Sarah communicates with potential customers by explaining why she is in business as a nutritionist. She knows the value of why she is in business but sometimes it’s hard to explain her business why clearly.
Why Explain Your Why?
It helps people decide to use your services. Chances are other businesses offer something similar to yours. It matters little whether they are better or worse. Someone who has not used your services has no way to assess your business and few customers buy similar things from more than one business to track differences.
The challenge is to to attract customers by explaining why you do what you do. Many marketers believe it is your why that sells. Let’s consider two things similar to your why and how they fall short.
How You Work
You invest many hours and a small fortune getting qualified and so the temptation to explain how you work is hard to resist. Some prospects want this information but only when they are close to a decision. A case study is a good story-type that shows exactly how you work.
However, most prospects are not particularly interested in how you work, until they experience it directly. Even then, they’re not necessarily interested in detail. You might lead guided mediations. Does it add anything to know your guided mediations are informed by neuro-linguistic programming?
Transformation
A more common mistake is to confuse the change you want to see with your why. The problem here is the transformation you want to see is likely to be shared with near competitors. I may totally agree with your aspirations and want to support them. But if there are three others in the room who advocate the same transformation, how do I choose between you?
Your Business Why
Your Why distinguishes you from your competitors. It helps prospects choose you. Chances are when people hear your personal story, some like what they hear and others don’t. The former are prospects. The rest choose your competitors.
Your why, therefore, means you don’t have to indulge in cutthroat competition. You position yourself as a person some get on with and others don’t. Does this mean you inevitably lose those who don’t find your story attractive?
Maybe not. If you are good at telling a compelling story, you are likely to have clarity on your side. And clarity sells.
Using Email to Communicate Your Business Why
In OVO marketing, use V for Value to communicate your why. You discuss the transformation you want to see but explain why you got there. Why do you think this change is important? You may have a lifetime’s worth of experience of the change you want to see, positive and negative.
Use emails to tell stories. Bring each story to a conclusion that illustrates your why and points to the change you want to see. It is not solely knowing what to do by way of solving the problem, prospects want to see you understand the problem. Your first task is to recruit them to your cause, so they are keen to support it.
Do this on social media but email is more effective because it addresses a supportive audience. There is no need to fear unsubscribes, they are people who are not listening. They make space for new people who want to hear your take on the problem.
One important key is to pay attention to the end of your stories. Do they clearly make a point and lead to a call to action? An ending that fizzles out in some joke or undermines great teaching in the middle of the story, is unlikely to be effective. The best stories generate excitement, so how do you do that?