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Articles filed in: Storytelling
What Do Your Customers Really Want?
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
There’s an Italian Cafe in our neighbourhood serving good coffee and speciality cakes. It’s jam-packed every single evening—not because people are hungry for cake, but because they are hungry for the feeling of being connected. They seek out the place that makes them feel that way.
Howard Schultz recognised the power of people’s aspirations thirty years ago, when he transformed Starbucks from a coffee roaster into ‘the third place’ by grounding the brand’s value proposition in a story about ritual and community.
Just as a successful cafe isn’t ever just about the coffee, the products and services you sell create meaning for your customers beyond their utility. The truth is that as marketers, we often miss the opportunity to acknowledge and reflect that story back to them.
Does your story align with the story your customers really want to believe?
Image by Niall Kennedy.
The Importance Of Customer Cues
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Ira’s cafe is tucked away at the bottom of a narrow city centre laneway. Without regulars who live close by Ira’s place is dependent on converting tourists and weekend shoppers into diners. Every neighbouring cafe stations a host in the small doorway waiting for passers-by to make a decision. Ira takes up his post in the cafe doorway too, but he approaches the problem a little differently.
Because his cafe is at the end of the laneway he can watch people approaching. He sees them stopping to look at how busy a cafe is or to glance at the menu only to move on in search of a better option. Ira knows that once they hit his place they are running out of choices and also beginning to question their original decision to wait or walk on. As each group approaches he watches their cues, makes an assessment, then acts. Families fearful of not finding room are asked if they’d like a table for four, and shown that there is more room inside. Couples are asked if they’d like to see the breakfast menu. Lone tourists wheeling suitcases on the way to the station are offered takeaways.
At every turn, Ira comes across as empathetic, in contrast to the usual way sales conversations are handled on the street in a ‘can I have a few moments of your time?’ fashion because he is constantly assessing the prospective customer’s cues and anticipating their internal narrative.
If we want to become better marketers and brand storytellers we need to pay attention to what people want but quite possibly haven’t yet articulated. When we do our actions are seen as good service and not an inconvenient interruption.
Image by Linh Nguyen.
Most Brand Stories
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Most brand stories…
Start with what the marketer needs to say, not with what the customer wants to hear.
Describe product features and benefits, instead of customer problems and desired outcomes.
Prioritise conversion above emotional connection.
Seek to build brand awareness rather than create brand affinity.
Invite customers to pay attention while companies ignore opportunities to understand their worldview.
Create noise instead of adding value.
Get lost in a sea of sameness.
Your job is to do exactly the opposite.
Image by Hans Splinter.
The Sustainable Marketing Strategy
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
The fast food restaurant’s latest advertising campaign announces the return of it’s famous $1 chips. Of course, the lure of the bargain will bring back people who have forgotten that this brand exists. Foot traffic will increase and revenue along with it—for a little while.
The local organic store puts out platters of delicious free samples for customers to try every lunchtime. The staff take time to answer questions about products, ingredients, and food allergies. Customers browse and linger. Revenue increases are reliable and sustained.
We have two choices. We can work hard to get attention and try to influence the customer’s short-term purchasing decisions, or we can set out to understand the context around what motivates him to want to belong first and buy later.
Which strategy are you working on?
Image by Jeffrey Smith.
When Rational Sales Strategies Don’t Work
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
A couple of years ago Mrs Jones spent $12,000 to install a hydronic heating system. She hasn’t had the boiler serviced since. She politely refuses when the guy from the service department calls her to arrange an annual service for just $164.
He pushes back a little, explaining about voiding the warranty, energy efficiency, safety, avoiding unwanted emergency repairs and call out fees. His rationale falls on deaf ears.
Mrs Jones says she’ll give them a call if and when the boiler breaks down.
The customers worldview is clearly not aligned with the service department’s and yet everything about the story they’re telling speaks to their own rational worldview, not to the customer’s heart.
What if instead of trying to make her buy, the service team spent time working out why she doesn’t? What’s the story your customer wants to hear?
Image by Judd McCullum.
Being Found Vs. Standing Apart
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Jim is a painter and decorator. He’s been in business for twenty-five years, long enough to see the world of marketing turned upside down. Fifteen years ago Jim took out a three line advert in the local newspaper every week. He finally cancelled that three years ago when it was yielding two calls a month and no real work. Now Jim pays Google, his SEO meister and other third party platforms thousands of dollars every month in order to be found.
