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Articles filed in: Marketing
Why People Choose This And Not That
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
A lifetime ago, before adblockers and Netflix we sat through TV ads that suggested (often questionable) tangible benefits. Washing-up liquids gave us hands as soft as our face, and chocolate makers created treats we could eat between meals without ruining our appetite. These ads sold us a story about how we could be better versions of ourselves.
While the media morphed and moved on—as living, breathing, thinking and most importantly feeling, human beings our motivations haven’t changed. We might be more aware of how marketing manipulates, but what we want deep down is still the same. Any buying decision we make, from cars to food, and yes, even toilet paper is made because of our internal narrative.
“I drive a Prius because……”
“I never give my kids frozen food because…..”
“I buy this toilet paper because…..”
Of course, there are the rational explanations about savings, or harmful additives and greenhouse gases, but the most powerful reasons are intangible and not articulated.
“Because I’m a good mother, a responsible citizen or a caring person.”
These internal narratives are not openly shared, which makes it all the more important for marketers to understand them. We switched from cabs to Uber because we hate uncertainty and from Coke to bottled water, to reusable cups because doing that reinforced the story we wanted to believe about ourselves.
Every successful brand fills in the blanks of the customer’s internal narrative. Can you?
Our customers shop here/use us because…..
Image by CK
The Things You’re Not Measuring
The more data we have the more we think we need. We measure everything from email open rates to foot traffic. We obsess over numbers of followers and rates of growth. And yet we often forget to take stock of the things we’re proud to have done and the ways we’ve made a difference.
Here’s your chance. Make a list of the things you’re proud you did over the past twelve months.
What’s the most important thing that needs to be on that list, but isn’t?
The clues you’re choosing to ignore in favour of what it seems important to know, are more powerful than you realise.
Image by Khánh Hmoong.
Are Your Business Goals And Actions Aligned?
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
He pushed the door. It was only when it didn’t give that he noticed the handwritten “back in ten minutes” sign. John was already twenty minutes into his lunch break. He just didn’t have time to hang around to buy the new picture book he’d promised he would read to his daughter tonight.
He swore quietly under his breath as he walked away empty handed.
Jan the bookstore owner is four doors away collecting her sushi order. She doesn’t see the harm in popping out for a quick bite to eat. It’s only ten minutes out of a very long day. If she misses out on a sale or two, so be it. A girl’s got to eat! People will understand. They’ll either wait or come back.
Except they don’t. They cross the street to try their luck at the department store or ‘buy with one click’ on Amazon. “Back in ten minutes” sends a signal to customers about how they are valued. Those ten minutes don’t just cost Jan a single sale, they add up to much more when she stops to consider the lifetime value of a loyal customer or the cost of acquiring a new one.
Every move you make is part of your brand’s story. How you act is who your customers believe you are and those beliefs impact your outcomes. What do you want them to believe?
Are your business goals and actions aligned?
Image by Tom Fahy.
A Question Of Attention
Have you noticed that more email marketers are trying to attract your attention at the weekend? Many weekly digests now hit inboxes outside office hours in the hope of getting traction when people are less busy.
As marketers we’re using every trick in the book to capture attention in order to further engagement, and so are our competitors. Email marketing services can help us to optimise email open rates by sending them at the optimum time. And we can read 101 posts to discover 10 ways to write headlines that get our emails opened.
But what if instead of wondering when and how to get more attention, we sought to understand what would compel the person on the receiving end to look forward to hearing from us? When we shift our focus to answering that question, we suddenly stop thinking about how to extract value and concentrate on how to create it instead.
Image by David Ramos.
Patient Growth
My trusty blender died a couple of weeks ago, or rather I killed the thing with overwork and by overloading. The new blender had a lot to live up to. On the advice of the sales assistant I bought the most powerful one on the market, but was still frustrated by its performance. Why wouldn’t this thing respond the way I wanted it to when I filled it to the brim? It’s taken some trial and error to work out that if I want to optimise the blender’s performance then patience is all that’s required.
I have two choices. I can take the shortcut, overfill the bowl and become frustrated when the motor can’t process the load, or I can gradually feed vegetables into it and watch as they are pulped in seconds.
In business as in life, we seek out what we think is the quickest route to the outcome we want, then we get frustrated when things don’t work out as we hoped they would. When our expectations don’t match our capabilities, or the customer’s worldview, or the marketplace’s readiness, we push harder—trying to hurry things along before it’s time.
