This month’s theme in our online community is BRANDING, and I wanted to share some thoughts about what we have been working on. Of course, you’re free to join us and catch all this serious shift in real-time.
‘Services Schmervices’
When you’re marketing products and services, you have to be as general as possible to be as appealing as possible to as many people as possible. Say that 5 times fast.
The problem is that you are not a service, you’re an experience but you’re not acting that way. You can get services everywhere, any time and they are so ordinary and every day that the only way they can possibly add any value to your life is to be available everywhere, any time for as little as possible.
Services are about speed and cost
We want both. We want pizza, in our hands the moment we order it, we want it to be good and dammit it better cost less than $12 or it may affect how we vote. The truth hurts!
Ditto financial planning and everything available through Amazon Prime. We are so spoiled we have lost sight, completely, of how good we actually have it.
Until we are reminded …
Of what an experience feels like. When we are surprised. When we find something that doesn’t just get the job done, it delights us. We take a picture of it. We ask questions about it. We want to know the story about it, who it’s for and why it has come into existence …
Here is a big hint, don’t do average work for average people. Do work for people who care.
Who’s the work for?
Who cares? How precise can you get defining your client?
What’s it for?
When your work has had its desired effect, what happens?
What is the worldview of the people you are trying to reach?
What do they believe?
What do they want to be or become?
What are they afraid of?
How can you be the hero and take that away?
What story will you tell? Is it true?
For a long time, I’d tell potential clients about the work I do, how it works and how it’s different from what most everyone else does. I’d talk about features and benefits. I had a pretty good pattern figured out.
Then one day for a reason I don’t quite understand myself, I didn’t.
I stopped telling people about features and benefits and the rest of it. I told them about Sherri, and my daughters and skiing and going to the cabin. I told them about Tom, and Ruth and their 3 kids and how they like hiking and touring.
I told them about staying small, having a business that serves my life and knowing when enough (lots) is enough. I told them that I love the work I do, especially when I like the people I’m doing it for and when it doesn’t get in the way of skiing or going to the lake.
Guess what happened next? Exactly. People love a good story especially when it’s true.