Tell Your Customer’s Story, Not Your Own

As I’ve said in a few other articles, most businesses in any given industry are the same.  My company can get you set up on AdWords just as well as another, equally experienced digital advertising studio.  So what makes a company different?

Quite simply, how it makes its customers feel.

So why, then, are so many businesses focused on telling potential clients what they can do?  Some go as far as to show potential clients what they’ve done right off the bat, but that’s not the type of messaging that works.  Potential customers don’t differentiate your service from other similar services because they don’t know you yet.  So instead of sending out the same messaging as everyone else, talk about how you make your customers feel.

It’s pretty simple.  For example, check out this fake email below:

• Acme has been around for two years and provides customers with social media, email and search marketing services.
  

versus

• Acme channels all of our energy into making business owners feel like they are more effectively advertising while simultaneously spending more of their own time on their business.  We’ve been successfully freeing up the lives of small business owners for over two years now.
  

It’s a slight difference, but in the first example you are telling them what you will do for them, while in the second you are telling them how you will make them feel because you’ve made other people feel the same way.

You are, in essence, telling your customer’s story instead of your own.  Your messaging should not be about your own business, but rather about your customer’s business and how it’s been positively changed by your actions.  The same can be said for apps and web services.  Differentiation is hard.  There are only so many ways to describe the same service or product.  But your customer’s reactions and interactions are unique.  Leverage that.