Monthly Archives: June 2018

Telling Your Market’s Story

Why consider your market’s story before we move onto your own story?  This sequence is about storytelling in marketing and so your market imposes constraints on the story you tell.  This is not storytelling as entertainment, your purpose in telling your story is to tell your market’s story.

You aim to move people to take action in their own interest.  Stories have done this for millennia.  They guide their hearers through life and show them how to flourish as mature human beings.  Your market’s story must do the same.

The hero sets out incomplete.  The story equips the hero to deal with their problem.

Your Market in Your Story?

In storytelling, characters and other things stand in for things in real life.  You need not refer to your market directly but understand with whom they identify in your story.

If they identify as the hero, they emotionally engage in the story and see they need the attributes the hero develops to tackle their problem.

Don’t identify yourself with the hero. If you market a solution to the problem, your market does not need to know you are searching for the same thing they are.  They need to know you have found it!  You are better positioned in the story as helper or guide; someone with a solution to the market’s problem.

However, bear in mind it can be inviting to offer participation in a journey.  Here you present yourself not as someone with a complete solution but someone who invites their market to join in a journey.  A good example in marketing terms is Jeff Walker’s seed launch.  Customers pay to be part of an exploratory project and receive the results of the work, usually some online product.

The challenging question is: how do I make my market the hero of my story?  Perhaps you experienced some life-changing event? Your market cannot feel what it was like to be there.  This is a challenge all storytellers face.  Helping your market engage fully is not always easy.  They never experience exactly what you experienced but can experience emotional involvement in your story.

Using Your Market’s Story

One possibility is to use your market’s story directly through a case study.  Use a single case or combine several to make a typical case.  Remember confidentiality constraints; changing names is not always sufficient to hide an identity.

Case studies help you showcase your role with the customer.  You tell their story and show how you helped them.  Sometimes this works better than shoehorning your market into your personal story.

What’s Their Problem?

Your market has a problem you can solve.  Does your story accurately describe their problem and explain why they should try your solution ?  If not, why tell that story?  If you tell an apparently unrelated story, know why you tell it and how it helps your business.  For example, your story might help your market know like and trust you.

The further your story is from your market’s problem, the greater your difficulty getting them to commit to further contact.  A lot depends on context.  For example, if you have a story that builds trust, use it with other material about the problem you solve.

Many successful business people have a keynote story that does not relate specifically to what they offer.  It is branding, creating a memorable public image that helps people understand their business.  This works where a business has a range of offers for various markets and needs a coherent overall message.  If the market’s problem is absent from the keynote story, feature it somewhere else in your marketing materials.

What Stage are They At?

There are other things to consider as you build your story, eg how aware are your audience?  Take a look at this post about the Awareness Ladder.

Here are the types of audience, from the bottom of the ladder upwards. They:

Each implies a different market with different needs.  How you tell your story depends on your offer.

Call to Action (CTA)

Finally, your call to action is crucial. It must acknowledge all these factors and dovetail with your story.

Sometimes you can sell from the stage, especially with a low-cost product, such as a book.  Selling your book is easy, especially if you design the story you tell to whet appetites for the rest of the book.

Otherwise, explain your offer and show people what to do if they are interested.

One possibility is start with your CTA and build your stories around it.  If you sell a book, a cliff hanger might work, so long as your audience doesn’t feel manipulated.  To sell a coaching service, your story needs to show the consequences of not taking action and the value of working with you to solve the problem.

Looking Forwards

In my next two posts, I work further down through the layer cake.  When we get to layer one, this opens up seven more posts as we explore traditional stories.

So, next time I describe the second layer down – your personal or keynote story – how to tell a compelling story that establishes your position in the marketplace.

How Does Your Offer Reduce Effort?

You save your customer’s time and energy, if your customer uses your offer to reduce effort. These can be redirected to more productive activities or work-life balance.

What is It?

Effort is productive.  To spend time and energy learning new skills is highly productive.  We learn how to do something new and gain insights into how it works.

However, doing something ourselves is not always productive.  Repeating the same activity over and again becomes tedious.  It ceases to be learning and becomes a chore.

Do-it-yourself hoovers up time we could use on more productive tasks and absorbs energy we need to do new things.  If it is something we are not particularly good at, it becomes more likely we make mistakes.

This is not about being lazy.  It is about the best use of time.  In other words, reduce effort in certain areas to increase business capacity.

