Tell the Story Behind the Product and the Purpose

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In “So that’s why we do that!”, Karina Ebert tells where many common habits and inventions come from. The “10,000 steps” a day health benchmark, for example, was a catchy marketing move by manufacturer Yamasa, “since the Japanese character for 10,000 looks a lot like a person walking”. Credit for festive birthday candles likely goes to the ancient Greeks, Ebert tells readers, who purportedly made cakes in the shape of the moon to honor Artemis, goddess of the moon and the hunt, with the candles providing “moonglow”. Escape-release latches inside car trunks, mandatory since 2001, came about after armed kidnappers forced a couple into the trunk of their car in 1995.

“The story of how your company came to manufacture or sell a specific product can be helpful to a prospective buyer,” magoda.com says in advising about press releases. By sharing an original story highlighting how a product or practice evolved, the authors explain, “you can effectively link your brand with a solution while delivering details and insight to an interested audience.” While the spotlight is on the product, they caution, the content needs to explain why your company is important in the process of delivering the product to the user.

.History-of-our-company background stories have a humanizing effect, we know at Say It For You, engaging readers and creating feelings of empathy and admiration for the business owners or professional practitioners who overcame adversity. At the same time, the stories call attention to modern solutions (in terms of both product improvements and customer service practices that grew out of those past experiences).

It’s worth repeating – people relate to stories about people more than to facts and statistics, and particularly more than to sales pitches. In representing our business owners and practitioners, we need to tape this mantra to our computer screens: Let the history of your industry and the history of your own business do the selling.

Keep telling the story behind the products and the purposes for which they’re used!

 

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You-Yes-You! Content

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To hear Ran Walker of Writer’s Digest tell it, our content writing would be much more effective when couched in second person. With first person writing, Walker observes, the reader is passive; with second person, the reader is an active participant in the story. With “you” writing, the reader can be either a character on the receiving end of the narrator’s energies or the protagonist of the story. Either way, the person reading the story is connected to the plot at all times.

Still, in more than 90% of his conversations with writers, Walker laments, their point of view revolves around only first person (“I” telling the story) or third person (narrator telling the story about someone else).

William Cane in Writer’s Digest disagrees, expressing the thought that third person narratives mimic the “beige voice” of a reporter. First person blog content writing (using the pronouns “I” and “we”) allows the writer to be intimate, unique, and conversational Cane thinks.

As content writers at Say It For You, we realize that different posts and articles are designed to serve different purposes. Second person (“you”, “your”) is a good fit for how-to blog posts, while third person (“he”, “she”, “they”) may be a choice for news items. In general content marketing, though, I stress first person writing because of its one enormous advantage – it shows the people behind the posts, revealing the personality of the business owner, practitioner, or the team standing ready to serve customers.

While it’s important to remember that all marketing content is actually “second person”-focused and needs to be about and for the target readers, I prefer first and second person (I-you) writing in business blog posts over third person “reporting”. I think people tend to buy when they see themselves in the picture and when can they relate emotionally to the person bringing them the message.

 

 

 

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Never Start With the Solution

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“Great marketers don’t use consumers to solve their company’s problems; they use marketing to solve other people’s problems,” is the concept behind Seth Godin’s marketing philosophy. That is why, he tells us content writers, never start with the solution, but with:

  1. the group you want to serve
  2. the problem you seek to solve
  3. the change you want to see made

In terms of all three of these elements, Godin reminds readers that, as humans, our decision making is primarily driven by one question:

“Do people like me do things like this?

The “things like this” refers to the changes you want to see made and the problem you seek to solve, but the first and most important item to address is the “people like me”. (Who is the “me???)

To achieve any degree of success through blog marketing, for example, your knowledge of your target audience needs to influence every aspect of your content, including the content itself, the style of writing, the length and frequency of posts, and the degree to which you elicit comments and feedback. It’s all about knowing – in detail – who the “me” is.

Fully seven years ago, friend and admired sales training expert Tim Roberts explained that, when it comes to teaching problem-solving skills, he encourages salespeople to focus on finding problems (perhaps those your customer hadn’t yet considered) before offering solutions. Translated into content marketing through blogs I explain to Say It For You clients, when searchers’ query relates to what you sell, what you do, and what you know about, those readers will find your blog. But, what if your content, rather than jumping into the solution, focused on raising questions and inviting input, rather than offering standard answers?

As I heard sales trainer Tory Buchan of Great Deals Marketing emphasize the other day in a presentation, branding is never a one-and-done affair. That means that for us content marketing means answering the “Who is ‘Me’? question not once, but over and over.

Great marketers start, not with the solution, but with the people they aim to serve!

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Rolling a Picasso in Your Content

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“Roll a Picasso” is an art game developed by Emily Glass for use in an art or art history classroom, but it it makes for a fun exercise for groups of any age. Each roll of a die relates to a printed key, directing the “artist” to draw the head, the left ear, the nose, the mouth, by copying the shape on the chart. The different combinations of the 24 shapes make for a high degree of variety in the finished product. It’s interesting that, just days after posting “Telling Your Business Story Through a Brand New Lens”, I was introduced to this visual proof of how, by creatively combining – and recombining – a finite number of elements, we can continue producing engaging marketing content.….,

In corporate content marketing training sessions, I teach that effective blog posts are centered around key themes, just like the recurring musical phrases that connect the different movements of a symphony.  As you continue to write about your industry, your products, and your services, we tell business and practice owners, you’ll naturally find yourself repeating some key ideas – in fact, that’s exactly what you should be doing, we explain, to keep the content focused and targeted while still offering variety.

  1. It’s important to stress that blog and social media posts tend to be most effective when they focus on just one idea. A content writer might go about:

    – busting one myth common among consumers of their product or service they’re marketing

– offering one testimonial from a user of that product or service

– describing an unusual application for a product

– describing one common problem their service helps solve

– updating readers on one new development in that industry or profession

– offering a unique opinion or slant on best practices

Each post is similar to one “roll of the dice”, with the long-term effect being your “Picasso” work of art!

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They’ve Found Your Website; Skip the 44 Seconds and Directions to the Store

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“Why do the greetings we hear when calling a business seldom include the option we want (“talk to a human – isn’t that why we called?”) humorous keynote speaker Todd Hunt wryly asks. What we don’t want, he observes, is what we do get: directions to their store, their fax number, and 44+ seconds about the company.

We’ve all experienced that very sort of frustration, and for that reason we advise content writers that, right away, visitors need to be connected with the information and advice they were seeking, not with a sales pitch. After all, I explain to business and practice owners, the only people who are going  to be reading the blog posts are those who are searching for precisely the kinds of information, products, and services that relate to what you do, what you have for sale, and what you know how to fix.

If ever there was a time to hit just the right note – midway between too bold and too shy, it’s in the “asks“. While readers understand you’re writing for business purposes, the first thing that needs to happen is reassurance that they’ve been connected to the right people, people who can provide the information (and possibly the products and services) they need.

Back to Todd Hunt’s point about customers attempting to make phone contact with a business, LinkedPhone.com cites this statistic: 88% of visitors are more likely to contact your company if you provide a business phone number on your website. The very presence of a phone number “gives the impression that your customers can get in touch with your company or organization whenever they have a query or need any kind of assistance”.  “It makes it easier for customers to trust you when they see a work phone number, usechalkboard.com agrees..

O.K. They’ve found your website – Skip the 44+ seconds and the directions to the store!

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