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Articles filed in: Marketing
Marketing Discernment
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Much of our marketing is designed to convince or convert a customer in the moment. A particular colour applied to a ‘buy now’ button, the timely Instagram post or product placement at the checkout—tactics to get the lukewarm prospect over the line.
Our customer’s path to her decision is convoluted. It’s influenced by the story she tells herself. Her choices are shaped by regrets about the past, her challenges in the present and fears for the future. And yet, we market to her like she’s only considering the merits of what’s right in front of her eyes this second.
We mistakenly believe we always have the power to manipulate the decision to our advantage with a tactical nudge, forgetting that sometimes the factors influencing the decision are in motion long before we encounter the customer.
You will win some and lose some. Sometimes the losses happen long before you show up. The job of your marketing isn’t simply to help people to make up their minds. It’s to discern which people you can genuinely help.
Image by Thomas Hawk
Choosing The Customers You Want
More cafes in Melbourne have begun offering a 10% discount to customers who bring a reusable cup. It’s an intentional choice that says something about their values and those of their customers. Theses cafes are attracting the kind of customers they want to serve.
The clothing store manager gets disgruntled when people rarely buy full priced items, forgetting she conditioned her customers to look for red sale stickers by consistently offering discounts on Fridays to entice weekend shoppers. Sustainability stories and premium pricing are deliberate strategies designed to attract the kind of customers a particular business wants to serve.
We get the customers we want by speaking to the customers we want. You’re choosing your customers and clients, partners and employees by telling the story you tell. You might as well tell a story that gets you the right ones.
Image by Angel Ganev
What Do You Want Your Brand Story To Do?
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
What’s the role of storytelling in your business? What are you expecting your brand story to do? Most of us tell stories to describe the value we create. Storytelling is a tactic used to convince or convert prospects to customers—a way to close the sale. We’re selling the power of story short.
Before they had words our ancestors told each other stories in paint and pictures on uneven stone walls. Storytelling has forever been the way we related to one another—how we connected, informed and inspired. Stories created a sense of belonging. They brought us closer.
That’s also the job of the brand stories we tell. Our stories signal belonging to the people who believe what we believe. It’s important to remember how the stories we live and breathe are shaped by the outcomes we pursue. You might make the sale by focusing relentlessly on tactics that support near-term goals. But in doing so you may miss the opportunity to forge lasting connections with the customers who will sustain your business over time. Significance scales.
Image by Bryn Pinzgauer
The Limitations Of Marketing To Persuade
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
We assume sales and marketing are simply a case of fulfilling unspoken desires or unmet needs and making the people with those needs aware we’ve solved their problem.
But there’s another piece of the marketing puzzle we often overlook—the doubts our customers must overcome. People don’t just want to know that our products and services exist or how they are better. They also need reassurance that the product enabled the change they are seeking. What most people care about isn’t making the right decision, it’s making the wrong one.
We market to persuade, often forgetting the place of marketing to reassure.
How are you ticking the reassurance box?
Image by Art DiNo.
The Visibility Paradox
filed in Marketing
A bullet point list of tactics to increase your visibility might include; perfecting your elevator pitch, networking, forming strategic partnerships or creating a compelling press release. You don’t need to look far to see that we’re expending a lot of time and resources metaphorically waving our arms in an attempt to be seen. The irony is the best way to be seen is to get better at seeing.
When we become more interested, empathetic and generous, we not only see the opportunities others miss, we also do our best work in the service of others. There will always be a place in the world for, as broadcaster Krista Tippett says, ‘voices not shouting to be heard’. We build businesses we’re proud of by ignoring the noise and getting in touch with our humanity.
Image by Dell Inc
Attention Deficit
Worldwide ad spending for 2017 is expected to reach $583.91 billion. That’s an increase of 7.3% on last year. We spend extraordinary sums of money and disproportionate amounts of time trying to get people to notice us—often without being specific about the end we have in mind.
No business ever died from a shortage of attention. Companies and ideas fail because of a lack of resonance with the people they seek to serve.
Questions for you
How much attention is enough to sustain your business?
Are the time and money you invest in creating brand awareness converting to results?
What resources are you devoting to creation and connection that will help you to resonate?
Image by txmx2
Three Ways To Sell
If you want to get more comfortable about selling, it’s helpful to consider which of these three sales techniques you use and to assess how they’re working for you.
Describing
This is the most common way to sell—one you’ve likely experienced or used. Describing the specifications, features and benefits of our products and services is usually our default sales technique. We tell people what they get, how it works, what it does and how much it will cost.
Storytelling
There’s no doubt that customer success stories are a powerful way to explain the benefits of our offerings. Before and after case studies and testimonials help people to imagine what their future might look like or who they might become in the presence of our product.
Listening
By far the most overlooked and underutilised sales technique is to listen before pitching. It’s far easier to make something people want than it is to make people want something. We can only do this by understanding the stories, frustrations, challenges and goals of our prospective customers.
Empathy is underrated.
Image by smr+lsh
The Art Of Customer Loyalty
How many store loyalty cards do you have in your wallet? How many more will you be offered this week? Do you still carry a wallet?
We’ve tried to turn customer loyalty into a data-driven science. A game of, if we do this, customers will do that. In our desire for something to measure, or a needle to move, we’ve lost sight of one crucial point. Our customers’ reactions and responses can’t always be conditioned in predictable ways. Loyalty is not transactional, it’s built on something we can’t measure—on how the customer feels.
Instead of creating our entire marketing strategy around what we want the customer to do, we could consider how we want the customer to feel. Science gives us data-driven loyalty programs and homogeneous points cards that people forget they signed up for. Art allows us to be remembered for our humanity and make meaning part of our marketing.
Image by Garry Knight
What Would The Enlightened Marketer Do?
When the email subject line contains the words ‘urgent alert’ there’s no doubt about the sender’s intention. His metric for success is the number of people who open the email today—the more the better.
Instead of baiting people with messages to make them act, the enlightened marketer thinks about how his words will make customers feel. He understands things like open rates that he can easily measure, only tell part of the story.
The enlightened marketer doesn’t jeopardise his long-term strategy for a quick near-term gain. He behaves like his objective is to get to do it all again tomorrow.
Is what you’re about to do today serving your goals for tomorrow?
Louder Than Words
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
We’re obsessed with finding the right words to communicate our value. We finesse our LinkedIn bios, agonise over product descriptions and sales pages. Of course, words have enormous power. But they are worthless without the actions that support them. It’s no good describing how great your product is if you haven’t put in the work to make sure it never disappoints.
Our stories are every bit as much about what we do as what we say. You have to work at being as good as the words you want to have the privilege of using.
What did you do today to tell your story?
Image by Niall Kennedy