You've worked hard. You've put in the hours, the sweat and the blood. You crossed the 80% mark with relentless effort and you shipped like an artist. You even went and hired the Marketing Weasels who tried to manipulate your customers. But your sales are barely trickling in.
You're starting to learn the hard hitting reality of life - No-one cares about you or your product.
Wondering why?
Ash Ambirge explains this very articulately in her rather interesting blog with an equally interesting name :
When you’re selling yourself, it’s easy to think that your name is what matters to the customer. You tell prospects all the things that YOU’VE done and all the things that YOU think and all the things that YOU suggest and all the reasons why YOU are the best.
But guess what? Nobody gives a shit about you. What they care about is themselves–because we’re human, and that’s what humans do. And therefore, the most important thing to them is THEIR OWN NAME. How is your product, your service, your widget…going to help them make their name?
Whatever story you tell, it should never be yours – it should be theirs.
She goes on to explain this using a Nike Advertisement and why Nike makes an Ad that looks like:
And not like:
In the end Ash leaves you with an action item:
Your homework: Look at whatever you’re selling. Print out your sales page, your description, your whatever you’ve got. Go through the print out with a big red pen, and circle every place that you use the words our, my, mine, us, we, me, I.
So go on, crawl your corporate website and see if you can replace words like our, my, mine, us, we, me and I with a 'you' or 'your' - or better still, weave a remarkable true story of how your product helps your users and how it changes, transforms or simplifies their lives.
The next time you copy write for a new product, take a note of how your brain tempts and tricks you into telling your own story instead of making it their story.
Give in to that temptation and you'll realize why even if you build it, they won't come.
Fight that temptation and they may still not come, but being able to tell 'their' story will actually help you build a better product, a better story, a better team and a better organization that truly cares about it's customers.
After all, they are your allies and if they win, you do too.
Comments are closed.