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Articles filed in: Strategy
Try And Test
filed in Strategy
If you are anything like many of the entrepreneurs I know and work with you have a bank of ideas waiting to be executed (or discarded). Most of these ideas (good and bad alike) never see the light of day because they are locked up in a notebook, or an app and they haven’t been either prioritised or ordered in any way. Here are five questions to help you to see the wood from the trees.
5 Questions To Help You Prioritise, Try And Test Your Ideas
1. What’s the idea?
2. Who is it for?
3. Why do they need it?
4. What excites you about this project?
5. How could you begin testing this idea with minimum doable launch strategy?
When you discard the ideas that don’t excite you, you make room for the ones that do.
Inage by Skane.
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.
The Unspoken Problem With Traditional Marketing Campaigns And Product Launches
It’s not unheard of for an entrepreneur or organisation to send 10-20 emails during an online product launch. We all understand that part of the job of our marketing is as McKinsey puts it;
“…is to reach consumers at the moments that most influence their decisions.”
This is why you have no choice but to pass the candy bar after you’ve bought tickets to the movie.
And yes, people who didn’t mean to buy Coke and popcorn end up buying Coke and popcorn, then regretting it later. This then is our dilemma, as marketers are we meant to care if the people who buy from us regret their decision after the fact?
The truth is sometimes the wrong people end up buying when we push too hard. What looks like a win for our short-term marketing strategy and our bottom line may not be a win at all. If people who shouldn’t have bought in the first place walk away unhappy, have we really won?
Yes, you can engineer your campaigns and your messaging to get more people to buy, but you also run the risk of creating more unhappy customers. Quite often these customers don’t even complain. After all, we didn’t put a gun to their head. As marketers, don’t we have a responsibility to help our customers to discern too?
You don’t want everyone—you want everyone who decides to belong to be delighted that they do.
Registration for The Story Strategy Course is now open.
Image by Mark Dodds.
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.
The Forgotten Purpose Of Brand Stories
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Most of what we describe as marketing and brand storytelling—what we do in order to grow our businesses, is designed to help us to find more customers.
What if we flipped that thinking on its head and thought about our stories as the way we help people to find us?
There’s a subtle difference.
When your main goal is to find the most people, you grasp at every straw and you dilute your message. You fail to stand for something or to draw a line in the marketing sand which you refuse to cross. You shoot for quantity over quality.
When your goal is to help people to find you, a subtle shift in your posture takes place. You, as Krista Tippett describes, stop shouting to be heard and start listening to understand. You actively look for ways to stand out to the right people, instead of trying to appease the majority. And most important of all you begin to measure things that matter to your customers beyond traditional metrics and the single bottom line.
Image by Luvia Lazo..
Uncommon And Unmistakable
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
A colleague in the university sector was attending a marketing event. The presenter’s first slide showed a university’s promotional materials—complete with the typical ‘DREAM LARGE’ and ‘DESIGN THE FUTURE’ type tagline. He then polled the audience, asking if they knew which university it was. A ten minute debate ensued. Many delegates thought it was definitely Melbourne University. Others guessed it was Sydney or University of Queensland, a handful plumped for other lesser-known institutions.
“That’s right guys, welcome to the university of anywhere.” the presenter said.
Everywhere you look you’ll see different businesses telling the same story, because it feels safer to conform than to stand out. But the things that set you apart—the uncommon and unmistakable are what customers seek out now. And yet we fall into the trap of amplifying our similarities, rather than risk telling the story about what sets us apart.
If you substituted the logo on your website for a competitor’s would anyone notice?
Your job is to make sure they do.
Image by Seattle Municipal Archives.