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3 Questions Every Innovator Needs To Ask
Microsoft is discounting it’s ‘Surface’ tablet just to get traction in the market. Even with all their innovation and marketing firepower Microsoft can’t make people care enough to switch, or belong.
Innovation isn’t just about making something that works well, (I’ve never used a Surface, but I’m guessing it does). And marketing isn’t about tempting the ‘market of everyone’ to change their minds. We need to start drilling down to the reasons people will want what we make.
3 Questions Innovators Must Ask
1. Who am I making this for?
2. What will make them care enough to choose this and not that?
3. Why will they pay me for it?
Ideas, products and services can be dreamt up in a moment, innovation and ideation isn’t the hard part. Having the guts to ask the right questions, and to answer them honestly before you bring an idea you’ve fallen in love with to market, that’s the hard part.
Image by Joe Shlabotnik.
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The Competition Isn’t Your Competition
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Bread Society is a beautiful artisan bakery in Singapore (the website doesn’t do it justice). At the back of the store the bakers roll, and knead and prove in full view, whilst just in front an assistant packages delectable breads. Self serve cabinets filled with Chocolate Melon Brioche, Honey Lemon Danish and Sundried Tomato Bagels are lit from above by glass chandeliers. It’s an experience from start to finish and a story we want to tell.
But the company doesn’t want us to share it. When one of my boys tried to take a photo he was politely informed that photography wasn’t allowed. We’d missed the sign in the window.
Why go to all the trouble of telling a great story, and creating a fantastic experience only to stop the best marketing you could ever dream of from filtering out?
If you’ve created a brand story worth sharing why worry about the competition?
A secret sauce is worthless without people who care about what you do and why you do it. Your mission then isn’t to prevent your idea being copied or stolen, it’s to find a way to matter.
The bigger concern for any business now is not the competition, it’s obscurity.
Image by Robyn Lee.
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What Are Your Metrics?
It’s easy to count Facebook likes and numbers of Twitter followers. And we’ve found ways to justify the ‘return on investment’ of a billboard that’s passed by 20,000 people every day.
It’s easy to advocate for doing things that we can measure.
A metric of any kind feels safe, and it’s got deniability built in.
But what’s the ROI of a Google Doodle?
The significance of a clutch of five star reviews on Trip Advisor?
The value of the joy experienced by a customer when a complaint is well handled?
The impact of empathy offered at the right moment?
Impact, connection, loyalty and love can’t easily be measured, which is why business hasn’t traditionally made them a priority. Perhaps it’s time that changed?
Because the things we can’t measure might be far more valuable to our businesses than the things we can.
Image by Ed Yourdon.
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Great Marketing: Begin With The End In Mind
The owner of my local beauty salon works really hard to make people feel special once they are through the door. She’s made improvements to the business in all sorts of ways since she took it over a year ago. This week I got an email from her, along with all the other people on her database….the first in a very long time.
It went something like this. Times are hard for small business and we are struggling a little. We need to fill just a few extra appointments a week to keep going. Why not book an appointment? I’m not sure how the email was meant to make me feel, but my immediate reaction wasn’t to reach for the phone.
Two marketing takeaways for you:
1. Don’t wait until you’re desperate to build connections with your clients.
A list of names and emails is just that.
It’s what you do with it that builds a sense of loyalty and belonging. It’s a lot easier to get bums on seats, when more bums on seats ‘this minute’ isn’t your only option.
2. Begin with the end in mind.
By that I don’t mean your end, which might be ‘more’…customers, revenue or appointments booked. Start by asking yourself these three questions.
“How do I want Sarah Jane to feel when she opens this email?”
“How does she want to feel?”
“How will I get her there?”
The ability to stand in your customer’s shoes is seriously underrated.
Image by David Martin.
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The Most Powerful Person In The World
filed in Storytelling
During the summer of 1994 while on a lunch break at his new company NeXT, Steve Jobs struck up a conversation with some of his team in the lunch room about power. Here’s what he told them.
“The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller.
The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come.”
Of course Steve went on to tell great stories at both Pixar and Apple, by nailing things that his competitors didn’t think to care about, like changing how it felt to unbox a product.
The exciting part for you and your ideas is that story doesn’t discriminate, you don’t need the biggest marketing budget to be able to tell a great true story.
You just need to decide that it’s what you want to do, then go do it.
How are you shaping the world that’s to come?
Thanks to Tomas Higbey for sharing a great story.
Image by Camillo Miller.
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The Attention Of Everyone And The Audience Of No One
It’s very tempting to create catch all messages, delivered in a way that will reach the most people. Logic says that if you have the attention of everyone, then you’ve got to reach someone.
The problem with aiming for an audience of everyone is that while your message might be seen and heard, it doesn’t mean it had any impact on the person who saw or heard it.
The bottom line is, it doesn’t matter who encounters your message, your product, or your service if they don’t care about it.
Craft your messages for the people who care. Speak to them.
Image by Ed Yourdon.
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Offers Vs. Offerings
Every July, (winter here in Australia, maybe summer where you are) and six months out from Christmas the big chain stores have an all caps ‘TOY SALE’. The toys are unremarkable, and they are marketed in an unremarkable, 20% off, when they’re gone they’re gone kind of way. The lesson is don’t miss out. Next July the retailers will mount exactly the same campaign with fliers and shouting adverts, because the offer is the only way they have to get customers into their store.
