Communicating what your brand stands for, and how interacting with your brand will benefit others, is powerful. But even more powerful is helping people create the story for themselves. Whether a small business with hundreds or thousands of customers, or a large business with millions or tens of millions of customers, a marketer’s job to help shape the story people tell themselves, and others, about your brand.

Treehouse

Treehouse is a provider of online, self-paced, technical education. However, founder and CEO Ryan Carson spends most of his time not promoting their library of courses, but rather how Treehouse helps people overcome the burdens of traditional education or no education at all. He paints a picture of self-empowerment, independence, and confidence to achieve your goals through affordable and convenient online education. Here are a couple of example’s from Ryan’s Instagram:

With Ryan’s message of how a traditional education isn’t right for everyone, and doesn’t necessarily set you up for the job, and life, you want, he allows you to start telling yourself a story of what Treehouse can offer you. You start seeing yourself learning in your spare time, keeping yourself out of debt, acquiring marketable skills in less time so you can start leading the life you want. It’s not about the story Treehouse tells you, but rather the story Treehouse helps you tell yourself.

Field Notes

Hey, let’s start a notebook company!

In a time of computers, tablets, smartphones, and electronic gadgets and gizmos aplenty, who thinks of starting a notebook company? Well, Aaron Draplin and Jim Coudal did when they came up with Field Notes.

The success of Field Notes isn’t a story about notebooks. Notebooks are a commodity at best and, in the electronic age, seen as obsolete at worst. But Field Notes, from the moment you interact with the brand or open one of its notebooks, is arming you with everything you need to tell yourself a story.

Limited editions, useful quips inside the back covers, use of high-quality materials, aspirational videos of new designs, how new ones are nice but broken-in is even better. Just look at how they inspire others to create cases and accessories for the brand.

Fans of Field Notes are telling themselves a story. A story about how they’ll feel carrying around a Field Notes notebook, breaking one in, filling one up, showing off the cool cover, and being part of a “club.” It’s truly a brand built on the stories people tell themselves.

Getting out of the way…

What Treehouse and Field Notes have in common is they tap into something primal, then get out of the way. They offer the product, service, and inspiration. But they also tap into people’s aspirations and show them a path to having what they want through an interaction with the brand. By showing that path and letting people craft their own story, there is nothing to “sell.”

People sell themselves by using the brand to create the story that makes them feel how they want to feel. Giving people the power to do that, and share those stories with others, is a much more powerful and effective form of marketing than anything a brand could generate on its own.

This thing that we’re experiencing, this global situation that unites us (separately, in our own homes) can be depressing, discouraging, scarring, life-destroying.

Precisely because it’s all those things, it’s a chance to show resilience. Or to grow some.

Over four years ago The New Yorker published Maria Konnikova’s piece, “How People Learn to Become Resilient.” She said, “If you are lucky enough to never experience any sort of adversity, we won’t know how resilient you are. It’s only when you’re faced with obstacles, stress, and other environmental threats that resilience, or the lack of it, emerges: Do you succumb or do you surmount?”

Lucky us!

A central element of resilience, Konnikova explains, is perception. If we conceptualize events as opportunities to learn and grow, we make ourselves less vulnerable.

I miss moderating dial test focus groups in person.

I can’t wait until it’s possible to travel to different locations and meet new people and hear not just their words but what they’re communicating with posture, movement, eye contact, and more.

In the meantime, Engagious is adapting: Qualitative research continues; focus groups can still happen, online. Dial tests, too. 

Covid-19 is forcing change everywhere:
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2020/04/11/the-changes-covid-19-is-forcing-on-to-business
https://www.engagious.com/top-4-best-practices-for-crisis-communications 

How are you adapting?

Photo from: https://www.architecturendesign.net/16-incredible-trees-that-have-adapted-to-their-surroundings/

Meaningful conversations lead to meaningful work. Scratch that. Meaningful conversations with the right people lead to meaningful work. You can talk all day to a rock and it won’t get you anywhere (except maybe the crazy house). So, what makes a conversation meaningful? How do you make sure you’re talking to ideal clients and not rocks? How do you provide them with helpful information instead of annoying them to tears? Let’s dive in.

