The observable problem about most marketing is that we have been making ourselves the subject of the story and not the customer. And so the message falls on deaf ears.
Most marketing messages make the brand the hero of the story and that’s where we get stuck. Our marketing message fails because the customer needs to be the hero of the story.
If you want to be the hero for your customers you have to be their guide, not hero.
In Star Wars lingo; your customer is Luke Skywalker and your brand is Yoda. Yoda is the most important person in Luke’s life because he shows him how to overcome obstacles and get what he wants.
You don’t want to be the hero of the story. The Hero is constantly getting his or her butt kicked. Be the guide instead.
Then create content and resources to help the hero (your customer) reach the destination they desire.
But Don’t Take My Word For it
If you need advice on your heart, you see a cardiologist. When you need help with your marketing message, you go to the New York Times bestselling author and former screenwriter, Donald Miller.
Miller teaches that the biggest mistake businesses make is when most marketers give the business the hero roles of the story, instead of the customer.
Brands should play the role of the guide their customer needs. In turn, consumers come to view the business as the hero for guiding them on their journey.
How Tell Your Brand Story Like an Expert?
A Harvard study found that people spend half of their thoughts just daydreaming (except during sex). People are stuck in the stories we believe.
Stories are how homo sapiens process information. We’re a story telling animal. That’s why marketers turn to stories for maximum impact.
Thus, the customer is the hero in their story and needs to be the hero in yours.
People want everything to be about them. Miller advises businesses to invite people to take a journey, rather than telling them ours.
WATCH THIS!
WARNING. This will change how you communicate to your customer forever (in a good way).
Capture What Your Audience Feels Like
When we frame our solutions into a story, it allows us to capture the experience our audience is feeling. People don’t buy products. They buy the products they understand.
In Lisa Cron’s book, Wired For Story, she says that story was more crucial to our evolution than the opposable thumb.
Opposable thumbs let us hang on; stories tell us what to hang on to.
Story is what enabled us to imagine what might happen in the future, and to prepare for it. It’s a feat no other species can lay claim to; opposable thumbs or not.
To form a bond with customers, knowing what’s important to them is key.
Next, is to identify where those customers can be reached. Where do they spend their time online?
Then it’s important to develop the story, the type of content that speaks to them.
When people ask, “What do you do?” They are really asking:
Does what you do matter to me?
If so, why?
What should I do about it?
A good guide understands their hero’s conflict and offers an alternative plan for dealing with it.
The only marketing strategy you need is to create a plan to help your customer overcome the obstacle in their way. Only then, they will connect with the story we’re telling them.
Only then, they will see visions of the brighter future we offer them.
If we can identify the internal frustration our audience feels, write it into words, and offer to resolve it, then something special happens, magic. We bond with our customers. They feel understood. They engage with the rest of our message in a more meaningful way.
But before we can identify what our audience is dealing with, we need to ask the following questions…
10 Questions to Help You Understand Your Customer Better
What tasks does your customer dread doing, as it relates to your industry?
What is your customer’s ultimate dream? What do they want to accomplish?
What confuses your customer, as it relates to your industry?
What keeps your customer up at night?
What makes your customer upset or angry?
How would your customers life look differently if they had more leisure time?
What regrets does your customer have as it relates to your industry?
What makes your customer feel embarrassed or self-conscious?
How does your customer want their friends to perceive them?
What makes your customer nervous as it relates to your industry?
Great Brands Sell Stories, Not Stuff
We don’t buy fortune cookies to eat them; we buy the stories inside them, even though the story is far more powerful than the cookie.
What message should we really tell our customers? It’s not like we’re reading them a book, but it’s how to craft a message the way humans think – in story form. When people realize they are at a point where they need help, they ask themselves the following questions.
What is the conflict I am confronting?
What different outcome do I really want?
Which guide can I turn to and trust to help me achieve my dreams?
Humans understand conflict. With the exception of lawyers, the majority of the human species hate it.
We want to avoid conflict and look for tools to solve conflict. Most businesses talk about what they sell, not which internal conflict people need resolved.
But as everything else in life, it’s a lot easier said than done…
“The absence of empathy is the completion of emotional detachment.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert (click to Tweet)Click here to get the book!
“Body Language Five Ways To Show Empathy In A Negotiation”
People don’t realize they’re always negotiating.
Don’t tell me you empathize with my position in this negotiation. You’ve not shown any empathy that I’ve discerned. What about the concession I gave you? Didn’t that display my understanding of your plight? No! You did that for your benefit. The compromise you made was not what I was seeking in this negotiation.
