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Ever get that feeling that your marketing message isn’t pressing the right buttons for your customers? Ever notice that sometimes the story you’re using to sell your product or service just isn’t connecting with your leads?
This is a problem I encounter quite often with the business owners I work with. They’ve got something truly remarkable to offer but no one knows because they aren’t talking about it in a way that makes people take notice.
Immediately, I start to consider the answers to these questions:
- How does the customer perceive their current situation? How do they feel right now?
- What do they know about the problem they face or the desire they’re hoping to attain?
- What’s currently standing in the way of them either fixing their problem or achieving their goal?
You’ve probably heard that the best way to communicate with someone is to meet them where they’re at. The point of these questions is to figure out exactly where that is so that you can do just that.
Once I’ve figured out where a particular customer segment is, my job is to understand what matters to them. Is it the problem they’re facing? Or is it the solution they’re after?
That helps me put those customers into one of two very big umbrellas: problem-aware and solution-aware.
Problem-aware customers know they hurt. Or they’re frustrated. Or they’re fed up with the status quo. They know they’re not accomplishing what they want to accomplish–whether that’s looking great for a big event, changing careers, or breaking bad habits–but they don’t know what it takes to make it happen.
When your customers are merely problem-aware, your main job is connecting the dots between what they feel and what they perceive as the problem to what you see as the solution to their problem.
It takes a lot of empathy, a lot of acknowledgement, and a healthy dose of step-by-step, insightful explanation.
How do you know if you’re dealing with problem-aware customers? Ask yourself these questions:
- Do my customers focus more on superficial issues and less on underlying concerns?
- Do my customers focus on how they feel right now and less on how they want to feel?
- Do my customers miss connections between their frustrations and their actions or beliefs?
Evernote‘s current brand messaging is telling a story about a problem most people face: forgetting stuff. For their website headline, they switch it around and lead with “Remember everything.” They don’t open the conversation with the fact that their app is available on every platform, that it’s free, or even that it has an infinite number of uses.
They focus on a single problem, forgetfulness, and suggest that remembering everything is actually possible.
Solution-aware customers know what they want and know there’s a tool, product, process, program, or service that will help them get it. If it’s information they lack, they have a well-formed question. If it’s skills they lack, they have name for those skills. If it’s a tool they lack, they can describe it to you.
These customers need you to explain why your solution works, why it’s best, and why it’s what they’ve been looking for. Credibility is key here. Reputation is huge.
Empathy still plays a part but so does helping to hold a positive vision for your customers. It’s almost more about empathizing with how they will feel instead of how they feel right now.
How do you know if you’re dealing with solution-aware customers? Ask yourself these questions:
- Are my customers asking for specific solutions that make sense for their goals?
- Are my customers addressing underlying issues that might prevent them from reaching their goals?
- Do my customers see where they’re falling short and aim to address those areas specifically?
Conversely to the Evernote example, WooThemes leads with the solution when they talk about WooCommerce. The prospects for this product aren’t confused about the fact that they need to sell online. They probably don’t even need to be convinced that they’re looking for a WordPress plugin. Nope, WooCommerce can simple say that it’s the WordPress eCommerce plugin that sells anything & everything, beautifully.
If you’ve created a product or service that you feel should be a no-brainer and it’s not selling, it’s likely that the story you’re telling about that product isn’t matching what your customers are aware of.
That said, problem-aware and solution-aware customers exist in almost every market. People will buy your product for different reasons. And it will mean different things to different people.
Gene Schwartz wrote in Breakthrough Advertising:
“If [your prospect] is aware of your product and realizes it can satisfy his desire, your headline starts with your product. If he is not aware of your product, but only of the desire itself, your headline starts with the desire. If he is not yet aware of what he really seeks, but is concerned only with the general problem, your headline starts with that problem and crystallizes it into a specific need.”
Of course, how you frame the story doesn’t start & end with the headline or sales page. It can be baked into the very development of the product, just as any good story should.
And as Bernadette Jiwa writes in Difference, “You can’t begin to tell a story without understanding why that story should matter to the people you want to serve.”
That’s really the crux of it.
A story on the solution side doesn’t matter nearly as much to a person who is focused on the problem, the disconnect, or the frustration. A story that’s focused on the problem doesn’t matter nearly as much to a person who is looking for a solution.