Value to the Customer

Spending money to pay someone to do something that consumes time and energy builds capacity.

Consider the advantages.  You

How to Get There?

Consider where the customer needs help with a task.  Will they employ someone outright or buy a service?  How will they decide which tasks to outsource?

You need to educate your market about the advantages of reducing effort and how to find the help they seek.  What are the advantages of your way to reduce effort compared with your competitors?

Your Offer

Consider the range of activities that reduce effort for your customers.  All aspects of administration or accountancy, plus research can be productive. Research is a skill that takes time to learn properly.  Engaging a researcher may be real value for money if they do a thorough job.

Similarly online activities reduce effort.  For some businesses, help with SEO or social media saves time and energy and generates more results.

However, the more vital the work to the success of the business, the more vital a good working relationship.  There is always employing someone to do the work or training a member of staff.

Like most functional elements, your offer may already reduce effort for your customers.  If so, spell out exactly how your offer reduces effort.

Be clear about your expertise or qualifications.  The customer needs to know they can rely on you and you are insured where that is appropriate.

This is the twenty-fifth of 31 posts about elements of value.  Make sure you don’t miss any by signing up for the offer below.  The posts in this sequence can be accessed below:

Next: Avoids Hassles + 5 more

Telling Your Marketing Story

Overview

I begin with the icing on the cake.  Once you have a marketing story, how do you promote it?  Why start here?  My first priority is to show how a good story is necessary for marketing.  This sequence of posts focuses on storytelling and as we get into detail it is important we don’t lose sight of the reason we tell stories as business owners.

How do you know whether you have a good marketing story?

1. Does it directly address the interests of your market by posing a problem and offering a solution?
2. Does the story help you stand out from your competitors? How does it position you in the marketplace?
3. Does the story appeal to your market at an emotional level? Does it move them so they are likely to respond to your call to action?

If you answer no to one or more of these questions, don’t abandon your story just yet.

How Marketing Has Changed

We’re all familiar with the rise of the Internet and understand it opens up opportunities for small businesses.

We’ve moved from a world where broadcast marketing was commonplace to one where targeted marketing is more common.

30 years ago you were in one of two possible places.  You were a big player who could afford broadcast marketing.  Television and radio, hoardings and publications were the main places to advertise.  Most of this was brand marketing although sometimes businesses used ingenious approaches to direct marketing.  Most direct marketing was through the post, once people signed up for something.  Mailshots were expensive.

There is little doubt these methods worked because businesses deployed them.  However, smaller businesses were at a disadvantage.  They were forced to use more localised methods, eg flyers handed out on streets or put through letterboxes.  Local publications might carry adverts at reasonable prices.

Perhaps the most effective marketing was through shop premises where there were several methods business owners used as people passed by or entered their shop.

All these approaches are available today but the big change has been the advent of the Internet.  This brings on board many new approaches and makes traditional approaches more affordable.

Hub and Spokes

Perhaps the easiest way to think of this is the Hub and Spokes analogy.  The spokes bring traffic to the hub.  The hub is where your keynote story is heard in full and where you build relationships with your market.

Your Hub

The hub is the focus of your marketing and you aim to bring people into the hub and retain them there.

Here are some hubs:

Consistency and Innovation

Assume you have a keynote story, a hub and spokes.  How often and when do you tell your keynote story?

First consider traffic and conversion.  You may find your story works better for one of these.  Does it lead people to find out more or to buy?  Does the way you tell it favour one or the other?

It’s worth having versions of different lengths.  A one minute or less version is useful for networking and equips you with a quick summary.  A short version sparks interest, longer versions build relationships.

Do you tell the story in the hub or the spoke?  In the spoke, your audience is unlikely to be familiar with you.  You excite their interest and tell them how to stay in touch.  You need a clear, compelling call to action.  At the hub, can you assume people are interested in your offer?  How often have they heard your story?

Always the Same Story?

How consistent do you need to be?  Most people think their market gets bored.  The only thing that matters is whether your story creates interest and generate income.  Some say you stop telling your story only at your accountant’s request.

So consistency or innovation?  To a degree storytelling is always innovative. You tell the same story over and again but always experiment with the way you tell it.  Even the time available rings significant changes.  Once you have a good story that resonates with your market, why change it?

When you address a room full of people, they can’t get out.  They have to hear you even if they are distracted by their mobile phones.  On social media, it is much easier to opt out of listening.  You may find you need more innovation there because people actively seek novelty.  You may need a range of stories or anecdotes to generate traffic.

