Digital Challenge
I recorded a podcast last week with James Gill from Ecosend (great chap, fantastic company), and reflected that I am having far more conversations with people about them looking for purpose in their work.
Perhaps it is our outward communication or the difficulty people are having cutting through the noise but even fairly transactional organisations are looking for purpose to help them get up in the morning.
This is surely an inevitable step from the relentless capitalist approach of growth for growth’s sake, as consumers become more savvy they want to know their tuppence-worth is going to an organisation that puts something back, an organisation without a board of fatcats, an organisation of purpose and impact.
And lots of small businesses are now aspiring to that, instead of waiting for large governments & corporations to shift, more small businesses take up the mantle, and the BCorp movement is becoming known to more and more everyday people.
Customer behaviours dictate change.
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, the client is always right, because we cease to exist without them. Why then, do we build barriers instead of bridges? Nowadays I spend much of my time grabbing teams by the hand, taking them 10 paces outside their business and staring back in with their newly affixed customer goggles on.
I think perhaps it’s because in our roles it’s so easy to go about what we do from the perspective of our own goals, rarely are these meeting the needs of the customers’ tasks.
A common goal is to increase sales, and the organisation may increase touchpoints with existing customers as a tactic. If so you may decide to start posting more on social media or send a monthly newsletter.
But what will you write? Well, how much do you actually know about your audience or customers? Are they connected to you just because they are customers? Did they buy into your brand on values or price?
Not sure? There’s an easy way to find out, ask them.
Market research can be expensive, customer research on the other hand may cost little more than just your time, and it may reward you even more than the valuable information you will gain, because we actually feel more connected to brands that care to ask our opinions and shape their products and services around us.
Anyway, in the absence of all this, you will most likely be keen to tell customers about your latest products/services.
Your customer however may be keen to hear a story about how that service positively impacted the last customer, we like stories not sales pitches. This is the subtle shift between offering a product or case study as your content.
And let’s come back to that phrase “customer tasks” for a moment, perhaps consider spending a few moments with these questions…
What task do we help the customer complete?
How do we positively impact the customers mood?
How do we impact the customers’ perception by others?
You may find some gems within the answers.
You may unpick ideas for content that will help the customer but have little relevance or no benefit to your brand, that’s okay, if you want your customers to look forward to hearing from you then give them a kindness.
You have quite likely defined a set of core values for your brand, have you cross-referenced them against what your customers would say they are?
We also bring a personality to our relationships, yes, our professional ones too. You may be serious/playful, classic/innovative or calming/energetic – but you can’t be all of these things.
Your customers will find interacting with your organisation far more consistent if your tone is defined and kept to. Again, a sliding scale of personality dimensions makes for a fun exercise with your internal and external stakeholders.
We’ve asked our audience. They are time-poor, keen to explore how they can be more sustainable and have to keep up to speed with content creation, marketing trends and quickly changing technologies.
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