Last week was a really great week. As part of my one women mission to improve the business story telling abilities of Essex I met, and coffee’d with, lots of small business owners.
Unbeknownst to them (sorry!) I was conducting a little secret survey during these meet ups. I had set myself a goal of discovering the three biggest challenges they face. I had a feeling that attracting more customers would almost certainly be top for all…but I wanted to put some stats behind my theory.
Much caffine, and nattering, later I can confidently say that 9 out of 10 small business owners I surveyed consider attracting new customers to be their top biggest business challenge. With finding good staff, and their own work life balance coming in second and third place.
The point of all this is that I think there’s a mismatch between how businesses go about attracting more customers, and how customers best respond to being attracted.
Having recently read an excellent blog by Bernadetta Jiwa (author of The Difference Map) I felt inspired. She talked about the default method for creating brand awareness going something like this.
Old rules of brand awareness:
1. Make something for everyone.
2. Tell your story.
3. Attract customers.
4. Build brand awareness.
Then she showed how to flip that on its head, and how the brands that succeed today operate differently:
New rules of brand awareness:
1. Understand the customer’s story.
2. Make something they want.
3. Give them a story to tell.
4. Create brand affinity.
I’m totally in agreement with her that while we are busy employing tactics to get more people to notice us, we are overlooking the greatest opportunity we have to drive the sustainable growth and success of our businesses.
It’s time we started trying to create an affinity with our customers. After all affinity endures and it trumps fleeting awareness every time.
To chat about your business communications challenges drop me a line on jill@jillwillis.co.uk
