Blog
Unwrap Your Client Success Stories
Customer success stories should be in every company's marketing strategy. The usual format takes you through three phases: the situation, what the vendor did, and the outcome. It’s common to focus on the middle phase and blow your own horn talking about yourself and your work, but there’s a different way to tell your client stories that will enable sales and guide your prospect to a decision.
Storytelling Isn't Just For Telling Stories
Storytelling for business isn’t anything new. It’s been an on-again, off-again buzzword for a long time. At face value, the word “storytelling” seems a little fluffy and certainly, everything that is being called a story is not a story. The reality is that companies that have embraced a storytelling approach to communications are finding benefits in all areas of their business, not just marketing. They have found that storytelling isn’t just for telling stories.
This is What Happened When I Started with a Story
When I was in college, I worked for the New York Times. That’s how I started out a talk that I gave recently to the Women Executives in Business (WEB) organization in Mankato. Until I became a student of storytelling, I didn’t understand the value that my personal stories could have in the business world. But the success of this talk, measured in audience feedback, proved out the concept that good stories power up your communications. Here’s what happened.
Talking with Customers is Better Than a Survey
There is a not-so-sneaky way to get your clients to appreciate you and to extend their thanks for all you do for them. It has to do with your responsiveness, but it’s more than customer service and doing what you say you will do. When you nurture your relationship with your client so that it’s deeper than your last transaction, you can find ways to bring more value to them, and at the same time make client retention the top growth strategy for your own company. The best way to do this is to make person-to-person conversations an integral part of your ongoing communications.
Is Your Marketing Recipe Cooking Up the Right Results?
Have you ever made lasagna from scratch? It’s laborious but worth the effort. It’s what I make for my family when I want to love on them with food. Different people have different versions of the recipe, but the basic ingredients of pasta, tomato sauce, seasonings and cheeses mixed with egg remains the same. Once I had homemade lasagna that a friend made with boiled eggs in it. She had the right ingredients in her dish but she cooked them up in a way that changed the results.
How Talking About Yourself Backfires on Your Website Results
What if you were looking for a home builder and the websites that you landed on said this – “We have hammers. We have nails. We have lots of other building tools, too. We have people who know how to use these tools. Our people are really proud of what they can do with these tools. We are really excited to use these tools to build something for you. If you need
What Happens When Your Website is Nobody's Baby
Neglected websites. You know them when you see them, don’t you? They are visually unappealing. They don’t answer your questions. They don’t work well with your phone, or sometimes they just don’t work. There could be several reasons why a website falls into neglect. The company may have spent a lot of money creating the site – years ago -- and thinks that it should last a long, long time. There might not be anyone in-house who knows how to work with the site because special software or knowledge of coding is needed.