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Articles filed in: Storytelling
People Power
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
When a traveller books a $700 a night hotel room she assumes that she’ll have a five-star experience. She’s expecting more than a better bed, thicker carpets and fancier facilities. When a five-star hotel gets a one-star review, it’s an indication that something went badly wrong.
Of course, guests and customers are disappointed for a variety of reasons. Reality can’t always meet expectations. Sometimes the room is noisy, or the food is cold. Maybe the shower is dirty, or the bed is uncomfortable. But these issues in isolation rarely result in a ‘terrible’ review.
When you analyse one-star reviews, a clear pattern emerges. It doesn’t matter whether the hotel’s room rate is $700 or $70 a night—every single one-star review is a result of human failure. It’s what happens in the moment when the customer seeks acknowledgement that changes everything.
The best product on the planet is rendered virtually worthless if the person delivering it fails to make a human connection with the customer. We want to be seen more than we want plush carpets beneath our feet or goose down pillows under our heads.
Image by Thomas Hawk
Making A Mark
filed in Storytelling
Regular customers know when Effie has the day off from her job at the city centre convenience store. They sense her absence as soon as they walk in. The coffee machine hasn’t been cleaned. The shelves haven’t been restocked. The music isn’t playing. Customers aren’t stopping to chat.
There’s a different energy about the place.
Over time, we’ve come to believe that making a mark is about doing the monumental—things few people could do. We’ve got that backwards. We change the world in imperceptible increments, by caring to do the things that anyone could do—but few choose to do.
Image by Can Pac Swire
Skill Vs. Talent
filed in Storytelling, Strategy
The dentist looks inside the patient’s mouth. She completes her examination, makes an assessment and proposes treatment. The proposed treatment considers only two things. What’s going on inside the patient’s mouth and his ability to pay.
The dentist knows she can fix the problem. She wants to do a good job. This is the work she’s trained for twenty years to do. But her training hasn’t equipped her to see that treatment isn’t only about executing flawless fillings. A good dentist assesses the mouth, then fills the tooth to relieve the pain. A great dentist looks the patient in the eye and understands why he’s worried about having a broken tooth before she thinks about drilling.
Proficiency and competence are a given. What patients, clients and customers want is someone who has the talent to see their problems in context. A professional who knows that they are more than the sum of their challenges and the contents of the wallets.
Image by My Future.
Better Bridges
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
The design and layout of a department store are deliberate. The sum of a thousand decisions, choices made to optimise the customer experience and maximise profit. Cosmetics on the ground floor, furniture on the top. The fewer people shopping for big-ticket items invest time ascending six floors. You could argue that the customers who go to the trouble of reaching the top of the store are the most motivated customers in it.
And yet often the sales conversation that happens when the customer gets there seems haphazard and unplanned. Despite the marketing jargon about sleep systems and orthopaedic grade mattresses, one bed looks like any other. The salesperson’s script is the bridge between confusion and clarity, indecision and conviction, an enquiry and a sale. The questions she asks and story she tells are also a set of choices that should help the customer to get to where he wants to go.
Our job as marketers, teachers and leaders is to build better bridges to enable the right change to happen. We can choose to do it on purpose.
Image by Jo Zimney
What’s Your Customer’s Context?
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
Yesterday I got chatting to Sarah in the street about the sofa she didn’t buy. Sarah, who has three daughters under the age of seven had been looking for the perfect sofa for ages. When she finally found the perfect one she put down a deposit on it and waited for it to arrive a few weeks later.
This sofa was $8,000.
The following morning she began to question her decision. ‘What on earth am I doing? I must be crazy to spend this kind of money on a sofa, especially when I have three small children.’ Sarah decided to cancel her order and keep looking. Which is why she was leaning on her gate telling me the story yesterday about the sofa she did buy. The sofa that was $2,200, with linen covers that can all be removed and chucked in the washing machine. The sofa that’s perfect for now.
We get caught up in the story we want our customers to believe. We obsess about finding the perfect words to express the value we create—often forgetting to consider the story the customer tells about what’s right for her.
What’s the story your customer is telling herself?
Image by Donnie Ray Jones
The Ready And Willing
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
The sandwich boards positioned on the footpath. Posters pasted inside the bus shelter. A pair of charity fundraisers stationed outside the university. All marketing tactics designed with one goal in mind—to make the product, business or cause more visible.
The reason our marketing falls flat is that the people we want to serve are not interested in our need to be seen or sell. Customers are motivated by their need to be seen and understood. We all are.
The good news is it’s easier to make things people want than it is to make people want things. When you stop trying to get the attention of the casual passer-by, you have more resources to tell your story to the people who are ready to hear it. What do they want from your product or service?
Image by Judy Dean
The World Inside Your Customer’s Heart
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
There are few better lessons in the art of storytelling than those learned by watching a great real estate agent auction a good property, on a chilly Melbourne morning. Last Saturday, I looked on as an agent sold a million dollar home by reminding potential buyers how they would feel every weekend as they strolled to the cafe on the corner to have a delicious pastry with their flat white.
Having gone through the legal formalities, he didn’t waste much time talking about the quality of the construction or the fixtures and fittings. Instead, he painted a picture of what it would be like to live in that home, in that location. He reflected the story already in the buyers’ hearts back to them.
The young couple who bought the home (with the help of their parents, who stood by their side), had grown up in the area. They wanted their baby son to grow up there too.
Contrast this first agent’s approach with that of the one whose client’s property was passed in at auction later that day. The second agent led with the facts. He gave details about the land size, the distance from the city and statistics on property values in the area. Information that without meaning or context made little emotional connection with potential buyers and their worldview.
It’s believed that marketing is an unethical attempt to motivate people to buy through the back door of their emotions. Of course, storytelling in the wrong hands is a powerful tool that can encourage people to make decisions they later regret. Our job as ethical marketers is to help people to do things they want to do today and won’t regret tomorrow. We can only do that by understanding what’s in their hearts and by being able to say hand on our hearts that this is what we did.
Image by North Charleston
You Don’t Need Everyone
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
Keeping a customer is more valuable to your business than courting one. Fred Reichheld, from Bain and Co, points out that return customers buy more products and refer more friends. Yet the majority of our marketing is devoted attracting more customers.
When startup Dollar Shave Club launched in 2011, the brand had some stiff competition in Gillette—the brand that had dominated the razor blade market for more than a century. The startup founders knew they’d never beat Gillette at the consumer awareness game, but they could shoot for customer affinity. That’s what they did by launching a subscription razor blade service at a competitive price.
Mass awareness isn’t working so well any more. Thankfully, we’re moving beyond thinking about how we can win the battle for every customer’s mind and recognising that the future of business is about understanding how to get closer to a particular customer’s heart.
You don’t need everyone to succeed. You need to matter to someone.
Image by Roberto Trombetta
Easy Isn’t Always Best In The Long Run
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
The billboard outside the old cemetery read like a real estate advertisement.
‘Last remaining graves for sale.’ It seemed to scream inappropriately at the traffic roaring past.
In the past, these local burial plots would have been acquired by neighbouring families who were getting their affairs in order. Now even essential products and services have competition.
There’s no doubt that a billboard is a great way to capture everyone’s attention. But it may not be the best way to engage with the people you want to matter to.
It’s important to prioritise best above easy whatever you’re selling—especially if your customers will be around to do business with you again tomorrow.
Image by Natash Ramasamay
More What?
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
All marketing is an attempt to amplify.
The story we tell and the marketing we do depends on our priorities. Do you want to be more visible, more trusted, more respected, more desirable, more loved or something else?
Begin with that end in mind and craft your message accordingly.
Image by Jason Ogden