Unlock the Magic in Your Story Now
Get the Free 20 questions to Ask Before Launching Your Idea workbook when you sign up for occasional updates.
Get the Free 20 questions to Ask Before Launching Your Idea workbook when you sign up for occasional updates.
Ditch The Business Plan And Write A Letter To Your Future Customer
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
This might sound like a pointless and obvious exercise that’s easy to do…..so why would anyone bother? I guarantee you, that if more of the forgettable businesses you’ve visited and never been back to, had written this letter (or their own version of it), they’d be one step closer to remarkable.
Time to ditch the business plan for a second and begin…..
Dear ——————————,
It was great to hear from you today. I remember the day I saw you struggling to ————————, a hundred light bulbs went off when I realised at that moment that I could help you to ————————.
I know that you want to do/create/be/feel/have ———————— and I understand the challenges you face, like ———————— and ————————, because over the past five years I’ve been working on/helped ———————— to overcome similar problems. Understanding your experience is the reason I created ————————.
Here’s how it works.
Once you begin/finish/buy/use ———————— you will be able to ————————.
And that’s the reason I can’t wait to jump out of bed and get to work every morning.
You can try/start/buy it now [hyperlink]. If you have any questions you can contact me anytime at getitnow@whatyouvebeenwaitingforbutdidntknow.com
Best Wishes
Alex
CEO
whatyouvebeenwatingforbutdidntknow.com
Image by Rachel.
Share this article
The Biggest Problem Facing Entrepreneurs…
…is love. People with great ideas (and average ones too) are in love with the idea itself. Because we’re human, we become irrationally seduced by the potential of our own solutions. This blinds us to what matters most, to the thing that gives the idea the best chance to fly.
Being in love with the idea is what made the Segway falter. It’s also what made Blackberry fall into the abyss and saw Kodak flounder after decades of domination.
Of course you’ve got to believe in the product, service, or solution you’re creating. But what you need more than a love of your product, is love for your customer. You have to care about them to want to make something for them. And you have to understand them to care about them.
Understanding of the customer is why Apple’s packaging feels like a gift. It’s the reason Instagram became unstoppable and how Lululemon amassed a cult following.
Because when you innovate and build your business from a place of empathy and a desire to create difference for your customers it bubbles up into everything you do.
Image by Gillian Chicago.
Share this article
Why Is The Next Time Never Like The First Time?
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Twelve years ago we took our boys on a family holiday to Tuscany. We spent a whole magical day just wandering the beautiful walled city of Lucca. It was there that we had our first taste of real Italian gelato. It turns out that Lucca is the perfect place for circling back on yourself, which is exactly what we did, not once, but twice that afternoon—to try just one more cup of gelato.
Of course we weren’t hungry for ice-cream, what we wanted was to replicate the feeling of the first time.
We often go to great lengths to create memorable experiences for our customers first time round.
It’s easy to set the bar and forget.
But if we are going to matter to our customers we need to think beyond the first time.
The challenge, and the opportunity is to make the next time, feel like the first time.
Image by Adam Bowie.
Share this article
What Customers Believe Is Your Competitive Advantage
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Ask any business owner about how they stand apart from the competition and they’ll probably begin with the tangible, the things they can easily explain. “We offer a more competitive interest rate.” “Our products have more features. “We have better distribution.”
In 2008 Windows accounted for 84% of personal computing devices shipped. Today that number is just 28%. It turns out that people weren’t buying monitors and motherboards.
Customers don’t often pay for the actual value the product delivers. If they did $4 cups of coffee wouldn’t exist. People pay for the intangible value, for what they experience and what they care about.
If you can’t finish this sentence, then like Microsoft, it might be time for a rethink.
“Our customers love how it feels when they ———————— our product or service, because ————————.”
Your competitive advantage is what your customers believe, not what you make in the factory.
Image by Bianca Nogrady.
Share this article
What If Your Customers Could Talk?
When was that last time you couldn’t wait to click on a banner ad?
Marketers will spend $500 billion on advertising this year.
Someone clearly believes advertising is working, even if it’s not.
We still think that marketing is how we talk to people about ourselves.
Marketing is giving people something to talk about.
Image by Chris Booth.
Share this article
How To Write A Mission Statement
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
By definition a mission statement is the official line on the aims and objectives of your organisation. Academic papers have been written about how mission statements must be cogent (possibly one of the ugliest words in the history of the English language in my opinion).
Your mission statement should describe your key market and your contribution. It should explain why your product or service is unique, setting out reasons why a prospective client would, or should choose you. No wonder most businesses find writing a mission statement hard.
If you’re stuck, you could try using the handy mission statement generator to help you come up with a mission statement like this one.
“We will work concertedly to efficiently monetize best practice methods of empowerment to stay pertinent in tomorrow’s world.”
Or try this for size.
“We are committed to globally engineer virtual sources while continuing to quickly leverage web 2.0 services.”
Don’t laugh! I’m sure you’ve read many a meaningless mission statement similar to these ones.
Your mission statement shouldn’t live in a dusty A4 file, or be buried on a long forgotten, never updated page on your website. And it shouldn’t just be something you say.
It should be something you live every day, on purpose.
What are you doing right now, today? Why does your business exist? Why does it matter?
Are you actually on a mission, or are you just saying that you are?
