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.
What Can You Build Upon?
filed in Strategy
You have just 20 minutes. What’s the most valuable thing you can do with them?
It probably isn’t checking your LinkedIn updates, responding to housekeeping emails or listening to one more podcast about productivity.
Checking and updating may feel like work but they aren’t things you can build upon.
If you can’t look back at the end of the day and see the foundation you laid or a mark you made, you’re probably not doing the things that will get you to where you want to go.
Image by WorldSkills.
Share this article
How To Optimise For Customer Delight
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
“You’re here for the Valium?” blurted the dental receptionist as they arrived.
The young man looked blankly at her and then at his mother. He was about to have three wisdom teeth removed under local anaesthetic. He had arrived early to be prepared for the procedure and dutifully took the 20mg of Valium given to calm him without understanding why. The dentist would be with them in an hour. Meanwhile, the receptionist continued through her checklist with the best of intentions, getting documentation signed and giving aftercare advice. The boy’s Dad pointed out three mistakes on the consent form before he signed it. All the while Sesame Street blared away on the television in the background of the otherwise empty waiting room.
Regardless of whether the procedure went well the level of empathy, attention to detail and care could have begun long before the patient sat in the dentist’s chair.
Every day we take our customers on a journey, along that journey there will be ‘moments of truth’—opportunities to either disappoint or delight. We often think of ‘moments of truth’ occurring in times of a customer service crisis and focus a lot of our energy on delighting in those moments, but ‘moments of truth’ happen routinely.
There are certain “givens” that customers expect, and they’re disappointed if they don’t happen. Then there are opportunities to create ‘magic’ which is where we often focus our customer service efforts. It’s natural to want to delight but we sometimes forget that focusing on the “givens” is as important as delivering the magic.
In our rush to delight the customer we can overlook the basics.
Paying attention to the ‘givens’ as much as the magic is how we delight. We must do both.
What are the “givens” in your customer’s journey and where is there an opportunity to create magic?
*Download and the Customer Delight PDF to make lists of opportunities you have to meet expectations and to create magic. Use this list to refine the customer experience and optimise for delight.
Image by Miss Messie.
Share this article
How To Build Brand Equity
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
The toilet paper manufacturer has seemingly found a new way to increase customer engagement and build brand equity. Instead of just embossing patters on the paper, the company has decided to emboss its logo on every sheet. Imagine the meetings, time, energy and a myriad of other resources (including retooling of machines) that went into making and implementing this marketing decision. Now imagine the conversation that started the company on this journey to finding ways to create brand equity. Phrases like ‘captive audience’ (not so much), and ‘increased brand awareness’ were probably used, leading to many of the wrong questions being asked and answered.
Brand equity is not created by sticking a logo where a customer has no choice but to see it. Brand equity evolves when the brand is so meaningful to the customer that it becomes part of her story. It doesn’t happen when she sees the logo, but when she wants to be seen with it. Big difference.
The reason the backpacker at the airport covers every part of her 15 inch Macbook apart from the Apple logo with a heavy duty protective case, is because she wants people to know that she is part of the Apple tribe. Her Macbook is as much a part of her identity as the battered, bright yellow, sticker-covered violin case she rests her foot on while she surfs the Internet in the departure lounge.
We don’t commandeer brand equity with adverts or increased exposure. We earn it when we change how the customer feels about herself in the presence of our brand. And yes, it’s even possible to do that with a toilet paper brand, just not in the way we might have done fifty years ago.
Image by Shandi-lee Cox..
Share this article
Good Marketing
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
As she’s scanning organic bananas or buckwheat kernels at the checkout the assistant at local health food store strikes up a conversation. She’s curious to know if the bananas are just for making smoothies and what the customer uses the buckwheat for. These seemingly insignificant interactions are hardly worth remembering and yet over time they spark ideas for new menu items to be introduced at the in-store cafe and give rise to opportunities to better serve her community of customers.
Good marketing starts with the customer’s needs and wants, not with the company’s emergency.
A great marketing strategy is geared towards creating lasting connections instead of simply being focused on reaching short term targets.
The gifted marketer doesn’t simply try to sell what’s in stock today. She strives to understand what her customer will want tomorrow and then creates the culture and momentum to deliver that.