That was the exchange that occurred between two people during a negotiation. Does it sound like something you may have encountered in any of your negotiations?
Empathy is a potent tool in a negotiation. Its display, or its withholding, impacts the mind of a negotiator and the overall flow of the negotiation process. Empathy is something that negotiators seek in a negotiation, but few consider its impact on the talks.
The following insights outline how you can display empathy through your body language during a negotiation. It’s also insightful on how you can express empathy in other aspects of your life.
How to develop your content strategy like a media company?
Develop a Media Mindset
In order to create a content strategy like a major media publisher, you first have to start thinking like one.
If you’re in the financial services industry for example, think about your website and content strategy as if you were running Forbes Money.
Starting today, and continuing into the future, your business requires a customer-focused content marketing plan.
Start thinking like a media publisher, by answering these questions for your business:
Who are your customers?
What is their conflict they need resolved?
How will you resolve it?
What does your customer really want to learn, purchase, use?
Which platforms are your customers using?
How will you attract them to consume your content?
Content as the Sales Funnel…
Business today are attracting new leads and customers by designing content that solves a need or interest for the prospect they want to attract.
If people are searching for common questions as they relate to your industry, those are good indicators they are potentially interested in your services. Creating content can bring people into the top of your marketing funnel.
To generate awareness at the top of the funnel, highlight success stories focusing on the outcomes from people and companies who have achieved the ultimate desire your customer wants and that you can help them solve.
Once they see “proof,” the relationship starts to build because you have created a clear path of how to reach the same results for the outcome they really care about.
Increase Traffic to Your Sales Funnel
Businesses that invest in writing blogs for their customer receive 3x the amount of leads than those who don’t.
According toBrightEdge, more than 75% of B2B traffic is coming from organic and paid search alone.
Most people are searching for information to learn more about a subject; very few are actively seeking to take action, just yet.
Create content that answers questions and teaches consumers what to look out for. By being the most helpful source of information, who do you think they will want to work with when they are ready to buy?
That’s how companies are using content to add value to prospects.
The “Content Bridge” Strategy
Move your customers up the value ladder with informative content using the “content bridge strategy” to guide your customers to their ultimate goals with content designed to reach your desired success.
Think about your content strategy as the bridge to get your customer to the destination they want for themselves. What tips and insights can you create to help them achieve their results faster?
During the manufacturing economy, the “value chain” was defined as the full range of activities needed to create a product or service.
For companies that produce physical goods, value chain were all of the necessary physical steps required to develop a product from initial conception, through the procurement of raw materials, and then, manufacturing the final product.
But today, in the services economy, the value chain on the internet is literally content. Here’s why…
The Digital Economy Runs on Content
Does the world need more content? Absolutely not but it’s the only currency to doing business online.
Information-based service businesses comprise over 80% of the private sector. The service business used to be called the “Knowledge Industry” because buyers in the knowledge industry want solutions.
Therefore, the value chain for the service industry is sharing solutions, tips, and informational content.
This chain leads prospects into the traditional sales funnel by attracting an audience based on interest and turns them into advocates.
The purpose of analyzing a company’s value chain, is to increase productivity efficiency, in order for a company to deliver maximum value for the least possible cost.
Small and medium-sized service businesses are taking massive advantages of content marketing by providing content that drives value to their target audience and minimizes the costs associated with traditional advertising and marketing methods in the process.
But What’s the Catch?
In one word, time.
On average it takes over 6-9 months to begin to see organic results with your content strategy.
But the good news is that if you can persist and outlast others in your space. You win long term.
The other good news? Aside from the fact that it’s free, your competitors probably wont put in the extra effort.
For example, there are over 900k podcasts that have started since podcasting became “a thing” in the early 2000s. Many of which are business podcasts (no one knows that exact number). But the funny thing is, only 34% of podcasts have more than 10 episodes.
Most people start a content strategy and then give up.
But for those who have the stamina and willpower, there has never been an easier time to produce content that drives you to become the most helpful, and, in turn, most valuable authority in your industry.
What is the ROI?
But how does this benefit my bottom line?
The ROI of contributing content in your field produces the following benefits:
Establishes domain authority on your subject matter
Builds brand awareness
Engages your target audience
Generates leads and customers
If you want to be considered an authority in your business and increase leads and sales, then producing content is necessary.
This is one of those cliche instances where it helps to ask the same question in reverse, what will it cost you not to participate overtime?
Content Marketing Example: Vayner Media
Vayner Media
If you don’t know him, Gary Vaynerchuk, he is the founder & CEO of VaynerMedia.
He started his organization by focusing on creating valuable content in order to get the attention of an audience to sell to.
