Content Marketing and Making the Customer the Hero of Your Story

I’d like to talk to you about content marketing, but more specifically, I want to talk about making the customer the hero of your story. Now, I am sure you have gone to websites and you start reading the copy and you see somebody saying, “We have won such-and-such awards, and we have done so many things, and we are the best at this, and we have this solution, and… we, we, we.” This, my friends, is what I call “We We-ing” all over yourself. Don’t do that in public.

Seriously, people tend to write copy thinking that they need to convince the reader, or maybe listener, or viewer that they can deliver the goods. They’re trying to convince them that they are the best thing since buttered bread. But in reality, what the author doesn’t understand is that it’s not about them. It’s not about you, it’s about the reader. It’s about what problem you solve for them. What difference do you make in their lives? How do they feel after they read or listen to what you’ve said?

My goal with this post, obviously, is to make you feel better, to make you feel, “I can do this.” You know what? It’s not that hard, especially when you understand the perspective that people are consuming your messages from.

There’s something I call WIIAM versus WIIFM; they’re both radio stations. We all tend to broadcast on WIIAM (what is interesting about me), and we feel like when in the business of convincing the client or the prospect or the customer, that we have the best solution for them. But they are tuned into a different radio station called WIIFM (what’s in it for me)? So when you communicate the what’s in it for me, you are truly speaking with (and not to) the client or customer. Let me give you a few more tips that will help you put your content into a perspective that makes your client the hero of the story.

Emotion

Let’s start with the first one: Tap into an emotion. Now, I’m not going to get all political, but a lot of politics is much more successful when they make you fear something, when you feel like they’re going to take something away or somebody’s going to hurt you, or something along those lines. The most successful political ads are about just that: making you fear. No, I’m not saying you should do that, but it’s very powerful. Scarcity, my money is going to be taken away, fear of missing out. Fear of something is a very powerful emotion to get people to take action.

But, on the other hand, there’s pleasure. You want to make people feel better about themselves. What are they going to feel when they have this new life? Will they have more money? Will they be healthier? Will they have more free time? Whatever it is, you need to create that image in their mind of the pleasure they’re going to have. Both of those work, but I have to say, it’s a lot easier to make people to fear something than it is to make them imagine feeling good about themselves. But that’s your challenge.

Empathy

The next thing you have to do is make sure they understand you care. One of my favorite phrases is people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. So,, you have to show them empathy. One of the things that you see all of the time in the internet marketing business is the guy standing next to his Lamborghini by the mansion. This is supposed to say, “Hey, if you follow me, you can live my lifestyle.” But really most people understand that they don’t want a Lamborghini and they don’t want a mansion. They just want to pay their bills, they just don’t want to have to struggle month to month. Or, they want their house to be warm or clean, or their car to run better, whatever it is. The problems are usually a lot smaller than needing a Lamborghini or a mansion. You don’t want the end user to feel like you’re bigger and better than they are, you want them to feel like, “Hey, I’m on a level playing field with you. I know exactly what you’re going through. I know how you feel.”

Social Proof

The next part of that is you have to make them feel like you’ve been there and done that. I got this email today from somebody who was trying to sell this package; it wasn’t expensive, it was $25. But the person who was standing there in the video to sell this package was saying, “With only one week’s worth of time, this person made $10,000 and this person made $100,000 and it was really easy and we’ve done 3 million dollars and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”

The reality is that’s just all hype. What people want to know is the basics. Give them testimonials from real people and real success stories. They need to hear it from the person who actually had the success because I can make up any numbers I want. I can make up any solution that I want. The bottom line is to get a testimonial or a referral or a success story that you can point to a real person that says, “Hey, I now created a culture. I’ve created a bunch of people around this success story.” People want to be part of the in crowd. The more that you can show successes of other people rather than what you’ve done, you’re going to have better success getting people to imagine themselves being part of that crowd.

YES!

The last piece of this is a sales technique. I don’t want you to go all salesy on your customers, but it’s very useful. That is the key to get your audience to say “Yes,” and it involves asking some questions. Have you ever been frustrated at your dog? Have you ever bought a pair of pants that felt real good in the store but just didn’t feel good and you didn’t want to return them? Have you ever had an experience at a restaurant where you felt like the waiter just didn’t pay attention to you? Sure, we’ve all had those kinds of things. The key question is, can you say yes? If you said yes to any of those, then chances are you’ve had an emotional response. So that’s it, what you have to do in your content is ask questions to get them to say yes. When they say yes, they all of a sudden feel akin to what you are saying. So, would you like to have your content help you make more money? Of course you said yes, that’s why you’re here, right? You want to learn the secrets that work.

The key thing you have to do is get your audience to say yes. Ask them the right questions that you know the answer is yes to. Because if you get them to say no, it tends to put them in a negative mindset. So get to the yes.

Final Thoughts

Let me leave you with a couple of final thoughts. First and foremost, you may have to do all of what I just said in phases, you may not be able to do that in just one email or one post. You may have to create a sequence of things to get people to go through the story because people don’t have time to read through a ton of copy or watch a lot of video or listen to long podcasts. Think about how you can break that up into multiple parts where you’re always getting those things.

Are you tapping into an emotion? Are you making them feel like you know and you care? Can you make them feel like you’ve been there, that you have empathy for them? And can you get them to say yes? The thing to do is K.I.S.S.: Keep It Super Simple. And finally, guide them through the process but make them feel like what’s in it for them is going to make their life better and that they come out the winter in the story. Remember, it’s not about you, it’s about them.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Comment below and share your thoughts, ideas or questions about showing the concepts presented. Have you had to overcome any of the presented concepts? What worked and what did not live up to expectations? Do you have any ideas or advice you could share?

Read more:

• Find The Hero And Tell The Story