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Use Stories to Humanize Your Brand

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“We learn who characters are the same way we get to know people in real life: We are introduced to them, we get a first impression, we see how they act and behave, what they do, how they react and interact, and little by little, we form a composite, ever-deepening picture of who they are.,” Tiffany Yates Martin observes in Writer’s Digest, teaching ways to bring characters to life on the page.

Post COVID, the Made For Knoxville initiative attempted to do that very thing, celebrating and  uplifting Knoxville founders and entrepreneurial leaders by highlighting their individual stories, asking the question “What was your big pivot moment that led to entrepreneurship?”.

To create a brand story that builds authenticity with your target audience, Adobe Express emphasizes, use storytelling for long-lasting impact, conveying the company’s message through compelling narratives rather than relying on “dry facts and features. Through storytelling, the authors assert, you can:

  • connect with customers on an emotional level
  • foster brand loyalty
  • humanize the brand

Our work at Say It For You is based on that precise concept, translating our clients’ corporate message into human, people-to-people terms. In fact, that’s the reason I prefer first and second person writing 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. I compare the interaction between content writers and online readers to behavioral job interviews, where the concept is to focus not on facts, but on discovering the “person behind the resume”.

For that very reason, “how-we-did-it” stories make for very effective blog content for both business owners and professional practitioners. True stories about mistakes and struggles are very humanizing, adding to the trust readers place in the people behind the business or practice, not to mention the special expertise and insights the providers gained that can now be applied, much to the benefit of customers.

In today’s technology-driven world, humanizing your marketing content is a way of bringing readers “backstage”, keeping the company or professional practice relatable. AI advances notwithstanding, the old saw still applies: People want to do business with people!

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Are Your Marketing and Sales Teams on the Same Page?

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Whether you are the owner, marketing manager, or sales manager, marketing and sales need to be on the same page. If not, too much time will be wasted by all. What can you do to make sure both functions work together?

Focus on the Prospect
Prospects move through  one to four phases of your sales cycle: Awareness, Interest, Decision, and Action (or Conversion), based on whether they convert to clients or drop out during your sales cycle. When do they drop out? Why did they drop out?

Your sales cycle is the timeframe that buyers (prospects and customers) take to make a purchase. Review your prospect’s journey using the 4 phases below:

  • Awareness – People become aware through multiple channels.
  • Interest – People want to know that you solve their problem and engage using your call to action (CTA).
  • Decision – People recognize you meet their need and ask about pricing.
  • Action (or Conversion) – People make the decision to buy from you.
  • Upon review, you will find answers to when and why prospects drop out of your sales funnel.

When and Why Prospects Drop Out
When prospects drop out often tells you why prospects drop out. For example:

  • Awareness – Marketing is driving the wrong people.
  • Interest – Your CTA (Call to Action)is not enticing.
  • Decision – What prevents them from buying?
  • Action – Why did they buy from a competitor?

Use your funnel to see what is going on.

Track Prospects with a Sales Funnel
Depending on business size, there are many ways to track prospects. A robust CRM (Customer Relationship Management) will:

  • Track prospects and report by sales funnel stage, sales agent, and value.
  • Trigger texts and emails to prospects (with CTAs) and reminders to sales reps to follow up.
  • Analyze which prospects are stuck at each stage.

A robust CRM helps you close more sales with less follow-up fatigue!

What If I Don’t Have a CRM?
If you have marketing and sales teams, you need a CRM. Robust CRMs deliver:

  •  Automation to engage with clients and prospects and to communicate internally.
  • Email and quote templates that replace repetitive manual work and use current branding, logo and format.
  • Segmented contact lists based on your criteria to send key messaging.
  • Lead scoring so that reps spend more time on their best prospects
  • Reports to show which prospects were not contacted in the last 30 days.
  • Leaderboards that report on your agreed upon metrics and milestones.

A robust CRM frees you up for your highest priorities.

Keeping Marketing and Sales on One Page
Think about the twelve “touches” needed to close most sales and spread them across the four phases. As you measure your results, you will find the answers to when and why prospects drop out of your sales funnel.\

Make sure your marketing and sales teams are on the same page!

 

This guest post was contributed by Jon Rutenberg, owner of CCCSolutions.com. Jon helps his clients close more sales with less followup fatigue and helps them manage their prospects, clients, outreach, and mail lists. He automates marketing and sales processes, organizes client sales funnels, and segments client contacts to deliver unique messaging, installing and supporting Customer Relationship Management systems.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Sharpening Your Content Creation Saw

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“Imagine if you learned 1% more today. That doesn’t seem like very much, right? Now, imagine you learned 1% more every day, 365 days a year. You would have increased your knowledge 365%,” estate planning attorney Brian Eagle wrote in honor of the March 2nd Read Across America Day, emphasizing that reading can keep your mind sharp and creative..

At Say It For You, we couldn’t agree more. Reasons our content writers make “reading around” such an important part of our daily routine include:

  • We need to keep up with what others are saying on the topic we’re handling. What’s in the news? What problems and questions have been surfacing that relate to the industries/professions of our clients?
  • We need a constant flow of ideas, and those ideas can come from unexpected sources.
  • We improve our own writing skills by reading books and articles about good writing.
  • By reading, we uncover little-known facts that we can use to explain our clients’ products, services, and “corporate culture”.
  • Since we’re in the business of selling and marketing, books and articles on those topics are interesting to us and important to our work.