Looking Forwards

In my next three posts I work further down through the layer cake.  When we get to layer one, it opens up seven more posts as we explore traditional stories.

So, next time we’ll look at the next layer down – your market’s story – their problem and your solution.

How to Market Connection

This element of value brings people together by making a connection.

What is It?

Bringing people together extends social networks and causes change through shared activity.

Sponsorship sometimes achieves this aim.   Some companies sponsor sporting events, for example.  They might equally sponsor arts or hobbies.

Whilst it undoubtedly has value and is a welcome contribution to culture, this feels slightly odd because the thing sponsored need have no connection with the business.

Furthermore, where sponsorship includes advertising the sponsor on sportswear or similar, the whole event sometimes feels tarnished.  For example, some years ago tobacco firms frequently sponsored sports events.

In any event, sponsorship is something for larger more established businesses.  How can connection help smaller businesses?

Value to the Customer

Offering activities where people meet, share an interest and learn from each other may be an advantage.

Business network events are one example.  Whilst some networks are businesses in their own right, they offer opportunities for smaller businesses to enhance their reputation locally.

Alternatively, you can organise events to bring people with shared interests together.  Workshops are popular and well-promoted can be a good showcase for your business.

Similarly courses and webinars are opportunities to bring people together.

How to Get There

Mostly, sponsorship or otherwise, this is brand marketing.  You can sink a lot of money into activities, with no sense of how valuable they are to your business.

Workshops work as direct marketing if you find customers through the workshop.  They may use your services if the workshop builds their trust in you.

If you deliver workshops, review your marketing to check you highlight how your offers increase connection.

Your Offer

This is another functional element of value that rarely stands alone.  Your market by definition shares common interests.  Is it possible to bring them together?

Possibly not if your business is something people are not prepared to share.  If you coach people who suffer from stress, they may not wish to share that interest!

Even if they are prepared to attend workshops, do they really attend to meet other stressed people?  There may be ways you can show them value in such encounters but this requires careful planning.

This is the twenty-fourth of 31 posts about elements of value.  Make sure you don’t miss any by signing up for the offer below.  The posts in this sequence can be accessed below:

• Social impact: Self-transcendence
• Life Changing: Provide Hope, Self-Actualisation, Motivation, Heirloom, Affiliation and Belonging
• Emotional: Reduces Anxiety, Rewards Me, Nostalgia, Design / Aesthetics, Badge Value, Wellness, Therapeutic Value, Fun / Entertainment, Attractiveness, Provides Access
• Functional: Saves Time, Simplifies, Makes Money, Reduces Risk, Organises, Integrates, Connects

Next: Reduces Effort + 6 more

How to Design Your Business Story

I listen to many business stories through my Telling Stories: Making Business Lunch and Learns.  We all benefit from telling and hearing business stories.  This is the first in a series of posts about how to design your business story.

The Problem

Most stories I’ve heard over the last year have been life stories.  The challenge is how to turn a life story into a story to promote your business.  Many life stories do not work for marketing, not least because may don’t work as stories.

So, this sequence of blog posts is about how to work your story into a story that works for marketing.  Much of what I write applies to any storytelling and so may interest anyone interested in stories.  But my focus is specifically on what works in a business context.

Alternatives to Life Stories

Before I explore storytelling in more depth, let’s think about alternatives to life stories.  Similar rules apply to any story but it’s worth considering alternatives to your life story.

I’ve encountered two types of life story.  Perhaps the most successful describe a life-changing event.  Everything arranges itself around that event.  Sometimes someone with such a story has already written a book.  A book, whether self-published or through an established publisher, is potentially a great marketing tool.  I may return to this in a future post.  The problem is what to say to promote the book.  How much of the story to cover?

The other type of story is where there is no single life-changing event and so the story becomes one thing after another.  Some stories have a theme, eg depression or “how I got to where I am today”.

Both types share the problem of too much material.  How can you focus the story to help your audience grasp your message?

Here are Some Alternatives

These mostly don’t draw on the life story:

These alternatives overlap.  Use them to interrogate your story and see it in new ways.  You have far more than one story to tell and for marketing that is an advantage.

How to Structure Your Business Story

You’ve found a story to tell.  Good.  The next step is work out a structure for the story.  This is harder to explain than it is to do!  People have told stories for millennia.  It is an art-form and as Fats Wallah said of song-writing: “It’s 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.”