Image by Alex Watson.
Share this article
Doing Work That Matters
filed in Storytelling, Strategy
My maternal grandfather died in his sleep, while my mother aged just four, lay breathing next to him. She was number ten of eleven children. Ten years later mum was sent to work at a biscuit factory. She hated it from day one. At the end of that first shift she told her mother that she was never going back. She worked there every day for the next four years, until she finally escaped aged eighteen.
My paternal grandmother died in childbirth aged just 36, while her husband who was a baker stayed at home looking after their other ten children. My dad’s first job was as a delivery boy for the local grocer. They gave him a bike and a few shillings at the end of the week, but not enough for shoes.
My parents met at the crisp factory, where they both worked long days frying potatoes in front of huge vats of hot oil. They had worked in other factories before that, packing biscuits or dipping caramels in icing, either pink or white. Work to them was the thing you tolerated because you had no choice. If you were lucky it bought you a couple of cinema tickets and a few hours escape on a Saturday evening.
I remember my dad going to work every day in the vast freezers at the HB factory to fill orders of Cornettos and load boxes of Birdseye ready meals, so that Captain Birdseye could put chunky flakes of sea fresh cod on more plates across the county.
He worked so that we could go to school with food in our bellies (a luxury he never had). So that he could buy a whole set of Encyclopedia Britannica by the week, in the hope of something better for us. So that we would have a nice yard of new green ribbon to wear in our hair on Sunday.
So that we would never want for a new pair of Clarke’s shoes.
My dad got joy from what the work enabled him to do when he wasn’t at work. From the hope of a better future that his ability to bring home a pay packet at the end of each week might bring his children. Work was a means to the promise of a better end. There was little joy or fulfilment in the work itself.
Every single person who is reading this has a choice that isn’t this. We get to care that our work has meaning, that our days are not just something we get through. Let’s not waste it for a second.
Image by Thomas Hawk.
Share this article
What Are You Promising?
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
I loved Ryan’s corner shop when I was a little girl. The smells of freshly delivered bread mingled with newsprint from the Evening Herald. It was a relief that Mr Ryan knew exactly what kind of ham your mother would want, without you having to explain in detail the part about making sure it was sliced thinly and not ‘too fatty’.
And even when supermarkets began to pop up all around him, selling things in bulk, at prices he just couldn’t compete with (he didn’t even try), Mr Ryan kept going and stayed afloat because he was able to make a different promise to his customers. He knew them after all, in a way that even the data we can gather with repeated swipes of a store loyalty card today, never could.
Sometimes we’re so busy trying to catch up to the gold standard of the industry, or the market that we forget to set and articulate our own standards. If the hotel we compete with has five pillows on the pillow menu, we go one better and make a menu with six. We open longer hours and give people more of what they’re already getting, but we lose sight of what it is we are promising our customers and what it is they really want.
Are you going to be ethical, fair, true to your word? Are you the company that just won’t compromise on your values no matter what. Are you the consultant who will be honest, look clients in the eye and tell them, “this might not work”.
It’s never been more important to know what you stand for and what difference you create.
What are you promising your customers? What’s your story? What’s theirs?
Image by hugovk.
Share this article
5 Better Ways To Tell The Story Of Your Products And Services
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
I once heard a tea taster who tasted 1,000 cups of tea a day, explain that the secret to the perfect cup of tea was the water. He said that “water is the mother of tea”. That one phrase was enough to hold me still for a second longer. That’s something we all need to learn how to do for our customers.
Let’s face it descriptions are hard. It’s tough to differentiate your products and services with facts alone. Coffee is coffee…right, even if it is aromatic, freshly ground or single origin? Instead of trying to describe what it is you’re selling, set out to change how people feel the moment they read your copy or visit your website.
How to create emotional points of difference with your product and service descriptions
1. Resist relying on the description of features and benefits.
Tell people what they can do with your product, not what the product does.
2. Let your current customers do the talking.
Build trust using proof with testimonials and customer stories.
3. Show how customers are using your product to make their lives better.
Use images, video, case studies and stories.
4. Think about how you want the people who use your products and services to feel.
Write descriptions and create content that helps them to experience those feelings before they ever use the product or service.
5. Behave like a lover, or at least a very dear friend.
Because if you’re going about your business the right way, that’s exactly what you are.
Now go write like one too.
Image by Marcos Ojeda.
Share this article
Digital Empathy And The Secret To Writing Better Emails
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
We have a problem. One that the Internet and an ‘always on’ world has magnified. I call it ‘Iitis’. We’re all guilty of it, both online and offline. Spend some time today just listening to the exchanges that happen all around you. Conversations between friends at the café. An exchange between the bank teller and customer. Mostly we’re not even waiting to hear the answer to the questions we ask. We’re jumping in to share our own experience.
As humans we’re hard-wired to want to ‘be seen’, but it’s important to recognise that need in others too. That brings me to email.
Before you hit send on anything today check your email for ‘Iitis’. Your inbox might be overflowing and maybe you don’t need one more thing to think about, but when you practice ‘digital empathy’ you’ll be surprised by the results. How many times can you take ‘I’ out of your emails and replace it with ‘you’?
Better brand stories are not just told by the marketing department. They begin by changing how people feel in everything you say and do, email included.
Image by Ian Sanderson.