Creating powerful buyer personas doesn’t only shape your marketing strategy, but if utilized correctly, buyer personas can change the way you do business. Consider this your guide to building detailed buyer personas that drive meaningful conversations that lead to meaningful sales.

WHAT: What’s a Persona?

A buyer persona (aka ideal client persona, aka avatar) is a representation of your ideal customer. Don’t get this confused with basic demographics or a target audience. Personas are semi-fictional characters with stories based on detailed research of your actual customers. Unlike simple demographic information, personas look deeper at your target audience to uncover the needs and wants of your most ideal buyer.

Let’s do that over with different words: Who is your unicorn? If someone were to waltz in your front door to give your business, who would make you do a double take? Your unicorn isn’t just any client, it’s the most ideal customer you can imagine.

WHY: The Power of the Persona 

Buyer personas reflect your best customer relationships – relationships that generate the most revenue over the longest period and sustain a partnership where you can create your best work. Think about your best customers. How do they communicate? What are their persistent and emerging challenges? How can your services provide meaningful solutions they can understand and value? Now, it’s totally possible that you don’t have an ideal client yet. Don’t panic! Just think about who can provide you with the opportunity to do your best work? These are the clients that you are trying to understand when creating your personas.

Let’s go back and flip-flop that first scenario really quick. Have you ever been in a conversation that could have been meaningful, except the person you’re talking with won’t stop yammering about something that’s of no interest to you? Not much better than the conversation with the rock, is it? To create content that is meaningful, you must first know who you’re creating the content for. That’s why at Little Bird, before we ever begin brainstorming content ideas, we spend a good amount of time defining ideal buyer personas.

The value of buyer personas exceeds marketing. Their purpose can and should be utilized across your entire organization. Sales departments can use them to focus on training and learn how to best sell to qualified leads. Management can use them to decide which industry events to attend. It even benefits new hires during onboarding to better help them understand the clients that they will soon be working with. Lastly, they are an integral part of creating and maintaining a customer-centric organization.

By orienting your team around your ideal persona, you assure that your entire organization is working together to reach the right client and serve them well.

With good personas, your organization will have insights into questions like:

• What pains are you solving for your clients?
• What form of content is meaningful to your ideal client?
• How do your potential clients want to engage with you?

HOW: Understanding Your Ideal Client

Whether you’re presenting at an industry event, posting on social media or developing a downloadable resource, these tips can be used to reach your persona in a meaningful way:

Stop Focusing on the Outliers

The minute I start talking about buyer personas and knowing your audience, there’s always at least one person who chimes in with, “But, I have this one client that ___________.” You can fill in the blank, but some of my favorites include “…is allergic to electricity,” and “…doesn’t know the difference between a rumba and a tango.”

When it comes to personas, don’t let your outliers be your disqualifiers. While they may exist, they aren’t going to be the bulk of your work. When you’re building personas and crafting content to reach them, don’t let the outliers stress you out. Get focused on where you can reach the most people in the most meaningful way.

Ask the Right Questions

In order to get the information you need to understand your persona(s), you need to ask the right questions. While you can start with the basic, “Walk me through a day in their life,” you need to push beyond that. Consider the first things they do when they wake up, where they are going to get lunch, and what they plan to do after leaving the office.

It doesn’t stop there. Really try to get inside your customers’ minds. What are they thinking about when lying in bed at night? What are their greatest personal life challenges? What achievements make them most proud? 

No matter what industry, there are obvious questions that need to be answered and other important questions that will bring your personas to life. Start with the basic info and work your way into questions that will offer you more insight into what it’s like to be the customer.

Truthfully, you need a mix of both general and open-ended questions. The general questions get you basic information that is fundamental to understanding your customers. The open-ended questions will offer the information you need to understand and create a story for your buyer personas.

Here’s our go-to list:

• Who do they answer to at work?
• Who are they trying to impress?
• What does a day in their life look like?
• How do they source their news?
• What keeps them up on Sunday night?
• What gets them up on Monday morning?
• How do they measure success?
• Where are their eyeballs most of the day?
• Who are they most likely to ask for help from?
• What are they afraid to admit?