Once you’ve determined what’s important to your prospects about what you have to offer, whether it’s the solution itself, the pain they’re feeling, or the image they want to have of themselves, you can craft both a product/service and the story that will help you sell it.
Business Brainstorm, Interviews
In a recent post, I remarked that everything in business is a choice. From how you price your offerings to the brand you create to the marketplace you sell in, everything can be determined by you.
Of course, we’re often less than intentional about these choices and that leaves us feeling backed into the nether-corners of business.
The same is true of our health. And entrepreneurship can be a heavy burden to bear on our overall well-being.
I spoke with Dr. Samantha Brody, a Portland-based naturopathic physician (and a client of mine!), about handling stress as an entrepreneur.
The two big takeaways I had from this chat were:
- I can be more in control of my own health when I better understand all the things that are stressing my body.
- I can choose to remove stress factors, even in little ways, to have a big impact on my overall health.
Watch this short interview above, or click here to view it in Vimeo.
Learn more about Dr. Samantha, Stress 2.0, and how to take control of your health: click here.
Art of Growth
Imagine this common scenario: Stella is a new business owner. She’s got impeccable skills, a passion for her work, and a unique set of insights into her market. She’s poised for success–and excited about sharing what she does with the world.
She develops her first offer, a one-on-one service with companion workbook that helps her customers make big steps toward their goals while giving them the tools they need to maintain their success. She gladly tells her network all about this new offer. She’s full of the kind of earnestness and zeal that really moves people to action, even if just one at a time.
As Stella is in business longer, she gets even better at what she does, grows her prospect list, and has many happy clients. However, things aren’t quite as exciting anymore.
Why? She feels like she needs to hustle more & more to maintain her revenue growth. It’s not so much that she doesn’t feel “successful” so much as she isn’t having as much fun growing the business.
She hustles and hustles. She develops new offers. She launches like a boss.
And she’s feeling burnt out.
That’s rough. Burnt out isn’t a fun place to be in your career. Especially when your business is largely dependent on you to keep it rolling.
Surely, there must be a way for Stella to reach her true revenue goals (they’re high!), to keep up the parts of her business that she loves, and to spend less time & energy on the maintenance of her business so that she can live her life own her own terms.
There is.
The “microbusiness earning plateau” is an extremely common problem. Hustle, hustle, hustle, and you just don’t get the same growth you used to get. On the outside you look successful, but on the inside you feel tired and spent.
It’s where I see a lot of microbusiness owners end up throwing the towel in. They just don’t see the path to the revenue and scale they thought was possible.
And that’s often when they come to me.
That’s when we start working on creating a business model that breathes. Marketing & sales activities pulse through its veins. Customer perspective feeds its soul.
The key to busting through the microbusiness earning plateau isn’t more offers (that’s just more work) and it’s not necessarily some signature program or ebook.
The key to busting through the microbusiness earning plateau and creating a business that helps you stick with this for the long haul is leveraging:
- Prices that serve your customers.
- Products or services that address their evolving needs.
- And marketing & sales strategies that are designed for your freedom.
And that is the essence of a business model.
When you’re focused on creating, delivering, and exchanging value according to those three principles, you can kiss that microbusiness earning platue (and burn out, and frustration) good-bye.
Big Thinking
One of the major breakthroughs I had in my business very early on was realizing that my earning potential wasn’t written in stone. It was a choice.
For a variety of familial and community reasons, I believed that my earning potential was capped around $40,000 per year. So I planned my business to generate about that much revenue.
At some point I realized that this was an arbitrary number–sometimes I am less bright than others–and that I could set any goal that I like. So I set a higher goal. Wouldn’t $80,000 be nice? Maybe $100,000? Maybe $150,000?
Once I realized that my earning potential was up to me (sky’s-the-limit, please and thank you), I could make different (read: better) decisions.
One of the chief lessons I want people to take away from my new book, Quiet Power Strategy, is:
Treat everything in your business as a choice.
Whether it’s the amount of revenue you want to generate, the way you want to promote your products, the model you use to construct your business, or the channels you use to communicate with your customers, everything is a choice.
It’s easy to get bogged down by what you think you need to do to succeed. It might be pricing your products or services a certain way. Or it could be creating a certain set of offers.
For instance, I can’t tell you how many times clients have said “I’ve been seeing clients for a year now so I know it’s time to write an ebook and then create a program.” Really? Is that the best thing for you? How do you know?