He went from solopreneur as a one-man operation to a team of now over 1o00 employees and doing over $135M in annual revenue through his digital marketing agency.
Which needless to say is pretty impressive…
Even more so knowing they did it predominantly off of the success of Gary’s personal content that he creates.
Gary challenged his industry by confronting the biggest elephant in the room in the advertising industry.
Confronting the Status Quo
Gary confronted the status quo by helping corporate America overcome a serious marketing problem.
Brands are still spending $70.3 billion dollars a year on traditional TV ads, and no one is watching them!
Nobody cares about traditional TV programming anymore and if they do, they’re more likely to go to the bathroom during an ad than pay attention to one.
His agency produces a daily YouTube show (for free) that now has 2.5M subscribers. Their content strategy isn’t complicated either. His team answers any and all questions about digital marketing, how to grow a business, and even life and career advice.
By teaching other people how to overcome their digital marketing, and life problems, “Gary Vee” (as his fans call him) instantly became the most valuable person in this industry.
Any other agency would charge you for the right to meet with them or give you their advice. VaynerMedia gave it away for free and made all of their competitors instantly less valuable.
In 2018 alone, VaynerMedia took in $131 million dollars in revenue.
And what’s even more impressive? That’s not the first time he did it…
Wine Library TV
Before launching VaynerMedia, Gary worked at a liquor business his parents started when they arrived in America from Russia.
When YouTube launched in 2005, Gary instantly saw a potential to grow a new base of customers online. He started distributing a weekly video series called Wine Library TV.
He provided weekly video reviews of wines you could order directly from the website.
When recording his very first episode, his plan was to pitch everyone why they should buy whatever brand he was going to review in the video. When the camera turned on something changed Gary’s mind.
Instead, he offered the rawest review possible of the brands he was selling, and even referring to some brands tasted like tires, and dogshit.
Gary Isn’t Afraid to Fight Back
Naturally, his comments offended some of the sellers in his space, but to the customers and wine enthusiasts, it was gold.
He said what they were all thinking. His real perspective was refreshing, and people loved it.
The only other platform reviewing wines at the time was the Wine Spectator, which were infomercials on why you should buy everything they sold. Gary took the opposite approach.
In just five years, Gary grew their family business from $3M to $60M in revenue.
In so doing, he transitioned the company to one of the first e-commerce platforms for alcohol in the country resulting in unusual and explosive top-line growth.
Gary strategically built his content library based on questions and suggestions that he received from viewers in the comment boxes.
Wine and Cereal Anyone?
At some point, a fan mentioned it would be fun to watch a wine pairing against non-traditional foods.
So, Gary produced an entire 20-minute episode on which wine pairs best with cereal. Yes, that’s right he paired the best wine for Lucky Charms, Cap N Crunch, and Cinnamon Toast Crunch. That video alone received 25 thousand views.
“Whether you like it or not, every person is now a media company because the tools are easy, free, and everywhere. More importantly, producing content is now the BASELINE for all brands and companies, and if you’re not producing content, you basically don’t exist.”
– Gary Vaynerchuk
Do People Actually Want Your Content Though?
After attending Vidfest, a conference designed to help people start professional YouTube channels, one of the biggest questions posed to one of the leading speakers was:
“How do I know if people will be interested in my content?”
The response from the “experts” was stunning: People are watching videos on literally any subject imaginable.
For example, you can go on YouTube right now and find videos about how to pack a school lunch.
That’s right, a lunchbox. This one video on packing a school lunch has 14 million views!
Here’s What We Found:
We found hundreds of videos detailing exactly how to pack a school lunch…
The top 5 suggested videos had well over twenty-four million combined views. As it turns out people are seeking answers to all of life’s questions, including how to pack a lunch. Chances are someone, right now is typing a question for which you know the answer.
It’s certain, if you find something interesting, there are millions more who will likely share that opinion, too! It’s never been easier to find people who share the same interests.
But you can only get “discovered” if you’re willing to put in the effort to building your content marketing strategy and sharing your content for the people you’re making it for.
For more content tips, check out the following articles:
Meet the brands growing insanely fast using this marketing tactic…
The Best Advice I Got on Building a Brand
I met Russell Brunson in Las Vegas in 2008 at a small business event where he was talking about how digital marketing works online.
While I could tell that he knew what he was talking about, what I didn’t know at the time, was that he was about to build a $360 million company (called ClickFunnels), deploying the lessons he was sharing at the event I was attending.
The Sass Company That Created a Movement
One of the many things that made ClickFunnels successful is that rather than promoting their software subscription, they intentionally created a movement for their customers to follow instead.
