11 Feb Make your customer the hero in your marketing messages
What is your marketing story?
What is a hero? In stories or in the movies the hero is the person with the most dramatic storyline, the person involved in most of the action, who must overcome the most obstacles to eventually come out at the other end successful.
Think of Frodo Baggins, Harry Potter, James Bond – they all meet enemies, helpers and advisors along the way – but the stories in these movies are fundamentally centred around this one hero, not the other characters.
When it comes to telling your marketing story the biggest mistake that most business leaders will make is that they make their product, service or business the hero of their story.
If you want your customers to be interested in your marketing, interested in your business and interested in your products and services then you must tell a marketing story where they (the customer) is the hero, not you.
You only have a few seconds to engage your customers, and the only way to do this is to make them the hero of your marketing message.
You have to invite your customer into your marketing story, so how do you do this?
Spot the difference in these two marketing messages!
1. “our products and services solve problems, reduce costs and increase profits and for decades we have led the way’”
2. “We recently worked with (name of customer) and helped them save costs, increasing their profits so they were able to expand, employ more staff and grow their business”
In message 1 your business has the starring role and your customer plays a minor part, instead, your story should make the customer the most important part of the narrative as demonstrated in message 2.
This makes your customer the hero of the story and invites other customers to want to know more.
When your customer recognises themselves as a hero they are already hooked into your message like never before.
So why not look again at your marketing messages…who is the hero in your marketing story?
When was the last time you put your customer front and centre of your marketing offer?