Who is the hero in your customer’s story?
Hint — it’s not you.
One of my frustration about marketing is we make it so complicated. There are many tools and techniques out there. Many marketing agencies pose a hefty fee structure, so businesses don’t have to deal with those complicated tools. Here is the problem for the business, they deal with those marketing complications by paying someone else to do it. It is an additional cost that would end up on their prices.
Does marketing really need to be complicated and expensive? The answer is no if you know how to create stories that relate to your customers. As a business, we create a lot of “noises”. What we often call marketing is really just clutter and confusion sprayed over websites, emails and ads. And, it costs businesses a lot of money, just to create and deliver those noises.
“Customers don’t generally care about your story; they care about their own”.
What should businesses do then? Stop creating noise! One great way to do it is by creating customer stories. Story is a sense-making device. It identifies ambition, defines challenges, and provides a plan to help customers conquer those challenges. In any successful story, audiences must always know who the hero is, what the hero wants, who the hero has to defeat, and what wonderful thing will happen if the hero wins.
The key success factor is that your customer should be the hero of the story, not your brand. When you come along and position yourself as the hero, you start to lose your potential customers. This is because, in their mind, they would think — “here is another hero like me. I wish I had time to hear their story, but now I only care about my problem”.
An easy way to craft the right story is to think like a movie plot. Your customer is Jame Bond (the hero). He needs help to defeat his enemy. He comes to see Q (you) to get a tool so he could finish his mission. Without the tool from Q (you), Mr. Bond (your customer) would fail the mission.
Once you get the story plot right, you have to simplify your message. Your customers should get the answers from the below three questions within 10 seconds of looking at your website:
- What do you offer?
- How will it make their life better?
- What do they need to do to buy it?
If you were a car company, the ideal answers would be “you sell cars, I can go to work and feed my family, I can get one at your showroom.”
The key takeaway from this post is that you have to simplify your marketing message and position yourself as Q to help your James Bond to win the day. If you cannot do it, be prepared to spend lots of money in marketing.
PS. I can be your Q, and you are my James Bond. I can help you identify marketing opportunities to reduce costs and eliminate complexities. Feel free to reach out just to have a chat.