The Perfect Persona

Meet Marketing Mathew – he’s a sample of what a completed persona would look like. Notice the details, name and narrative.

WHAT’S NEXT?

You’ve heard it said, “Always Be Closing.” It’s the ABC’s of sales. I prefer ABH – Always Be Helping. More than a marketing agency, at Little Bird Marketing, I like to say that we’re a sleep improvement agency. If our clients can sleep easier at night knowing that their marketing problems are being solved, we’ve done our job. Our due diligence truly attracting the RIGHT client means the relationship is that much smoother as we partner for mutual success.

STAY TRUE

With a well-crafted persona (or three) in hand, your content and business will be structured around solving problems for people who are excited to have you on their side! Your new mantra before you create anything, “Is this helpful?”

Now it’s your turn!

For more on how to build buyer personas from scratch or effectively implement the ones you’ve already created, download Little Bird’s free guide to creating the perfect persona. 

David was fortunate enough to catch up with Ben at Story to discuss his work, where he gets his inspiration and ideas, and how visual storytelling plays a key role in his art.

Check out more of David’s videos on storytelling, persuasive selling, and strategic messaging, by visiting his YouTube Channel.

Now, all of that wouldn’t mean a thing if the content itself wasn’t valuable, but fortunately that is most definitely not the case. As the title clearly suggests, this book highlights the 10 types of stories told by great leaders. These include things like a founding story, a vision story, a strategy story, a customer story, a sales story, and five others. Each story explains why it’s important to have one of your own, an effective example, and tips to use in crafting your own story. Exactly what you need to understand it and begin crafting your own stories.

The best way I can describe this book is that it’s like a spark. It’s the catalyst for helping to bring these stories out of you. Even after 25 years in business, and owning my own company for 10 of those, I realized I don’t have all 10 of these down. In fact, not even close (which was humbling to say the least). Personally, I’ll be using this book as my spark to get my 10 stories down and I think if you give it a shot you’ll surprise yourself as well.

As an entrepreneur, business owner, leader, and salesperson, I always get value from Paul’s books and I’m happy to say this one is no exception.

Here are my Top 10 recommendations for How to Hire a Messaging Agency.

Do Your Homework: Keep a running list of agencies and campaigns that impress you.
At least you will have a starting place.

Be Honest with Yourself: How much bandwidth can you commit to managing an outside team?
Know this going into it.

Get Specific: Every agency has a specialty.
Know what you need (advocacy messaging? advertising messaging?) and find the right match.

Find the Right Size: Make sure the agency’s size matches your expectations. You don’t want to be the smallest client, making it easy to relegate your projects to the B-Team.

Go With Experience: If you are looking for a real partner, find a team that has related experience in your field. If you need messaging for B2B, find a team that has done B2B.

Secure Top Talent: Know who will be managing your account. That individual is your lifeline– and can sink a project if they are not strong or experienced enough.

Know Your Status: Know who their big clients are and what % of their bandwidth they occupy. You don’t want to be playing second fiddle to them for the duration.

Be Smart With Money: It’s a major factor and often an agency will cut a deal on the first job. But know that going in so you can prepare
for future projects.

Trust Your Gut: At the end of the day you are choosing a group of humans that you need to work with. Are they switched on? Do they have that sparkle in their eye?

Pull The Trigger: Your final decision will likely involve a leap of faith. If you’ve been diligent, odds are good you will end up with a partner you can work with.

In the end, your success depends a lot on your own preparation. I have faith in you; You can do this! We’re with you all the way.

If you need help with brand messaging or customer insights, we’ve got those chops. So put a check mark in our “been there, done that” column and give us a shout. Happy to talk through whatever you need.

See more of my blog posts here.

Are you looking to craft compelling stories and messages that hit the mark and drive your audience to take action? Let’s talk about how we can help.

