Don’t “We, We” All Over Your Content and Customers

Does your typical sales and marketing messaging sound something like this? “We offer cutting edge technology.” “We feature best in class service and support.” “We have the best people.” “We are the market leaders. “We are the fastest.” “We are the cheapest.” “We are the ______.”

Most of our customer communication is about us, our company, our solution(s). Don’t “we” “we” all over your customers and miscast your company as the hero of the story.

We often forget that the point of all marketing is to get somebody to DO something. We accomplish that by making our marketing more relevant. Be customer-centric, demonstrate value and show up differently. In other words, it’s about them, not you.

Watch Your “You” to We” Ratio

I suggest clients strive for at least a 3:1 ratio of “you” to “we” in their copy.

Here’s why. The days of telling and selling are long past. Your audience is time-starved and in control as never before. To win the battle of customer attention you need to talk with customers in their language, show respect for their situation, and position your solutions in terms of how they respond to customer’s needs or solve their pain points and problems.

When you do that, connect customer insights to differentiate the buying process, you create a clear competitive advantage.

So how do we become more customer-centric, find new ways to demonstrate value and show up differently?

Your Customer is the Hero of the Story

To start with, make your prospect or customer, not your company’s solution, the central character of your sales and marketing stories. Frame the story from their prospective, not yours.

Come into your customer’s world as a mentor; a guide who will provide clarity and direction and some of the tools they need to be successful in their journey.

Christopher Vogler, a Hollywood film producer and writer, wrote a seven-page memo for Disney Studios on the use of this type of storytelling as a guide for scriptwriters. The memo influenced the creation of such films as “Aladdin,” “The Lion King,” and “Beauty and the Beast.”

Vogler later expanded the memo and published it as the book “The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers,” which reportedly became the inspiration for a number of other successful Hollywood films, including “Fight Club,” “Black Swan” and others.

Here are some the stages of the hero’s journey:

1. The Ordinary World: the hero is seen in their everyday life
2. The Call to Adventure: the initiating incident of the story
3. Refusal of the Call: the hero experiences some hesitation to answer the call
4. Meeting with the Mentor: the hero gains the supplies, knowledge, and confidence needed to commence the adventure
5. Crossing the First Threshold: the hero commits wholeheartedly to the adventure
6. Tests, Allies, and Enemies: the hero explores the special world, faces trial, and makes friends and enemies
7. Approach to the Innermost Cave: the hero nears the center of the story and the special world
8. The Ordeal: the hero faces the greatest challenge yet and experiences death and rebirth
9. Reward: the hero experiences the consequences of surviving death
10. The Road Back: the hero returns to the ordinary world or continues to an ultimate destination
11. The Resurrection: the hero experiences a final moment of death and rebirth so they are pure when they reenter the ordinary world
12. Return with the Elixir: the hero returns with something to improve the ordinary world

So how can we apply these storytelling principles and structure to engage our audience? To create a competitive advantage?

Before and After

Here is some copy I cut and pasted verbatim from the website of a random radio-frequency identification company (RFID) that services retailers we can use as a “before” example.

Before: “A & A Solutions, Inc. works with its clients to produce high quality, cost effective solutions that are on time and within budget. We believe our success is built upon the success of our clients by enabling them to provide ‘best of breed’ products and services to their customers. Our team has developed the next-generation of Active RFID technology to achieve greater security reliability and better functionality and usability than any other technology available.”

Blah, blah, blah, right?! Change a few of the words and that kind of generic copy could be applied to virtually any company in any vertical. And it has zero value when it sounds like everyone else.

Now let’s look at that copy when we rewrite it, in the customer’s language. It features transformation. This is what our customers’ world looked like before; this is how different it looked after they hired us.

After: “What if you could engage with your customers – in real time – while they are in your store? Imagine a world where your customer can shop comparatively, provide feedback, and share their experience via social media with the technology they already carry. By implementing RFID technology from A & A Solutions we can give customer’s mobile devices the ability to exchange information with you – and the world. You’ll get real return when you can respond to customer queries and complaints immediately by receiving push notification updates. Manage your staff and business better by viewing real-time information on what is happening in your business. Use the smart analytics to help enhance productivity and profitability. All it takes is a tap.”

See the difference? Your job is to bring the help and guidance your customers need to be successful on their grand journey.

Making Marketing More Relevant

The stakes are high when it comes to sales and marketing stories that get – and keep – someone’s time and attention.

In fact, over 90% of what people think of us, our products, websites, ideas, etc., is determined in the first three seconds. So there’s not much time to create an emotional connection and lay a sales-forward foundation. And that is something we must do before someone will do business with us.

Here’s a summary of takeaways to make your sales and marketing messaging more relevant:

•  It’s about them, not you
•  You are the mentor, not the hero
• Translate your story into your customer’s world
• Make your customer the central character
•  Use “You” phrasing instead of “We” at a 3:1 ratio

The good news is it has never been easier to reach large numbers of people with our sales and marketing messages. The bad news is it has never been more difficult to connect with them. And we must create emotional connections – quickly – if we want to earn someone’s time and attention, and eventually their business.

You’ll never accomplish that with messaging that we we’s all over your customers and prospects.