Think of your story as a layer cake.  All four layers need to be present although some may not be immediately obvious.  Together they structure your story. Here is a basic overview and in future posts I offer deeper exploration.

1. The deepest layer is a traditional story. I shall  explain what I mean by traditional in a future post.  The aim is to find a traditional story that resonates with your story.  This contributes an underlying structure to your story.
2. The next layer is your personal story. It is likely to be one of the alternatives I suggested above.  It could be something else as I make no claim to have covered all possibilities.  This is the story you are telling, structured by the lower layer.
3. The topmost layer of the cake is your market’s story. Sometimes, eg case studies, you draw on this more than others.  But keep this in mind because these people are your audience.  Your story is for them and so they need to be part of it in some way.
4. Finally, you have the icing and decorations.  It is all the means you use to promote your business.  Aim for congruence between them.  So everything from business cards and flyers, through websites and social media to speaking and networking tells your story.

Looking Forward

In my next four posts I work down through the layer cake.  When we get to layer one, we’ll find this opens up seven more posts as we explore traditional stories.

So, next time we look at the topmost layer – the icing and decorations – your marketing story.

How Your Offer Integrates Products and Services

This survey of functional elements of value, considers practical aspects of products or services.  One challenge is to show what integrates products and services in your higher level offers.

What is It?

If you sell a service, is there anything you can automate at the same time?  The aim is convenience.  For one set of inputs, the customer receives a range of outputs.

Let’s say you market a system for recording accounts.  Your customer’s primary concern is end of year accounts for tax purposes.  Each month, you enter their income and expenditure item by item.  At the end of the year, the system produces annual accounts for tax returns.

This same information generates monthly management accounts with projections.  This may be of more value to the customer than the annual accounts.

If you are a life coach, offer other services as bonuses to your main offer.  As you get to know your client, if they want those services, offer them at no extra charge.

Value to the Customer

You may find secondary items integrated into your offer are more popular than the main offer.  Most accountants integrate annual accounts and management accounts.  Customers approach the accountant because they need help with annual accountants, which they must complete.  They find management accounts more useful, even though they did not expect them when they first approached the accountant.

However, be aware piling on more bells and whistles is not always positive.  We all use software that does far more than what we use it for.  It is possible we would use more if we knew how to use it but a lot of these add-ons are clutter.  They take up disk space and confuse an otherwise user-friendly interface.

How to Get There

If you create bricolage, one thing piled on top of another, it is not integration.  You are likely to produce a confusing mess.

A well-integrated package brings together several services customers want and delivers them with least possible inputs.

How do you work this out?  It depends on knowing your customers and what they need and want.  How do they go about their work?  How can you develop something they find easy to operate that delivers what they need with least effort?

Your Offer

Think about your customers, the way they work and what they need to complete their work.

Offer integrated products and services that exceed their expectations.  Aim for simplicity combined with high-powered utility.

This is the twenty-third of 31 posts about elements of value.  Make sure you don’t miss any by signing up for the offer below.  The posts in this sequence can be accessed below:

Next: Connects + 7 more

The Myth of the Rational Consumer

You may think your clients make rational decisions; show them how you solve their problem and they immediately decide to buy!  If only the rational consumer existed!

The Rational Consumer

Right-wing economists who believe economics is a science, developed an imaginary construct, the rational consumer.  Assume thousands of consumers all behave in their own best interests and you can model the economy.

The political implications are catastrophic.  Some politicians genuinely believe the economy works in this way.  More than that they claim their madcap schemes are the will of the rational consumer.

Experienced marketers are aware the rational consumer is a myth.  Most people do not act in their own self-interest because they do not know what their self-interest is.

Why do people not act in their self-interest?  They have in effect two brains.  Their emotional brain is fast and overwhelming.  Their rational brain is slow and logical.  Often they act on their emotional brain before their rational brain kicks in.

This is not to say the emotional brain is necessarily wrong.  Marketers sometimes encounter buyer’s remorse, where following a good purchase the rational brain kicks in and finds reasons to regret the purchase.

Good marketers engage with both brains, using the urgency of the emotional brain and the logic of the rational so their client feels comfortable with their purchase.  Motivate your client to take full advantage of their purchase. This is especially important for coaches.