Constantly looking for the best practices and “right ways” is tantamount to backing yourself into a corner. And that’s when the mistakes happen. Following someone else’s lead can be great, but not without careful personal examination first.
When you allow others’ previous success to guide your actions, you ignore the insanely creative voice inside your own head. You might also ignore the fact that your customers are quite different or that you have different goals for your business.
Generally, I don’t encourage business owners to reinvent the wheel. But some of the best marketing, branding, and business model ideas have come from when business owners just like you have disregarded what “works” in favor of trying something out of left field.
Think Netflix, Dropbox, Nespresso. Think coworking spaces, clothing subscription services, doctors-by-skype.
Consider what works for your personality, your business’s personality, and your customers’ motivating values. Consider what will be memorable, welcome, and gratitude-inducing.
You don’t have to set a certain price.
You don’t have to use a certain marketplace.
You don’t have to use a particular business model.
You don’t have to use social media.
You don’t have to do anything.
Arm yourself with information, engage in strategic thinking, and make a choice.
***
The Mission
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to choose to do your content marketing differently by writing a blog post that only you could write. How? Focus on your unique point of view in your field: your design philosophy, your methodology, your personal pet peeves, your guiding principles, etc…
Don’t be afraid to say things that have been unsaid or might prove unpopular with some people. Invest yourself in your unique point of view and choose to powerfully communicate the individuality of your business.
When you’ve completed the post, share the link on Facebook or Twitter with the hashtag #contentdirectionmission and #quietpowerstrategy.
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Don’t know what this is? Join in Lacy Bogg’s Content Direction Agency scavenger hunt: click here.
Business Brainstorm
What follows might be the most apolitical thing ever written about American health insurance reform. What follows might also save you a lot of heart ache, time, and money on your next product launch.
To my mind, there is nothing worth building that should be built all at once.
That’s what really stunned me about the roll out of health insurance reform in the US. Politics aside, the company building the website–the primary interface for the reform–should have known better than to try to build something so complete all at once.
This was especially true here in Oregon where the state government went all in. Cover Oregon wanted to be the most complete, most comprehensive health exchange in the nation. They invested millions of dollars in a really great, you-know-you’re-in-Oregon-when marketing campaign.
The intention was great. (Sound familiar?)
As of January 1, they had not enrolled a single customer via the website.
Everything that serves, everything that has value, everything that has a message worth sharing has been built in pieces. Test upon test upon test. Ideas, features, details all carefully fashioned together one at a time.
Sculptures, transformational programs, jewelry collections, menus, books… all reach their fullest potential when they are reduced to a single this-is-what-really-works element. And especially when that element is not just what the creator wants to create but what is created to delight the customer.
Bottom line:
Don’t try to build something all at once.
Don’t let your ambition, your vision, or your perfectionism side-track the proper development of your idea.
Silicon Valley figured this out a long time ago, relatively speaking. It’s the essence of Lean Startup mentality. Build. Measure. Learn.
It’s why your new favorite app doesn’t actually do everything you’d like it to do (they’re working on it).
When you launch something all at once, you have to stop at “Build.” You have no time (or data) for measuring. You have no energy (or experience) for learning.
When Megan Auman sits down to design a new jewelry collection, she doesn’t try to create the whole thing at once. It starts with a single piece, even a singular idea. Maybe it’s a change in the way she designs the shapes, maybe it’s a shift in the way she composes the metals.
She plays. And then she completes… something.
What she does next is extremely important: she wears it.
She takes it for a test drive. She starts to understand how it feels, how it changes the way she dresses, how it attracts compliments and “gotta have its!” That’s solid data to measure.
Then she learns and adapts. Each piece that derives from the initial prototype is a new iteration on that single idea. She constructs each piece knowing that it’s built on a proven idea.
All to often I see people with brilliant ideas spending too long trying to realize the full brilliance of their idea. Businesses that bring truly valuable things into the world know when to stop and analyze.
It’s a leap of faith.
A big one.
But it’s one that pays off in the long run.
It’s a little light bulb that goes off and says “this is enough.” For now.
Before you embark on your next big project or idea, remind yourself to look for that first stopping point. Quiet your perfectionist’s brain enough to hear when a potential prototype is whispering to you. Challenge yourself to think beyond big and, instead, reach for small.
So before you being your next big project, figure out the small thing you’d like to accomplish first.