For this research, our main focus was their recently introduced Parent Ambassador (PA) program. PAs are current CSFP parents selected to represent CSFP within their school communities. They help build relationships with other CSFP families within their child’s school and assist with questions about CSFP’s scholarship program, such as registration requirements, deadlines, and events. Our first group consisted of CSFP parents of children attending a school that has had a PA for at least one year, while our second group consisted of CSFP parents who have children attending a school that will have a PA starting this upcoming 2018-2019 school year. In connection with a grant CSFP received, the PAs will also help with educating low-income families on how to evaluate and locate quality pre-k options. Therefore, we also explored with respondents the factors they consider when choosing an early childcare program for children ages 3 – 4, their familiarity with pre-k rating and accreditation systems, and which organizations influence their decision-making with regard to high quality early education options.

Some highlights from our research include:

• Respondents had very little familiarity with CSFP’s Parent Ambassador Program. Interestingly, half of respondents who have had a PA in their school for at least one year were unaware of that.
• CSFP parents who will have a PA in their child’s school starting this month were excited about it. They thought that it would be good to have someone to talk to, and they expected to learn about scholarship opportunities.
• The most important factors when choosing an early childcare program for children ages 3 & 4 were: safety, highly rated in quality/quality certified or accredited, educational/academic program/school-based pre-k, class size, and affordability.
• The least important factors for choosing a pre-k was whether it is religious or faith-based and referrals by friends and family.
• Overall, a slight majority (14 of 24) of respondents have considered changing schools or changed schools since entering the CSFP scholarship program. For most, the reasons focused on the quality of their child’s educational experience rather than issues of affordability.
• The pre-k rating or accreditation system that respondents were most familiar with—by far—is Keystone STARS. Interestingly, fewer than one-third of respondents (seven of 24) knew that the highest STARS-rating possible to attain is four stars.
• School District of Philadelphia (SDP) is the organization that the most number of respondents overall (13 of 24) told us influenced their decision-making with regard to high quality early education options, but when probed, it appeared that the reason was that SDP was not quality and respondents were looking for something better.
• The best way for CSFP to get in touch with parents to notify them about an issue relating to their child’s program is to send an email to them.

This information will help CSFP plan the upcoming expansion of the PA program in multiple ways, including at the most basic level, knowing the best way to communicate updates and information to its scholarship parents. CSFP will also use this information to prepare materials about how to evaluate quality pre-k options for distribution to low-income parents and the public. Engagious was proud to be part of data-driven solutions that will help Philadelphia families struggling to find easily understood information about quality educational opportunities.

If you’d like to learn more about the fine work of CSFP, please visit: https://www.csfphiladelphia.org/.

The Story audience is an eclectic bunch and I knew that in order to earn my time on that stage I’d have to deliver a lot of value and a few surprises. With that in mind I got to work crafting a talk and a fun, interactive experiment.

The talk was based on how principles from the field of behavioral science can be used to craft more effective and persuasive stories. I told two versions of a compelling story, the second of which was deliberately written to capitalize on known cognitive biases to elicit a certain reaction. I then pulled back the curtain to show the audience how it was done and gave them some tools to use for themselves. The experiment looked at how powerful “framing” is when communicating a message. Participants listened to two versions of a story, then answered questions about it. Again, one version was deliberately written to elicit a specific reaction and it most certainly did.

Feedback from the audience was quite positive, with many telling me that they appreciated the tangible and practical takeaways they could deploy in their work. My biggest takeaway from this experience is to know your audience. There are many directions I could have taken and many were more self-serving. But when on that stage, I was in service to the audience, not myself. Through that lens I was able to craft a great experience for them and for me.

By the way, if you want to hear more about the talk or the outcome of the experiment, please let me know. I’d love to discuss it or share it with your audience.

Fast forward to a month or so later when I pitched master illusionist and Story curator Harris III my idea to speak with this year’s audience about how we help storytellers craft, test, and refine stories that resonate. In addition to that, we’ll be running an experiment with attendees to test how cognitive biases can impact how stories are perceived.

I first learned of the Story conference from Casey Neistat’s talk a couple of years ago and I’m honored to be sharing the same stage and to be in the company of this year’s amazing line-up of speakers.

If you’ll be at Story, please say hello. If not, stay tuned for a recap of the conference and the outcome of our experiment.