archetype has tried for their social media before encountering the workshop. This history shapes their scepticism, their objections, and the comparisons they will make when Sorted shows up.
| Brand-page socials | Posts regularly to the brand's own Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Reaches end customers directly but does nothing for individual dealer visibility. The dealers' customers don't see the brand page. |
| Asset library or template kit | Built a library of branded social tiles, captions, and seasonal content for the network to download and use. Most dealers don't log in. The ones who do download don't post. |
| Monthly content packs | Sent dealers ready-to-post content packs every month. Adoption patchy. The content doesn't feel local, so dealers either ignore it or post it inconsistently. |
| Webinar training | Hosted "social media training" webinars for the network. Patchy attendance. Almost no follow-through afterwards. The dealers who needed it most weren't on the call. |
| Centralised agency | Hired an agency to run brand socials. Generates brand-level engagement. Doesn't translate to dealer-level visibility in their local markets. |
| Direct asks | Emailed, called, or sent reps to tell dealers to post more. Limited response. Dealers don't have time, don't know how, or don't see why it matters. |
| Niece, cousin, or young staff running Instagram | Lasted two to three months. Stopped without ceremony when the person got busy or moved on. Account now sits with a handful of posts, all from a year ago. |
| Boosted a Facebook post once or twice | Spent $50 or $100 on a boost. Phone didn't ring. Concluded "social doesn't work for my industry." |
| Posts when they remember | Sporadic site progress photos, the occasional "finished job" shot. No plan, no consistency, no captions worth reading. |
| Old website | Paid $3k to $8k for a website three to seven years ago. Rarely updated. Often broken on mobile. Treated as a brochure, not a lead generator. |
| Course or webinar | Bought a marketing course, signed up to a webinar series, or attended a one-off event. Didn't action it. Felt overwhelmed. Decided it didn't apply to their industry. |
| Word-of-mouth | Default growth mechanism for the life of the business. Works until the schedule plateaus or younger competitors get louder online. |
What gets each archetype to actually move. The Network Investor archetype has two paths in: funded (the company pays for the network) and curated (the company has built a paying audience). The Independent Business Owner has two paths too: their Network Investor pays, or they pay themselves after a peer has gone first.
| What gets them moving | Their network's social presence is patchy. Competitor brands' networks are doing better. Internal pressure to show that marketing is helping the dealers, not just the brand. |
| How long it takes | One to three months from first conversation to signed deal. Procurement and budget approvals slow it down. |
| Who else is involved | Marketing director, finance, sometimes the dealer council or network advisory board. |
| What they want to see first | Case studies. Other brands who've done this. Dealer quotes. The day's structure on a single page. Numbers, even rough ones. |
| What gets them moving | Members or attendees asking for practical social training. Existing programming is heavy on theory, light on doing. Wanting a marquee event for the year that members will remember. |
| How long it takes | Two to six weeks. Founder decision, no procurement to navigate. |
| Who else is involved | The programme team. Member feedback if it's collected. |
| What they want to see first | What the day actually produces. The quality of past attendee work. Something they could feature back to members afterwards. |
| What gets them moving (curated) | A peer in their trade has done it and the social uplift is visible. Tribal proof, not advertising. "Have you seen what so-and-so is doing online lately?" carries the buying decision. |
| What gets them moving (funded) | Their Network Investor has booked them in. The day's paid for. There's a freebie attached. There's a qualifying selection that makes them feel chosen. Saying no would be ungrateful or strategically unwise. |
| Other triggers | A younger competitor outshining them online. A customer asking "are you on Instagram?" Their adult kid telling them they need to "get online." |
| How long it takes | Minutes when funded (just say yes). Two to four weeks when peer-driven. Months when it's their own discovery competing with operational urgency. |
| Who else is involved | Peers in their trade network. Their partner or spouse. The Network Investor when they're sponsored. The admin person in the business if there is one. |
| What they want to see first | Almost nothing. They'll trust a thirty-second pitch from a peer over a thirty-minute pitch from a marketer. |
Three layers per archetype. The surface fear is what they will say in the first conversation. The deep fear is what keeps them up at night. The secret fear is what they will never say out loud. Hooks, headlines, and openers should be calibrated against all three.
| Surface | "Half my network won't engage with this. They never log into the asset library, they don't open my emails. Why would they show up to a workshop?" |
| Deep | "If this fails, I look like I picked the wrong supplier. The cost is high enough that someone above me will notice. Next year my budget gets cut and I have to explain why." |
| Secret | "I don't have real authority over my network. I'm a middleman. The day they figure out they don't need me, the question becomes what I'm actually for." |
| Surface | "I don't have time. I'm flat out as it is. Where am I supposed to fit in posting on Instagram?" |
| Deep | "I'm being left behind. The next generation of operators grew up online. My business is going to look stale next to theirs in five years." |
| Secret | "If I'm honest, I have no idea what I actually stand for as a brand. The business is built on me. When I want to slow down, retire, or sell, there's nothing there. I built a job, not a business." |
Same three layers. Surface is what they will ask for. Deep is what they actually need. Secret is what they dream about but won't say out loud. The product has to deliver on all three to feel transformative.