Not only does “reading around” itself sharpen our skills and broaden our horizons, we often both collate and “curate” others’ material for the benefit of our own readers.

Collating is one important way in which content marketers can bring value to readers. Using content from our own former blog posts, newsletters, or even emails, then adding material from other people’s blogs and articles, from magazine content, or from books, we “collate”, or sort, that material into new categories, summarizing the main ideas we think our clients’ readers will find useful. When we curate content, on the other hand, we are giving credit to the authors of an article or post, but then adding our own “take” on that topic.

The term “sharpen the saw”, spica.com explains, comes from a story about two foresters. Competing to see who could cut down trees faster. While the younger man kept hard at work, the older of the two took a break during which he sharpened his saw. Although he had worked less time, he ended up winning the contest.

For us content marketers at Say It For You, reading around is our way of sharpening our saws!

 

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Don’t Lead Readers Into Content Word Traps

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My favorite article in the monthly Mensa Bulletin always seem to come from Richard Lederer, who excels in making witty observations about the use of language. In his latest “April Foolishness”, Lederer demonstrates how easy it is to unintentionally mislead readers….

  • “Pronounce out loud the words formed by each of these titles: B-O-A-S-T, C-O-A-S-T, R-O-A-S-T. Now, what do we put in a toaster?” (See how easy it is to answer TOAST? You don’t put toast into a toaster; you put in bread and it comes out toast!)
  • “How many times can you subtract 5 from 25?” (Only once. After that, the number is 20.)
  • What was the highest mountain on earth before Mount Everest was discovered? (Before it was discovered, it was there!)

Did you get all three answers right??

Mythbusting

Mythbusting is used in many fields to counteract what researchers suspect is counterproductive thinking, and I’m a firm believer in using debunking in content marketing. In the normal course of doing business, misunderstandings about your product or surface might surface in the form of customer questions and comments.  (It’s even worse when those myths and misunderstandings don’t surface, but still have the power to interrupt the selling process!)

The technique of mythbuting is not without risk, because customers and prospects don’t like to be proven wrong or feel stupid.  The trick is to engage interest, but not in “Gotcha!” fashion. In other words, business owners and professional practitioners can use blog, newsletter, and landing page content to showcase their own expertise without “showing up” their readers’ lack of it.

Engaging, but honest headlines

Don’t mislead readers by using sensational headlines, fastercapital.com cautions, because readers will be turned off if they feel they’ve been tricked into clicking on your content. It’s OK to use attention-grabbing words that evoke curiosity and emotion, but be specific about what readers can expect to learn or gain, Prova Biswas writes in Quora.

Unclear words and phrases

“On the surface, language traps refer to words or phrases whose meaning isn’t clear to readers and, worse, can potentially mislead them into thinking you mean something you don’t, hureywrite.com explains.

Mis/disinformation

“Knowing how to shield your company from mis/disinformation can be challenging. Your audience may lack the ability to critically evaluate media content, and this can negatively impact your brand,” Clara Doyle admits in publicrelay.com. “If you are not prepared to manage fake news, your audience may be likely to believe stories containing misleading information.” Since, at Say It For You, our writing team often functions as “communications director” for clients who hire us to bring their message to online readers, we know the important for mounting a strong defensive “play” in the form of blog content.

Content marketing is actually the perfect vehicle for defusing false news, correcting misunderstandings, and protecting readers from word traps.

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Connecting With Buyers A’ La Ford

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“Ford Motor Co. set out to put the world on wheels with the Model T.  Here’s how the company attempted to brand itself through advertising and how it pitched its product to early everyday drivers including women,” USA Network writes in the special section of the March 10 issue of my newspaper.

As I analyzed the Model T ad reproduced  in my Indianapolis Star (an ad created fully one hundred years ago!) I noticed a number of smart marketing principles at work, guidelines we content marketers can put to use today…

Market with the end in mind

“To the woman at the wheel of a Ford car, every road seems straight and smooth; hills melt away and rough places are easy.”  The goal of content marketing should be to leave readers absolutely knowing why they need to care, not about your product or service, but about the way they are going to feel after using it! 

Your Unique Selling Proposition

“Don’t tell them what you do.  Tell them what you do for them,” Certified Business Coach Andrew Valley advised in a guest post years ago in this Say It For You blog. “You must tell the listener how your product or service can benefit that person, and how you can do it better or differently than others who do what you do.”

 

Understand buyers’ concerns

“When a woman hesitates to manage a heavy car, when she needs an extra one for personal of family use, or when her means forbid the drain of high upkeep cost…” In content marketing, making claims such as “least expensive, or “most affordable” are totally ineffective compared to communicating that you understand and are ready to address buyers’ deepest concerns.

In his business skills and development book The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, Carmine Gallo reminds marketers to focus on results. “Remember, your widget doesn’t inspire,” he reminds us. Ford marketers obviously knew how to address potential buyers’ deepest concerns. – “She should have the easily handled, easily parked, reliable service of a Ford,”

Aim to inspire

While a company’s website, brochure and blog typically explain what products and services are offered, who the “players” are and in what geographical area they operate, the better content pieces give at least a taste of the corporate culture and some of the owners’ core beliefs.

As the author of the piece on the Model-T observes, “This ad uses the automobile as a symbol of freedom”.

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