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Articles filed in: Marketing
How To Write A Mission Statement
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
By definition a mission statement is the official line on the aims and objectives of your organisation. Academic papers have been written about how mission statements must be cogent (possibly one of the ugliest words in the history of the English language in my opinion).
Your mission statement should describe your key market and your contribution. It should explain why your product or service is unique, setting out reasons why a prospective client would, or should choose you. No wonder most businesses find writing a mission statement hard.
If you’re stuck, you could try using the handy mission statement generator to help you come up with a mission statement like this one.
“We will work concertedly to efficiently monetize best practice methods of empowerment to stay pertinent in tomorrow’s world.”
Or try this for size.
“We are committed to globally engineer virtual sources while continuing to quickly leverage web 2.0 services.”
Don’t laugh! I’m sure you’ve read many a meaningless mission statement similar to these ones.
Your mission statement shouldn’t live in a dusty A4 file, or be buried on a long forgotten, never updated page on your website. And it shouldn’t just be something you say.
It should be something you live every day, on purpose.
What are you doing right now, today? Why does your business exist? Why does it matter?
Are you actually on a mission, or are you just saying that you are?
Image by Alex Watson.
What Are You Promising?
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
I loved Ryan’s corner shop when I was a little girl. The smells of freshly delivered bread mingled with newsprint from the Evening Herald. It was a relief that Mr Ryan knew exactly what kind of ham your mother would want, without you having to explain in detail the part about making sure it was sliced thinly and not ‘too fatty’.
And even when supermarkets began to pop up all around him, selling things in bulk, at prices he just couldn’t compete with (he didn’t even try), Mr Ryan kept going and stayed afloat because he was able to make a different promise to his customers. He knew them after all, in a way that even the data we can gather with repeated swipes of a store loyalty card today, never could.
Sometimes we’re so busy trying to catch up to the gold standard of the industry, or the market that we forget to set and articulate our own standards. If the hotel we compete with has five pillows on the pillow menu, we go one better and make a menu with six. We open longer hours and give people more of what they’re already getting, but we lose sight of what it is we are promising our customers and what it is they really want.
Are you going to be ethical, fair, true to your word? Are you the company that just won’t compromise on your values no matter what. Are you the consultant who will be honest, look clients in the eye and tell them, “this might not work”.
It’s never been more important to know what you stand for and what difference you create.
What are you promising your customers? What’s your story? What’s theirs?
Image by hugovk.
5 Better Ways To Tell The Story Of Your Products And Services
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
I once heard a tea taster who tasted 1,000 cups of tea a day, explain that the secret to the perfect cup of tea was the water. He said that “water is the mother of tea”. That one phrase was enough to hold me still for a second longer. That’s something we all need to learn how to do for our customers.
Let’s face it descriptions are hard. It’s tough to differentiate your products and services with facts alone. Coffee is coffee…right, even if it is aromatic, freshly ground or single origin? Instead of trying to describe what it is you’re selling, set out to change how people feel the moment they read your copy or visit your website.
How to create emotional points of difference with your product and service descriptions
1. Resist relying on the description of features and benefits.
Tell people what they can do with your product, not what the product does.
2. Let your current customers do the talking.
Build trust using proof with testimonials and customer stories.
3. Show how customers are using your product to make their lives better.
Use images, video, case studies and stories.
4. Think about how you want the people who use your products and services to feel.
Write descriptions and create content that helps them to experience those feelings before they ever use the product or service.
5. Behave like a lover, or at least a very dear friend.
Because if you’re going about your business the right way, that’s exactly what you are.
Now go write like one too.
Image by Marcos Ojeda.
Digital Empathy And The Secret To Writing Better Emails
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
We have a problem. One that the Internet and an ‘always on’ world has magnified. I call it ‘Iitis’. We’re all guilty of it, both online and offline. Spend some time today just listening to the exchanges that happen all around you. Conversations between friends at the café. An exchange between the bank teller and customer. Mostly we’re not even waiting to hear the answer to the questions we ask. We’re jumping in to share our own experience.
As humans we’re hard-wired to want to ‘be seen’, but it’s important to recognise that need in others too. That brings me to email.
Before you hit send on anything today check your email for ‘Iitis’. Your inbox might be overflowing and maybe you don’t need one more thing to think about, but when you practice ‘digital empathy’ you’ll be surprised by the results. How many times can you take ‘I’ out of your emails and replace it with ‘you’?
Better brand stories are not just told by the marketing department. They begin by changing how people feel in everything you say and do, email included.
Image by Ian Sanderson.
How Do I Sell My Idea?
This is probably the question I get asked the most. The truth is it’s the wrong place to start.
You actually begin with a different question altogether, and that is.
How am I going to help people to care about this?If you understand that you’re more than halfway there.
Image by Pimpthida.
The 11 Whys Of Product Development
In my work with companies, entrepreneurs and businesses of all stripes, here’s what I’ve found.
We mostly get stuck not because we don’t know the right answer, but because we haven’t begun to ask the right questions. Here’s a handy list of questions to ask before you bring your product, service or idea to market.
