Is Your Thinking Inside-Out?
by Don Proffer
Every business wants to tell its story … communicate with its customers, potential customers, and the community at-large. And it’s easy to tell the world about the wonders of our product or service, our capabilities, how hard we work, our dedicated employees. But it’s a mistake to think that if we tell people that, why would they call anyone else?
We design our business models to deliver the goods, and how we do that is important information that our customers need to know. But it’s not the only thing they need to know. They also need to know how and why our products will help them achieve their goals.
So how do we do this? Perspective. We turn the focus of our communication around from looking inside-out to looking outside-in? Let’s say we’re producing a video to attract investors for our athletic shoe company. We could make an action-packed video that shows good-looking people playing sports and enjoying the shoes, and that’s a nice element for an introduction and background. But potential investors want to know more about what will affect their return on investment. How have our sales been trending relative to our market? What are the forecasts like for sales of athletic shoes in general? Is there something new and exciting in our product or marketing that gives us an edge? Do we have agreements with large chains that guarantee distribution? And perhaps most importantly, how do the people who wear our shoes feel about them? We need to make a conscious effort to look at our business from our customer’s side of the equation.
We can ask ourselves “Why should our customers come to us?” Better yet, we can also ask our customers. What needs do we fulfill? What are the important factors that helped them decide to do business with us and keep coming back – beyond our product offering?
Often, it’s helpful to bring in a communications professional (say, a video and digital media expert?) – someone who can see the forest and the trees. They can quickly learn our business’s story, speak with our customers and help us translate that outside-in perspective into a compelling story.
This perspective should become an integral part of our total communication efforts. It will help answer important questions in the minds of our prospects – why they should do business with us? It will reaffirm with our employees the value of what we do and of their efforts. The community-at-large will have a deeper understanding of the benefits of what we do.
Then we should get the word out – put the story on our web site, include links in emails, make it into commercial (there are lots of reasonably priced options these days – just look at your home cable menu), put it on DVDs to send out and use it in presentations.
There are lots of ways to tell a story. Just keep in mind that your story is also your customer’s story. That little bit of perspective will serve you well.
This is article 3 in the Proffer Productions “Stop, Don’t Shoot” Series
Read Article #1- Video production without a plan can be dangerous
Read Article #2 – How much is too much?