ClickFunnels is a software that enables entrepreneurs to sell and promote products in an easy to manage platform anyone can use without needing a developer.
Basically, it’s just a landing page builder. But what’s weird is that over a million people follow them online, wear their T-Shirts, and are in love with the company.
Because instead of promoting their company they invite people to join their movement teaching people how to grow their business and change their lives instead.
Inside Expert Secrets
Russell detailed the entire process in his book for anyone interested in copying the model.
If you haven’t read his book, Expert Secrets by Russell Brunson, then you need to stop what you’re doing and order it now.
It’s one of the most informative books on marketing I’ve ever read.
The UnderGround Marketing Playbook
Expert Secrets is the underground playbook for creating a mass movement of people who will pay for your advice.
Brunson outlines a comprehensive guide on how to become the expert in your niche and build a tribe of loyal followers who resonate with your message and ultimately buy your products.
Russell believes that you can make money when you challenge yourself to help others in the biggest way possible, and why it’s beneficial to create future opportunities for people to join in on (ie, a mass movement).
You’ll get plenty of examples and stories illustrating how he created his own loyal following that turned ClickFunnels into a $360 million business.
One of the biggest takeaways of the book is knowing what and how to communicate your message in a way people want to take part in your success.
The most successful brands communicate their mission as mass movements of change or something you can join and be apart of.
This is a Game Changer if You’re Building a Brand
To start building a mass movement, begin by thinking about how you can help the most people overcome the challenges of selling a product versus selling a service.
It’s a game changer for thinking about how we communicate our marketing message.
Take it from the Steve Jobs who created a movement with Apple when he started a computer company in the 90s:
“To me, marketing is about values.
This is an extremely complicated world; this is a very noisy world; and we’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us or about our company,
so you have to be really clear on what you want others to know about you and your company.”
Focus on What You Believe in
Talking about features and costs or how your company beats the competition is not the right approach.
The dairy industry tried for 20 years to convince you that milk was good for you.
Sales continuously declined for 20 years.
Then, they launched the “Got Milk” campaign, which didn’t even mention the product.
In fact, it actually focused on the absence of the product.
Apple is Committed to Passion
“To me, the best brand that tells a story is Nike.
Nike sells a commodity. They sell shoes. Or so you would think.
But in their ads, they never talk about their shoes, nor the soles, nor why they’re better than Reebok.
What does Nike do in their advertising? They honor great athletes. That’s who they are and what they care about.
At Apple, people want to know what we stand for. Apple’s core value is that we believe people with passion can change the world forever.”
– Steve Jobs
Elevate Your Customer
Remember when RedBull spent $65 million to produce one video so we could watch someone skydive 24 miles from outer space?
Felix Baumgartner became the first human being to break the sound barrier when the energy drink company sponsored the stunt.
But why would they do that?
They don’t sell their product. They sell stories of what’s possible.
Red Bull doesn’t rely on advertising. They have been creating a movement to inspire people.
They promote stories of people breaking the limits of what’s possible. It’s not a gimmick.
They don’t spend time explaining the benefits of their product and why you should buy from them.
They tell stories of what’s possible. They are leading a movement that people want to follow.
What Does Your Brand Actually Stand For?
RedBull doesn’t position themselves as a beverage company.
They are a peak performance movement that happens to sell five billion cans of their product to customers every year. They don’t create content for “why” to buy from them.
They sell passion, they sell energy, and they promote content from peak performing athletes.
So, when you’re at a store ready to buy an energy drink, you “choose the one that gives you wings!”
Attract Customers Like RedBull
The founder of RedBull has a net worth of $19.5 billion and is ranked #53 on the Forbes list of richest people.
He created a movement for consumers to follow.
He became the richest man in Austria and is easily the most famous individual to come out of his country since Arnold Schwarzenegger became Mr. Olympia.
How Did He Do It?
He knew that to attract the most customers, he would have to think unlike anyone in the beverage industry.
He focused on building a movement that would rally people together with a common purpose for a common result.
RedBull no longer competes on speed, quality, and price.
Their community or “tribe” is comprised of the most driven people on planet earth.
The product is just caffeinated water, but what they sell and promote is actually peak performance.
The more we make the customer the hero of our brands, the more likely they are to join our following and the more likely they will want to buy from us.
Make Passion Your Product (Even If You Sell Insurance)
Okay but would a more relatable business do this?
How would an insurance company create a mass movement?
Patrick Bet-David, an Iranian born entrepreneur and founder of PHP Agency turned the financial world upside down when he set out on a mission to save the insurance industry from their own up-tight self-destruction.