| Surface | "I want my network online and growing. I want the brand represented consistently across territories." |
| Deep | "I want a programme I can defend. Something with a clear before-and-after, dealer quotes, and numbers that fit on one slide." |
| Secret | "I want to be the person who modernised this network. When I move to my next role, I want this programme to be the thing I'm known for." |
| Surface | "More good jobs, fewer cowboy ones. Better customers, less hassle, less chasing payment." |
| Deep | "I want to be the obvious choice in my area. I want the work to speak for itself online so I don't have to chase. I want to be the one customers come to first, not the backup when the cheap option falls through." |
| Secret | "I want to be able to step back without the business falling over. I want what I've built to be worth something beyond me. I want my kids to have something worth taking on, not a mess to clean up." |
The transformation each archetype experiences when the workshop and the post-event sequence land properly. Use this as the spine of case study content, sales pitches, and the launch page promise structure.
| Dimension | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| How they feel | Anxious about the network. Always justifying spend. | Confident. Has a programme to point to. |
| Their day | Chasing dealer compliance with templates no one uses. | Running a structured programme with measurable outputs. |
| The numbers | Network's social presence patchy. Asset library adoption low. | Network shipping content. Visibility lifting. Case studies generated. |
| Internal standing | On the back foot when leadership asks about the network. | Bringing the programme into leadership conversations as evidence. |
| How they see themselves | A cost. A middleman. Vulnerable. | A programme owner. Strategic. Career-builder. |
| Dimension | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| How they feel | Quietly anxious about competitors. Sceptical about social. | Quietly proud of their presence. Sees content as part of the work. |
| Their day | Phone rings from referrals only. | Phone rings from leads they didn't chase. |
| The numbers | Revenue plateaued at owner capacity. Pipeline opaque. | Enquiries from digital channels. Pipeline visible. |
| Their face online | Spouse handles inbound. Business has no online face. | Business has its own face. Customers reference content in first contact. |
| How they see themselves | Tradie running a business. Building a job. | Operator with a brand. Building something worth selling. |
Where to find each archetype, and what they should encounter when they get there. The Network Investor lives on LinkedIn and at industry events. The Independent Business Owner lives on Facebook, Instagram, and inside trade WhatsApp groups.
Targeted by job title (head of marketing, dealer relations, programme director) and industry. Long-form posts about lifting network social presence, with operator-led content as proof. Direct outreach to warm titles after content has done some work.
Conferences, dealer summits, association AGMs. Sorted speaking, sponsoring, or attending as a known supplier of network programmes. Low volume but high commercial intent.
Warm intros from Network Investors who've already run the workshop. Strongest signal in this archetype. Build a case study library early so referrals have somewhere credible to land.
Guest spots on dealer relations, franchise sector, or association leadership shows. Position the workshop as a pattern other brands have used, not a sales pitch.
Partnerships page on sorteddigital.com.au with case studies, programme structure on a single page, and a clear next step. The Network Investor researches before they reach out. Give them something credible to find.
Word-of-mouth in their existing trade network. Strongest by an order of magnitude. Workshop alumni become the channel. Build the alumni testimony loop into the post-event sequence on purpose.
When the funded model applies, the Network Investor is the channel. Their email, their dealer council meeting, their portal. Sorted's job is to make the invitation easy to send and easy to say yes to.
Where they passively consume. Surface case studies of their peers (with permission) and short-form trade content that reframes social as a credibility tool, not a sales channel.
Trade-specific group chats are where decisions actually get made. Direct access is hard, but indirect access via alumni dropping a link in a group is realistic and converts faster than any paid placement.
Trade nights, supplier events, association gatherings. Where they encounter Sorted casually, ask a peer about it, and decide over a beer. Prioritise visible alumni at these events over agency presence.
Message direction, not finished copy. Each hook is a one-line pattern interrupt designed to land for a specific archetype. A copywriter takes these and writes the execution. Hooks that work for both archetypes are too generic and have been excluded.
Short orientation on register per archetype. Not the full Tone of Voice (skipped this engagement). Just enough for a copywriter or sales lead to know how to land each room.
Confident, plain, peer-to-peer. Speak the language of networks and operator outcomes, not agency-speak. Avoid words like engagement, eyeballs, virality. Use specific numbers when you have them and specific stories when you don't. Read like a peer who has already solved this problem, not a vendor pitching a service. Don't suggest they need to be educated. They have already had every internal conversation about marketing they're going to have.
Direct, plain, no fluff. Tradie-respect tone, never patronising. Acknowledge what they have already tried (the niece running Instagram, the boosted Facebook post) and why it didn't work, before telling them what to do differently. Don't pitch yourself as a "social media expert". Use trade vernacular where it sits naturally. Don't promise the phone will start ringing. Frame the workshop as something a peer would tell them to do, not something a marketer would sell them. Lean on tangible outputs (content already filmed, a printed planner on the wall, a plan for next week) over abstract benefits (visibility, presence, brand).
Pass-fail questions to validate the document before it is used as the brief for downstream work. If any answer is no, the document needs another pass before being relied on.
Could a copywriter pick this up and write a Network Investor LinkedIn outreach message in ten minutes without needing more context?
Could the same copywriter write an IBO Facebook ad in ten minutes from this document alone?
If you remove the archetype names, can you still tell the two profiles apart from their descriptions, fears, wants, and language?
Do the secret fears feel uncomfortable to read? If they feel safe, they are not deep enough.
Are both Network Investor buyer paths (funded and curated) captured with enough detail that the workshop can be sold under either model without rewriting the proposition?