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Articles filed in: Storytelling
The Downside Of Buying Attention
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Some of the most sad and frustrated emails I get are from business owners who have invested money to get people to visit their websites. Often they have paid for search engine optimisation or Google AdWords and waited for the traffic to come—which is does, it just doesn’t always convert or deliver the result the business owner had hoped for.
Yes, there are ways to buy attention and get people to your website—a ton of tricks and tactics, but what happens then?
What will make them stay, never mind buy?
Why should they trust you?
How are you demonstrating that above all of the other businesses that they will visit online today, that you are the one to solve their problem?
A marketing strategy has to go beyond getting people to look in the window.
If visitors are walking away it means we haven’t given them a reason to stay.
They are looking for a reason. It’s our job to give it to them.
Image by Hamed Masoumi.
Not Everything Is An Opportunity
filed in Entrepreneurship, Storytelling, Strategy
We first met casually, in a social situation one Saturday morning. Less than five minutes into the small talk Terry asked what I did for a living. No sooner had the words “I run my own business” left my lips, than his hand reached into his back pocket to draw out some business cards (one for me and a few for my friends). Terry is an accountant who specialises in small business.
His reaction was a reflex. He has learned to see any conversation with someone who is not employed as an opportunity. Of course Terry is trying to grow his business the only way he knows how, by using a scattershot approach, looking for the opportunity in every single encounter—because ‘you never know’.
Not every encounter is an opportunity to close a sale.
The way to succeed is not to clutch at all of the straws—it’s to have the discipline to discern.
Discernment and timing are two skills every marketer needs to cultivate, because ‘you never know’ is not a smart marketing strategy. We need to make understanding who our customers are, and who they’re not, a priority.
The best way to start is by taking time to consider the worldview of the person you’re trying to reach. Easier said than done, especially if your back is against the wall.
Luckily there’s a blueprint to help you make a start.
Image by David Tan.
Context And The Value Story
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
How much is nail polish removal worth? It all depends on the circumstances in which it’s executed.
Use a tissue and liquid remover at home and we’re talking a cent or two. Individually wrapped polish removal wipes for use on the go, cost as much as $1 each and a trip to the nail salon might set you back $10 to achieve the same result.
When the context story changes the value story changes too.
People don’t just pay a premium for different or better. They pay more for a product or service that anticipates, accommodates and sometimes celebrates the context of their situation. Understanding not just what our customers will buy or pay, but why they will buy or pay more, provides us with an opportunity to innovate and add value.
Taxi apps, on-demand delivery, product subscription services, meal kits and on and on were born from seeing the opportunity to change the value story.
What are the circumstances surrounding how customers experience your product or service?
When and where might they need an alternative or augmented solution?
Where is the opportunity to add value by changing the product story according to how customers want to experience it?
Start there.
Image by Lorenia.
The New Rules Of Brand Awareness
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
If you conducted a survey of entrepreneurs or business leaders, asking them to name their three biggest challenges, I can guarantee that nine times out of ten, attracting more customers and creating brand awareness would be on that list.
The default method for creating brand awareness goes something like this.
Old rules of brand awareness:
1. Make something for everyone.
2. Tell your story.
3. Attract customers.
4. Build brand awareness.
The brands that succeed today though turn this on its head.
New rules of brand awareness:
1. Understand the customer’s story.
2. Make something they want.
3. Give them a story to tell.
4. Create brand affinity.
While we are busy employing tactics to get more people to notice us, we are overlooking the greatest opportunity we have to drive the sustainable growth and success of our businesses.
Affinity endures and it trumps fleeting awareness every time.
Image by Bob Prosser.
Who Is This Not For?
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
When we spend time thinking about growing our businesses we tend to focus on our ideal customers—the people we know we want to matter to. A great way to get really specific about who you are creating your products and services for is to think about who they are not for.
The temptation in the short term is to be the brand that has the potential to serve everyone.
Giving in to that temptation is the road to a diluted, commoditised, interchangeable brand that doesn’t stand for much—one that gets used to making compromises to please everyone and anyone.
Do you want to attract the casual passerby who could just have easily walked into your competitor’s store today and will probably do that tomorrow?
Are you building your business to serve someone who responds to clickbait and lowest price offers?
Does it matter that the pay per click ads you buy deliver people who don’t truly value what you do?
Rock star brands that endure are never built by pleasing the masses.
You don’t have to fill every single seat in the auditorium.
Who would you rather not matter to?
Knowing the answer to that question and then living it is the foundation of a magnetic brand story.
A New Book To Help You Create Ideas That Fly
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
I’ve spent the last two years writing, speaking and consulting about how to succeed by making your ideas resonate with the people you want to serve.
My new book Meaningful: The Story Of Ideas That Fly is the culmination of that work.