Jim learns about backlinks and search queries while managing the day to day admin, quoting and craft of his business. He gets more leads, but so do the six other painters who are playing the ‘being found’ game along with him and so they end up competing on price, not value. Once the prospective customer arrives at Jim’s website there’s nothing to distinguish him from his competition. Because all of his energy and resources are spent on being found, he has nothing left to tell the story of how he stands apart.
We’ve mistakenly made being found the number one goal of our marketing. But being found is useless if we can’t make people feel like they wouldn’t even consider the competition.
That’s what you’re shooting for. Put your energy there.
Image by Alain Wibert.
The Essence Of Meaningful Ideas
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Victoria Parade is the road that separates north Melbourne’s suburbs from the city. It’s a busy spot. The road is dotted at intervals with pedestrian crossings and used by cars, commuters and pedestrians alike. But the widest pedestrian path across the dual carriageway isn’t a planned pavement. It’s one that’s been created by the desire of commuters to cross where they want to cross. The most popular route isn’t along the designated path or at the traffic lights, but across the grass embankment, at a place where it’s most convenient for pedestrians.
These shortcuts are called desire paths. Not only do they tell us where people have been, they leave clues about why people go where they go and do what they do. These well-worn routes often become more relevant than the planned ones. They tell the story of the community that made them.
As I wrote in Meaningful:
“The story of ideas that fly is really the story of the people who adopt them. It’s how their narratives and the realisation of their hopes, dreams and aspirations collide with what we create that makes an innovation meaningful or helps an idea take off.”
Your customers are showing you daily how they live, what they care about and how to become more relevant to them. Follow their lead.
Image by Duncan Rawlinson.
The Value Of Customer Questions
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Every day our customers give us clues about what’s important to them and what they really want. Often we ignore them. Questions like the one asked of a running shoe manufacturer, which was followed up with this response:
“Thank you for your email regarding shoes for a mud run.
Unfortunately, we don’t stock a shoe that is suitable for the mud run.
I have been advised by a work colleague that the best thing to do is to wear an old pair of shoes you will be willing to throw away afterwards as they are usually unsalvageable.”
These kinds of questions and responses are the stuff of lost opportunity, not just to increase revenue or market share, but to better serve our customers. For the record 2+ million people have taken part in Tough Mudder, an obstacle race “built to test your mental grit, camaraderie and all-around physical fitness.” and to give you a story to tell.
While there may not be much that the shoe company can do at the moment to solve the customer’s problem without a product to sell, there is an opportunity to learn from the question. All too often these questions are responded to and the lost in the busyness of our day-to-day.
What do you do with your customer’s questions?
Do you see them as a task, hassle or an opportunity?
Registration for The Story Strategy Course is now open.
Image by The Colectivity.
Who Is The Story For?
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Jane runs an upmarket souvenir shop in the heart of the city. It’s in the perfect spot, close to the four and five-star hotels, and full of tasteful gifts—reminders of good times had, and a little something that says ‘we were thinking of you’. In a digital world, her biggest problem is finding interesting gifts that will capture the imagination of 8-year-old boys.
It’s something she agonises over daily.
But here’s the thing, for the most part, the recipients of the gifts are not her customers. Her customers are the grandparents or aunties who want to be heroes when they return home. More than working out how to spark the imagination of the young boy, Jane needs to stand in the shoes of the gift giver—to understand grandma’s worldview.
And so it goes for us too. The end user isn’t always the person making the purchasing decision.
It’s just as important to pay attention to their needs as it is to sell a product that will be loved.
Registration for The Story Strategy Course is now open.
Image by Hernán Piñera.
The Key To A Great Product Story
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
As an entrepreneur or business leader, you will inevitably be asked how your product or service is different from your competitor’s. Often this question comes from someone who isn’t even a potential customer (but that’s another story). Our fallback position is to lead with features and benefits. We describe tiny, incremental improvements we’ve made in order to justify our existence. In our rush to prove that we are different or better, we list things our competitors can copy in a heartbeat.
“We open earlier.” “Our ingredients are superior.” “We support local businesses.”
The best brands don’t lead with descriptions of the features and benefits, they communicate the level of love they’ve put into the product. And they tell the backstory about why it needed to exist. They showing that they understood who they created it for and why it should matter.
Anyone can copy the nuts and bolts of a product. It’s a lot harder to replicate the heart and soul.
Your product story doesn’t just describe what you do, it’s an opportunity to show why you care to do it.
Image by Linh Nguyen.