You can’t begin to tell a story without understanding why that story should matter to the people you want to serve. You can’t build a great business just by being different
Be the best
Set out to be the best at whatever it is you’re going to be. Don’t set out to be okay, or an alternate service that is slightly cheaper or just alright.
Figure out who you want to help, and what you can do to ease their pain. Be the one everyone who cares about your particular thing must-have.
Make it easy for people to connect and perceive in the right way
Knowing your customers’ needs and wants is important, but that alone won’t make your business successful. It’s also important to make sure your business matters.
In order to ensure that people perceive a difference in the quality of services or products you provide, the next step is to develop a personal connection with them.
The life that your potential customers are leading should resonate with your product or service. Using your product or service should make people feel good.
Because people don’t want to do; they want to be. They want to be less busy and more productive, less alone and more connected, less fearful and more safe
Tell a story that customers can relate to
A modern marketing strategy involves not screaming at potential customers but instead telling stories they can relate to or identify with.
Airbnb, for example, offers great stories about the company. It is aware of the high cost of hotels and their impersonal service. Therefore, Airbnb offers more than just cheap hotel rooms. They encourage customers to experience the world in a whole new way.
How can you create a story that people can relate to? A different model should be followed, which involves the six P’s: principles, purpose, people, personal, perceptions, and product.
Promises, not features
So much time has been spent explaining to people the features of services and products but that is speaking to a rational buyer’s mind. People really want to know what is underneath the product or service, and what it could potentially change for them by using it.
Spend more time thinking about what promises you can make, and less about what the obvious features are. You need to “stand in a potential user’s shoes and understand the impact that an innovation and its design might have on that person’s life (and thus in the market).
Understand your business, market, and customers in terms of their fundamental truths
- The first step is to focus on your truths. Where do you excel and where do you struggle? Are there ways to incorporate these into your goal-setting?
- Your industry also has its own truths, which you must recognize. How does your industry function exactly? Is it possible to use or change these truths to your advantage?
- You must analyze the principles of your customers. Put yourself in the shoes of the people you want to influence. Are there truths driving their behavior? Do they feel restricted or unhappy due to those facts? How do they wish to live?
Today the shortcut to more is to matter – not to be different, but to do something that creates difference. It isn’t the person with the best ideas who wins; it’s the person who has the greatest understanding of what really matters to people
If in creating new products and services for people, our biggest concern is understanding and improving things for other people – what a gorgeous world we could have.