Behavioural Economics

1. How does your behaviour vary from the profit-maximising rational behaviour classical economists insist upon. This may help you understand the reasons for your clients’ behaviour.
2. How much choice do you offer your prospects? Remember too much choice can be counter-productive.
3. How do you position your offers to guide prospects to your best offer?

Slow Down Your Thinking

There is value in thinking about your own thinking.  Too often we rush to a decision without giving it proper thought.

Take time when you make an important decision.  It is easy to get stuck in a narrow definition of the problem.  Try to see the problem in its wider context.  The problem as it initially presents itself is transformed when viewed from another perspective.  Consider using a coach or mentor to help with decisions.

You sometimes find another perspective by taking time out and allowing your mind scope to reflect.  Walking is an opportunity to do this and a good night’s sleep is also effective.  Even turning to another problem allows your mind space to find another perspective.

Beware of Premature Solutions

Beware of the solution that presents itself as a problem.  A prospect who presents with a request for help with their website is presenting a solution.  They may be right and have already done the thinking for themselves.  Still, it is worth finding out: what is the problem the website solves?  Once you know what the problem is, you can assess the proposed solution.  Sometimes a well-defined problem goes most of the way to solving it.

This is a really important point.  The costs of solutions masquerading as problems is immense.  An example of this, now in vogue is Brexit.  There is no agreement about what the problem is that Brexit is meant to solve.  Is it immigration or sovereignty?  Both these problems are poorly defined.  Worse the real problem may have nothing to do with Europe and everything to do with how we make decisions in the UK.  A referendum takes power away from representative government.  It disables opposition, which means the government is no longer held to account or able to receive feedback on its legislation.

Always find out what the problem is first! Sometimes clients resist this and insist on their solution.  If you can help them understand their problem, they are likely to see their problem in an entirely different light.

Following this thirty-ninth and final post in this series to encourage coaches to reflect on relational marketing, take this opportunity to sign up below.  You get a weekly round-up of my posts and a pdf about how to make sure you are charging what your business is worth.

How Getting Organised Benefits Your Clients

Getting organised benefits your clients and so this is an important element of value.

What is It?

Organisation is one aspect of administration.  Generally, the aim is to organise so that specific items are found with minimum fuss.

Human error always limits organisational systems.  I once worked in an office responsible for properties across the UK.  There were thousands of paper files, stored in a room in a particular order.  Everyone knew how to find a specific file and how to return it to the shelves.

Files still went missing.  They never left the building but sometimes a file would disappear for days.  Experienced admin workers were usually able to track down missing files.  The problem was users did not organise their desks to the same degree.  Everyone had their own system and passed files informally around the office.  Once a file left its shelf space, the rules no longer applied.

And of course, once you found a file, it would not necessarily contain everything it should.

All systems are subject to human error, including online systems.  But any system is better than random piles on the floor.  A well-managed system saves much time.

We can distinguish two approaches to organisation;

Value to the Client

Let’s dig deeper into the time savings.  Lost items are the most time-consuming elements in an office with a complex filing system.

Lost items don’t just consume time searching for them.  They consume mental energy.  Can they be replaced?  Has a member of staff removed it from the office, against regulations?  What was in that file?  How do I explain the lost file to the client?  And on and on.

No system can guarantee against lost items.  People make mistakes.  However, with a good system:

How to Get There

The basic principles of organisation are well-known.  However, an experienced administrator knows the pitfalls and designs a system that works for their office.  They save time by guaranteeing stuff does not go astray.

Another way things get lost is where vital papers disappear into a pile of paperwork.  This could have serious consequences for an office if bills or cheques go astray.  The well-organised system processes and files everything new to the office.

Your Offer

If your offer assists with any of these activities you can market this element of value.  You don’t necessarily have to offer complete solutions, you could market filing systems to administrators, for example, to help them do their job.

This is the twenty-second of 31 posts about elements of value.  Make sure you don’t miss any by signing up for the offer below.  Access posts from this sequence here:

• Social impact: Self-transcendence
• Life Changing: Provide Hope, Self-Actualisation, Motivation, Heirloom, Affiliation and Belonging
• Emotional: Reduces Anxiety, Rewards Me, Nostalgia, Design / Aesthetics, Badge Value, Wellness, Therapeutic Value, Fun / Entertainment, Attractiveness, Provides Access
• Functional: Saves Time, Simplifies, Makes Money, Reduces Risk, Organises

Next: Integrates + 8 more