If your success and profits are by-product of satisfied customers, it stands to reason that your priority is to matter, not simply to make and sell.
Image by G. Morel.
Share this article
The Customer Referral Source Changes The Story
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Not all prospective customer enquiries are created equal.
An enquiry via website contact form, made as a result of a Google search is very different from a direct referral from a friend. It’s also worth remembering that the customer’s story at the time she seeks you out changes the sales conversation.
How and when a potential customer finds you has a bearing on the story she is ready to hear and the value you can create for her in the moment. It’s just as important to focus on her circumstances and worldview and to allocate resources to that as it is to hone the brand story you want to tell.
Image by Kejing GU.
Share this article
The Noisy Bell And Napkin Worthiness
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
John Lydgate was right, “you can’t please all of the people all of the time.”
And yet a huge part of our job as business leaders, entrepreneurs and product creators is to meet a standard that pleases most of the people we serve, most of the time.
Feedback—the information and reactions we receive about our products or performance is the basis for improvement, but feedback comes in different forms. It’s often what’s unsaid, the complaint that isn’t voiced or the praise that isn’t overt that’s most valuable to our businesses. The clean plate, the return visit, the website address scribbled on a lunch companion’s napkin, leave valuable clues about what’s working and what’s not.
Customer satisfaction and customer support are very different from customer awareness and customer care.
Your business needs both.
You can wear yourself down by constantly reacting to the noisy bell, or you can find more ways to pay attention to the people who think you are napkin-worthy, then work harder to create more of them.
Image by C.Foulger.
Share this article
How Do You Know?
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
How do you know which product to launch next?
How do you know which packaging works best?
How do you know what it feels like for someone to encounter your brand?
How do you know what story your customer will tell tomorrow about the experience he had today?
What we know (or perhaps don’t yet know), about our customers should be the thing that impacts what we do now and next.
How are you getting better at knowing?
Image by Glen Scott.
Share this article
The Thing About That List You’re Making
filed in Storytelling, Strategy
Take a look at the Top 20 Book Lists of All Time on Amazon. This is what most people bought and reviewed—the books that succeeded wildly, beyond expectations. Could anyone have predicted that these would be the books that the majority embraced? Can anyone explain why?
Despite their outstanding success you probably haven’t read or even heard of some of them.
Now consider the books not listed, maybe they too got under someone’s skin, changed a life, sparked a great idea or launched a career.
As you set out on this brand new year you’re probably making a list of your own. You have things you want to plan for, milestones you want to reach, targets you want to hit and perhaps even a list or two you want to get on.
Remember that success is not what you read in a well-crafted bio, or see on a carefully curated Instagram feed and it may never be recognised with awards or witnessed on a list.
Success is a feeling, not a fact. You get to choose what it should feel like.
Image by Colin Knowles.
Share this article
A Reputation That Precedes You
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
It’s 5pm, still thirty minutes to go before Mr Wong opens its doors for dinner. The line snakes down the street and around the corner. A few people have bookings for tables of six or more, but not many, most are walk-ins who know that if you’re not dining with a bigger group and have no reservation (house rules), then you need to get there early. Mr Wong’s reputation precedes it.
There is clearly no time for the management to worry about what the dozen other restaurants within walking distance are doing and no urgency to allocate resources to traditional marketing campaigns.
Like the Mr Wong team every one of us has a choice. We can spend the majority of our time either managing our reputation or keeping pace with our competitors or we can deliberately create the reputation that precedes us.
What’s the story you want customers to tell about your brand? [Take time to write it down].
How will you make that happen?
Image by deepstereo.
Share this article
The Three Marketing Superpowers—Judgement, Empathy And Timing
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Just two days before Christmas while every other retailer was happily dealing with long lines, the outdoor clothing and travel equipment store was empty. Not a customer in sight. They should have been doing a brisk trade in torches, camping accessories and stocking fillers, yet the assistants had plenty of time to finesse the ‘Boxing Day Sale’ window display. Large red signs announcing that in just three days things might be cheaper filled every window, reminding passers-by about buyer’s remorse right when they were in the mindset to make a purchase.
This error in judgement, empathy and timing led to a slew of operational decisions, the impact of which couldn’t be undone. The ability to stand in the customer’s shoes and to see the world as they do is the most underrated marketing tool we have.
Image by Gerard Stolk.