Marketing Lessons and karate

I took my first karate class last week. 

Me, three other adults and thirty children under twelve. It was a strange feeling to be one of the few adults learning alongside children my own kids' age. 

As I did my best to keep my elbows tucked in and my eyes up I couldn’t but notice another first timer. He was 8 years old and English wasn’t his first language. He was struggling to sit still in the lines and follow along. Until another child around his same age noticed. This young boy walked over to the new boy with a smile and gently maneuvered him back into line. The experience boy stood beside the new boy nudging him when to move. You could practically feel the new boy relax. He joined in as best he could with enthusiastic grunts and stomps with every punch. 

So how does this karate story relate to your marketing? At the heart it's a story about belonging and social proof. The new child needed to see someone like him to copy and start to feel like he belonged in the group. He wasn’t an outsider anymore once he had his guide, he was special like all the children wearing their GI, moving together. You, as the business owner, are no different than the child guiding the new boy. You’re guiding and welcoming your customers into your own special group.

How you tell your brand stories and the stories about your customers is about building social proof and connecting to a sense of belonging. There are many ways to tell your brand story and one way is to have customers tell about their experience with you through customer stories. 

A customer story is like a long form of a testimonial but it gives the opportunity to share more about why the product or service matters to them. It can be in video form, which can be very powerful if you have the capacity to create decent quality, or written with photos. The goal of a customer story is to connect to your broader community and network on an emotional level to the product or service you provide. 

You first want to identify a customer who has a long enough relationship with your business that they can speak to your offering. Then you’ll want to think about what information you want to get from them in order to tell a meaningful story that is also in line with your brand identity (if you don’t know your brand identity yet, don’t stress! It’s an ongoing process). This practice may also help you to understand your business as well. 

If you focus on anything, focus on this: the villain in the customer's story. It’s not the time to get into features and benefits of your product or service. Customers can find that elsewhere and besides that isn’t REALLY why people buy a product or service, it’s the outcome of that offering.

So, how do you identify the villain? If you sell eco-friendly fair trade earrings, the villain is throw-away culture. If you sell workplace conflict management consulting, the villain is awkward office tension. If you sell heart-centered marketing consulting? The villain is runaway capitalism. 

Help your customer identify the big picture problem they are looking to solve by asking them probing questions that get to the heart of why they support your business. My favorite is “why is that important to you?” asked until you get a real genuine answer. Maybe give them a heads up that you’ll be doing this so you don’t sound like a toddler asking why, why, why! 

You can then get to the barriers and problems that prevent the problem your customer is trying to solve. These can be external, internal, or philosophical. Or any combination. 

What is an example of an external problem? Anything in the outside world that’s stopping the customer from achieving their goals. If it’s the environmental and justice-orientated customer, it’s finding a gift for a friend that they feel good about. For the workplace, it’s communication that allows for easier dispute resolution. It’s whatever externally that stops the need or want from being fulfilled. How did your business make it easier to overcome an external barrier to defeat your customers villain? 

An internal problem as the inner desire to resolve a problem. It’s often to do with identity. When your customer purchases earrings from you as a justice-orientated supplier they seem themselves as a good person. When the HR manager organises conflict resolution training they see themselves as competent. Your offering helps customers reflect who they want to be. That internal conflict is what draws us into stories - the hero’s journey is nothing without the need to build internal strength and overcome challenges. 

The last barrier you can explore with your customer is a philosophical one. This is the REALLY big picture the customer is trying to resolve. It could be fairness, justice, equity, self-sufficiency. It’s the really big ideas that usually have should or oughts assigned to them. For example: people should be paid fairly; A workplace ought to feel safe and welcoming.   

Coming back to the earrings, a philosophical reason to purchase your earrings is that your customer believes that people ought to be paid well for their labour. So they purchase earrings from you rather than from Temu. 

If you can have your customer identify the villain and the three barriers that would have stopped them from defeating their villain had they not found your business, you will have a compelling customer story that isn’t about gimmicks or features. It’s about the deep and meaningful reasons you give your precious time and energy to your business. 

If this sounds like a lot - that’s a fair response! Coming in November I can help you craft stories that get to the heart of your business and help you build a business you love without the ick.