Customers understand that a special offer isn’t really all about saving them money. And although they are tempted by the feeling of making a smart purchase, they know in their hearts that offers are how businesses try to shift more stuff. Offers then are a short term tactic that will probably help you to sell more this week, but sales and discounts are not how the world’s most loved brands keep customers coming back.
Offerings on the other hand are strategic and generous. They layer one tiny connection upon another, helping to create meaning and significance bit by bit and changing how people feel about themselves when they are close to your brand. Offerings require patience for the long haul and they don’t necessarily have an immediate return on investment.
Offers might make the cash register ring today, but offerings build something that will sustain your business tomorrow.
And the flip side is that when you make more offerings, you’ll need fewer offers.
Image by Jason Short.
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10 Things A Brand Does
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
A brand…..
1. Creates meaning around your product or service.
2. Determines what you sell, where and when.
3. Dictates the price range you can sell at.
4. Influences the kind of customers you can sell to.
5. Changes how people feel about commodities.
6. Sets expectations.
7. Affects the kind of staff you can attract.
8. Demonstrates your values.
9. Shapes business models.
10.Enables loyalty, connection, belonging and love.
Image by Pedro.
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Measurable Or Important
In marketing as in management what we can measure gets done. But do metrics enable us to tick the right boxes, or are we ignoring what’s really important?
When I was pregnant with my second son, the local health authority set about improving patient waiting times at antenatal clinics. Performance indicators were set. A nursing assistant called each woman through to be weighed and give a urine sample within ten minutes of her arrival at the clinic. A simple, yet measurable efficiency. Every patient was ‘seen’ within the required time frame. Box ticked, she was then returned to the waiting room where she sat for up to two hours doing just that….waiting to see the obstetrician or a midwife.
Targets were certainly hit that summer. The graphs must have been a thing of beauty.
But what looks good on paper to a manager might not matter a damn to a customer.
It’s not always possible to measure what creates the most value.
I don’t know how Singapore Airlines measures the effect of hot towels, delivered at just the right moment. And I bet despite all his calculations and over 5,000 prototypes, James Dyson couldn’t have anticipated the impact of his clear cylinder design, that allowed people to actually see the dirt that was once in their carpets.
The real magic doesn’t often show up on the spreadsheet.
Image by Ben McLeod.
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The 20 Keys To A Brand Story
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
A brand story is more than a narrative. The story goes beyond the copy on a website, the text in a brochure, or the presentation used to pitch to investors. Your story isn’t just what you tell people. It’s what they believe about you based on the signals your brand sends. The story is a complete picture made up of facts, feelings, and interpretations, which means that part of your story isn’t even told by you.
Everything you do, from the colours and texture of your packaging to the staff you hire, is part of your brand story, and every element of it should reflect the truth about your brand back to your audience.
If you want to build a successful, sustainable business, a brand that will garner loyalty and, if you’re lucky, become loved, you have to start with your story.
THE 20 KEYS TO A BRAND STORY
1. The Truth
What business are you in?
Car companies don’t just manufacture boxes to get people from A to B.
2. Purpose
The reason you exist.
3. Vision
What impact do you see your business making in the world?
4. Values
Your values reinforce the vision for the business, shape its culture, and guide its behaviours.
5. Products and Services
Do they live up to the story you want to tell?
6. Your People
Leaders and employees, their values and posture.
7. Value you deliver
Think beyond features and benefits.
People don’t buy what you do; they buy how it makes them feel.
8. Name and Tagline
Your opening move.
9. Content and Copy
Your content and copy are the way you woo your customers. They are your voice and the way you communicate your brand’s personality.
10. Design
The visual shorthand that helps people to make decisions about your brand.
It also shapes the user’s experience of your products and makes them work better.
11. Your Actions
How you do everything, from greeting customers to answering the phone and requesting payment,
12. Customer Experience
Customer experience is everything that happens when people encounter your brand and how it makes your customers feel.
13. Price and Quality
The price you charge and the quality of what you sell or serve sends a signal to the right people.
14. Perception
Your position is your customers’ perception. It’s shaped by the way in which you touch their hearts, not by how you manipulate their thinking.
15. Distribution
How you get your products and services into the hands of customers sends them a signal about your brand. It can also provide a competitive advantage.
16. Location
Your location has to align with your business strategy.
17. Ubiquity or Scarcity
Do you want to have a product in every store, or will being selective about where your brand is stocked align with your story? Is your plan to have a presence on the tablet of every consumer with access to an Internet connection, or will you serve just a handful of consulting clients each year?
18. Community
Your audience. The people you want to reach out to, those your brand resonates with.
The people who feel like they belong and who want to share your story.
19. Reputation
The story your customers tell about you. How your idea and brand story is spread. What one person says to another to recommend your brand.
20. Reaction and Reach
How your customers behave towards your brand. Lines at the Apple store.
You’ll find more about how to tell a great brand story using the 20 keys in my new book
The Fortune Cookie Principle now available on Amazon.
The story you tell is a choice. What story are you telling?