Get to know and understand your customer. Cultivate relationships. Build community. You hear marketers circulate these refrains all the time. What does any of it mean? How do you do it?
Learn your customer’s story.
Stories are how we communicate. First this happened, next that, and then something else. Stories are how we learn and how we make emotional connections.
It’s hard to care about someone you don’t know. Put another way, it’s hard to care about someone whose story you don’t know. Stories generate empathy; when you know what the other has experienced, you learn where she’s coming from and why she does what she does.
Without stories and its narrative arc and context, we’re just filling roles. Customer. Salesperson. The interaction remains limited to the transaction, money for product. While reciprocity is an important element of relationships, story adds depth and context and emotion to the transaction. Your customer’s story will spark a connection, prompt a conversation, generate knowledge and understanding, and you’ll begin to care. You’ll begin to want to help her, in any way possible, whether it be with your offering or not, rather than just sell to her.
This goes beyond creating a profile or persona of your ideal customer, though that is a good start. I’m talking about particular individuals who are your actual customers. That’s personalization, that’s customization. Talk to them. Ask questions. Keep track. (Having a lot of customers is no excuse; your employees can help you out. If Zappos can do it, so can you.)
Stories add concreteness to communication, with concreteness being one of the crucial elements of what makes messages stick. All too often, we use our industry’s lingo and jargon, which removes us from what’s really going on. Take any of the first three sentences of this post and then the bolded one. Which one is more concrete? Which one actually tells you something applicable?
An example from my consulting work: Project Access NOW coordinates a network of volunteer physicians in the Portland metro area who provide charity care to eligible low-income uninsured. I thought I understood what the nonprofit does and the benefits it delivers. Then I interviewed a few actual beneficiaries of the organization’s services and realized what I’d known was the tip of the iceberg. Only as former patients shared personal stories of their journeys from illness to health (and some to survival as human beings) and expressed tremendous gratitude – some on the verge of tears – for the organization’s help, did I begin to understand.
The storytelling and story-learning advice goes the other way, too. Turn your marketing into a storytelling vehicle. Share your story with your customer and become human, not just a faceless business. People want to buy from Bob or Janette, not a legal entity.
Social media makes story-sharing possible. In fact, with social media there’s no excuse for not learning your customer’s story and for sharing yours. Which, of course, is a whole another story.
Keep in mind that relationship cultivation and community building are processes, not ends in themselves. Learning your customer’s story, recognize that the present moment is not the end of it. As your customer’s story continues, take the opportunity to be a part of your customer’s story.
What’s your story?
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Thanks for the link love. When my mom said she received a get well card from Zappos, I just had to write about it. Adding that personal touch can make one-time shoppers into life-long customers.