1. Why are we making this?
2. Why doesn’t this exist already?
3. Why us?
4. Why now?
5. Why do people need this product?
6. Why will people want this product?
7. Why will people pay for this?
8. Why will this make people do/feel/be, what they want to do/feel/be?
9. Why would people buy from our competitors?
10.Why will people cross the street to buy from us?
11.Why does this idea matter?
The truth is that often we don’t know the answer to all of the questions. Sometimes even after we’ve answered the questions we’ve just got to take our best guess and go.
Image by David Shackleford
The Difference Between A Good Idea And A Great Idea Is Just One Thing
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Actually, the difference between a good and a great anything, (business, movie, hotel, product, blog, book, packaging, design, app, talk, school, song, art…..keep going), is that the great stuff, the things we give a damn about have the heart left in them.
Heart the verb, not the hollow muscular organ that pumps blood around your body. The empathy and emotion. The feeling and yes, vulnerability. Yours, not the marketing department’s.
Good products work. Great products become part of our story.
A good speaker leaves us with food for thought. A great speaker leaves his heart on the podium.
Good marketing tells the story. Great marketing is the story.
We don’t notice or respond to greatness, most of the time we can’t even explain it.
We simply feel it. We just know.
And that’s what makes it matter.
Image by Tomasz Kulbowski.
Your Work Is A Gift. Talking With James Victore
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Your work is a gift. Doesn’t this stop you in your tracks for a second? That’s what it did to me when I saw James’s Victore’s talk on the subject (well worth bookmarking to watch later).
James runs an independent design studio in Brooklyn, he is known for his original thinking and unforgettable work. James’ clients include Esquire Magazine, The New York Times, Moet Chandon and The City of New York. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
I’m thrilled to to able to bring you this video interview* with him today, as we talk about why telling your story and doing work that matters, starts with understanding the truth and being true to yourself. If you want to start thinking about designing your own future this might be a good place to begin.
(*Receiving this post by email? You may need to click on the headline link and view in your browser).
James Victore : Your Work Is A Gift from Bernadette Jiwa on Vimeo.
James’s links as promised. I’d love to hear how you are putting more of you into your work and telling your story in the comments.
Website.
Burning Questions.
Dinner Series.
Image by Filmatu.
Being Undervalued Vs. Being ‘The One’
Design is undervalued. So is journalism, and songwriting, and the guy who wrote the code that made the balls in the app bounce. I can have a logo designed for $249 using one of many crowd sourced design platforms. I’ll get 30 designs to choose from and although many will dispute this, it will probably be good enough. It’s a problem for sure.
And yet designer and letterer Jessica Hische is sought after, she gets to choose who she works with and names her price. If I want to apply design thinking to a new innovation, of course I go straight to IDEO because, well who else would you go to but the best? Nancy Duarte’s company designs presentations for people like Al Gore and Bill Gates, and companies like Twitter and Hewlett Packard. If you want to shine at TED Global hiring Duarte is a no brainer.
Every day people are being well paid to use the skills you have, not because they are better than you, but because they decided that’s what they wanted and they worked towards it. They recognised the truth about their talents, they taught themselves how to see what people really wanted and they executed with difference.
Should the Samsung CEO spend his day punching his desk, while lamenting why we fall in love with anything Apple designs and brings to market, every damn time? Or should he just get on and lead the company so that it creates difference for its customers.
The answer is not to sit around imploring the industry, or the customer to give us back our value.
It’s not up to our customers to value us. It’s up to us to show them why they should, and to do work that communicates our difference. There is no more business as usual for musicians, or journalists, designers and [insert your profession here, for it’s sure to be next].
No cushy numbers. No get out of jail free card. There is only work that matters.
The way forward for designers, creatives, and maybe you or your company, is not to be lumped in with the competition. It’s to demonstrate your difference. To be ‘the one’. You must do what it takes not to be just another creative or professional, but to be the creative or professional that people who want the particular must have. You might not be able to change how the world values your profession, but you can change how you are valued by doing work that matters. Work that changes how people feel, not just what they think.
We have two choices. We can stand around looking at the train wreck of what was, or we can design our own futures.
Which are you going for?
Art (or is it graffiti?) by Banksy.
Image by Wally Gobetz.
Attention Is A Two Way Street
Do you know what’s really ironic? Businesses spend thousands of dollars, manpower, head space and creative energy trying to get the attention of potential customers, and when they get it they waste it. The question for all of us, (not just in business but also in life) is how can we expect what we’re not prepared to give?
You can test out this theory anywhere you do business today, in the cafe, grocery store, cinema and on and on. Everywhere you go people will be multitasking. Having their morning tea break while they fill orders at their desks. Answering the phone while they delete email. Serving a customer while they talk to their colleague at the next checkout.
We work hard to get people over the line, then we don’t even bother to give them eye contact. There’s no excuse for this, even if your business is online you have to find a way to give people virtual eye contact. Zappos built a billion dollar business on that single difference.
It seems that hardly anyone takes the time to properly pay attention anymore, to do just one thing. Your customers want to be that one thing. They want to feel like they matter. If you don’t make them feel that way when they walk through the door, what’s the point of opening the door in the first place.
All the marketing tactics in the world, won’t save us from our own indifference.
Image by Ed Yourdon.