Sometimes what we need is more patience and more time to work out how to turn aspirations into outcomes. Slow and steady is often the quickest way to get to where we want to go.
Image by Steven Depolo.
Hedging Your Bets Vs A Stake In The Ground
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
When we’re having problems articulating our story or making ideas resonate it’s often because we’re afraid of putting a stake in the ground. It seems safer to hedge our bets and easier to be more things to more people, than to commit to choosing who to matter to.
When you narrow your focus and stake your claim to a category or an idea, you must decide who you want to serve and how to matter to only those people. This in turn, helps you to get better at telling your story.
If you make a list of beloved brands you’ll find that they don’t hedge their bets. Spreading ideas isn’t simply a case of telling a better story, it starts with deciding exactly which story to tell.
Image by George Laoutaris.
The Value Of Challenging Our Assumptions
It’s 6am, and a passer-by bends down to leave a couple of bananas next to the homeless guy who is turning over in his sleeping bag in the doorway of 7-Eleven. When he wakes, he gathers his things and the few coins in his tin. He drops the fruit in a nearby bin and heads into the city.
The passer-by made an assumption about how best to help. But despite her good intentions their worldviews didn’t align.
This misalignment between giver and receiver, provider and user, business and customer occurs all too often. It happens when our understanding of the people we serve falls short—when we’re more focused on our story than we are on theirs.
We can challenge our assumptions about our customer’s wants and needs with knowledge, proof and truth. We seek those out by noticing, questioning, and understanding.
How are you doing that in your business?
Image by Gary Knight.
Brand Storytelling And The Rule Of One
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
Have you ever wondered why movies like Toy Story are so compelling and successful? The best writers in the world speak to universal human themes—the things that drive every one of us no matter what our worldview is.
Compelling storylines work because we see ourselves reflected in the characters. Their story is our story. A great script looks us right in the eye and says, “I see you”. Contrast that feeling with the one you get when you’re speaking to someone at a party, who is looking over his shoulder for the next most interesting person to enter the room. That’s exactly how you don’t want your customers and clients to feel.
Great storytellers make us feel like they’re speaking directly to us. And so it goes for great brand storytelling. The best brand stories make you feel like the company understands and is speaking just to you. The goal is to be more like Pixar and nothing like that guy at the party.
You achieve that by remembering ‘the rule of one’.
Speak to one person at a time. Make that person feel like she’s being looked in the eye.
That’s the foundation of a winning brand story.
Image by Luis Miguel Justino.
5 Questions To Consider Before Spending Your Marketing Budget
A colleague recently asked my advice about a five-figure advertising spend he was contemplating. Should he or shouldn’t he?
We mapped out the risks vs. the rewards and also discussed alternatives.
It turned out that he needed to ask a different set of questions entirely.
5 Questions To Ask Before Allocating Marketing Resources
1. What’s the best outcome you can hope to achieve as a result of employing this strategy?
2. What does failure look like?
3. Why this medium and not that one?
4. Why do you believe this is the best use of your marketing resources?
5. How could you delight existing customers by devoting these resources to deepening connections with them instead?
Just because it looks and feels like marketing doesn’t mean it’s the best option.
And 3 Action Items
1. If you’re going to read just one post about marketing from Seth Godin, read First ten.
2. Then read Kevin Kelly’s post 1,000 True Fans—still relevant today.
3. Your About Page is probably the most overlooked marketing opportunity you have.
The About Page Guide will help you to write an About Me Page that works for you.
The opportunities for growth are closer than you think.
Image by Angelo Antonelli.
The Powerful Sales Question We Forget To Ask
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
It was a busy Saturday morning in the department store. Lucy, the kitchen appliance sales assistant didn’t have a lot of time on her hands. She needed to work as efficiently as possible while ensuring that customers felt seen and heard. Lucy’s first customer was shopping for an electric blender. Like many customers, she felt so overwhelmed by the array of choices she was unlikely to buy anything—until Lucy expertly helped her to narrow them down with one simple question.
“What do you want to do with it?”
The ability to understand what a customer wants to do next has spawned countless successful business ideas from Facebook to the Dyson vacuum cleaner. When you are aware of the context shaping the story the customer tells herself, you put yourself in the best possible position to serve her and grow your business.
What does your customer want to do next?
What must you do next to help her get to where she wants to go?
Image by Yassan.