Our new digital landscape has spawned an entrepreneurial culture and the belief that anyone with a laptop and an Internet connection has the power to change the world—to create an idea that flies. But for every groundbreaking business that started this way, a thousand others have stalled or failed. Why? What’s the secret to success? What do Khan Academy and the GoPro camera have in common?
After years of consulting with hundreds of innovators, creatives, entrepreneurs and business leaders to help them tell the stories of their ideas, I have discovered something: every business that flies starts not with the best idea, the biggest budget or better marketing, but with the story of someone who wants to do something—and can’t.
We don’t change the world by starting with our brilliant ideas, our dreams; we change the world by helping others to live their dreams. The story of ideas that fly is the story of the people who embrace them, love them, adopt them, care about them and share them. Successful ideas are the ones that become meaningful to others—helping them to see what’s possible for them.
Our ideas fly when we show others their wings.
This new book includes the stories and case studies of businesses that have become beloved brands by beginning their innovation and marketing journey with the customer’s story. It also introduces a new tool—the Story Strategy Blueprint to help you to do that too.
I hope this book enables you to get clear about the impact you are creating, for whom and that it empowers you to build the business you always wanted. Thanks for giving me a reason to write it.
Image by Karishma Kasabia. Book cover design by Reese Spykerman. Book layout by Kelly Exeter. It takes a village!
Before You Pitch
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
At the end of the event a small group gathered around the presenter. He had flown in from Europe the day before and was bound to be jet lagged. Despite that he had delivered an informative and inspiring keynote about how his company—one of the most powerful brands in the world, used customer insights to innovate.
A couple of people shook his hand and thanked him. The third guy to reach the top of the line began by explaining what his company did, mentioning that they were hoping to partner with the speaker’s brand. Next he pulled out his smartphone and started scrolling through screenshots of their product. The speaker glanced over his shoulder at the next person in the line apologetically.
Pitch guy was on a roll. He was face to face with a representative from one of the world’s leading brands and he didn’t want to waste the opportunity. He pressed on, making sure to communicate every last detail, without pausing for breath or to read the body language of the person he was pitching to. After five minutes he walked away with the speaker’s business card (clearly the goal he had set himself), which of course must have felt like a win. In the process of scoring that quick victory he forgot the first rule of pitching.
Before you try to make yourself understood, you need to work out why the person you are pitching to will care about what you have to say. We have all been pitch guy at one time or another. Typically when we pitch or sell we are primarily concerned about what we want the person on the receiving end to do next—give us his card, invest, make an introduction and on and on. What we really should be asking ourselves first is;
“Why exactly will what I am about to say next matter to this particular person?”
Just because someone heard what you had to say doesn’t mean it made an impression.
Image by Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung.
Most Marketing
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Most marketing is designed to….
Get attention in the moment.
Make people choose.
Create awareness among many.
Persuade people to decide.
Most marketing is not designed to….
Build loyalty over time.
Make people care.
Create affinity with a few.
Help people to feel good about their decisions.
What makes your marketing unlike most marketing?
Image by Onny Carr.
Why We Have A Hard Time Communicating Value
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
No self-respecting (or smart) cafe owner would describe his drip-filter coffee as 85% boiling water. Instead he tells the origin story of the coffee beans and the slow pour-over brewing process that augments the flavour. The barista creates retail theatre while you wait in line.
We all know that the line is also part of the $4 coffee story.
We witness great brand storytelling every day and yet we still find it hard to communicate value to our customers.
Here are three reasons why.
3 Mistakes we make when communicating the value of our products
1. Starting in the wrong place.
We get hung up on explaining why we’re different before understanding what matters to the customer.
2. Leading with the facts and only communicating tangible value.
We describe features and benefits to justify the sticker price. This only serves to reduce products and services to the sum of their commoditised parts.
3. Overlooking that people buy with their hearts AND their heads.
We need to appeal to both.
Value is best communicated when it’s designed to be believed, not just described.
Image by Roland Tanglao.
The Most Powerful Thing You Didn’t Do Today
filed in Storytelling, Strategy
Have you ever been footsteps away from a window and yet found yourself opening an app or doing a Google search to check the weather, instead of simply going over to the window and opening the curtains? Me too! Why is that?
We are now in the habit of outsourcing our thinking and second guessing our judgement because the right answer is always just a Google search away.
There are so many more demands on our time, we prioritise responding and reacting to other people’s questions and have left very little time to think about what’s important to ask ourselves.
We allow ourselves to be consumed by other people’s lives, thoughts and content to the detriment of living, prioritising and creating our own.
What are your important questions and what could you achieve, in both work and life by choosing to give yourself the space to answer them?
Image by Rennet Stowe.