How does one make an insurance company “cool” to work with?
By creating a movement of change instead.
Instead of fitting into an industry that lacks consumer excitement, Bet-David redefined the customers’ expectations about his insurance company.
Meet The People Helping People (PHP Agency
He founded PHP in 2009 at the height of the recession.
In addition to launching PHP, he also launched one of the most viewed shows on YouTube with over 2,000,000 subscribers, called Valuetainment.
Their show has around 3 million subs and they are putting out high volumes of insanely valuable content to help other business owners. One of their original videos went viral with over 23 million views.
WATCH THIS:
The popular YouTube show, has a cult-like following, by helping other entrepreneurs grow their business.
By sharing his passion for building businesses, he was able to create a community of like-minded business builders.
Passionate entrepreneurship is his mantra for their show, company, and community. He didn’t simply launch a YouTube show.
He created a movement for people to follow and redefined how business leaders should communicate.
Bet-David doesn’t sell insurance through his content. He celebrates, encourages, teaches, and inspires other people to grow their businesses.
His team intensely shares valuable, in depth insights, and encouragement to continuously grow. They’re an example that nothing is impossible.
Invest In Your Audience
His company invests time to inform and inspire other people. This is why his followers are loyal and love Valuetainment.
He turned what he learned into four bestselling books and gained a ridiculously large digital audience.
Now, Valuetainment is a leading voice of business information online. They interview everyone including celebrities, pro-athletes, Mafia bosses, and the most interesting people who have endless passion to achieve the life of their dreams.
Patrick became a multi-published author, global speaker and internet celebrity by focusing on how to deliver content to other people who share a similar passion for running and growing businesses.
Thus, turning his passion into a movement worth following.
Even Hotel Brands Are Doing This
Marriott is known for serving those who love adventure.
After launching a successful blog from their chairman, Marriott International learned the power of pivoting their marketing strategy to approach people based on their passion for travel and love for adventure.
Upon recognizing its success, Marriott shifted to become a full media publisher and invested in a team of storytellers to produce and launch their own TV show, “ The Navigator Live,” a popular short film titled, “Two Bellmen,” and then ultimately, the “Marriott Traveler.”
In turn, Marriott International became a mass media site that shares and promotes content for millions of travelers with a shared interest in culture and adventure.
“In 2018 alone, Marriott Traveler attracted 3 million unique visitors, a 78% increase from the previous year. Visits via Traveler increased visits to individual hotel landing pages by 80%, and revenue from hotel bookings skyrocketed to 200% compared to the previous year. These results certainly make a solid case for content marketing.”
– Inc. Magazine
Lead Your Movement to a Better Opportunity
As Russell Brunson proudly stated in Expert Secrets, everything is based on beliefs.
It’s easier to influence people to embrace the opportunities available to them when your beliefs are clear, compelling, and honest.
The best way to build a mass movement is our ability to promote what we believe.
Also, every movement needs a leader, which Brunson calls “The Attractive Character.”
Becoming the Attractive Character
And if you’re the CEO, it’s almost certainly going to have to be you!
Thinking through how you, the CEO, positions yourself as the “attractive character” may sound vain, but it’s not.
The attractive character of your company is not about looking cool and popular. Its purpose is to provide the platform to explain your story in a “why” (or with reasoning) that communicates directly to your audience to prove that you understand what they care about in their interests.
Honest and authentic connections are key to the success of these types of initiatives. Consumers want to know you are a real human being and that you struggle through the same issues.
Share Your Experiences
Sharing both positive and negative experiences is a good approach to connect closely with your ideal customer base. Be open and share topics similar to these:
Articulate the frustration you experience
Share the approach and outcome about the wall you ran into when you confronted your industry to address the “elephant in the room”
Goals
Achievements
Ultimately, by opening the curtain to the inside of your company, you will convey truth.
With that truth, you will attract empathy, solidarity, and engagement.
Answer The Following Questions to Start Your Mass Movement
How are you creating a new opportunity for them by providing them with the services, tools, resources, and information to help them achieve their goals?
Which type of challenges did you face that allows you to help them prevent taking the same path?
How can you convey that you are not like everyone who is trying to pitch them some service; that you are one of them
The Conclusion
The next time someone asks you what you do for a living, explain the outcomes you provide rather than what you sell.
As consumers, we need to really care about the ultimate outcome provided, not the process it takes to get there.
The attractive character is to explain the desired outcome people really want through the content they produce to help their customer overcome the conflict in their way.
Our job if we are to build a brand, is to take our customers on a journey.
“Self-publishing grew at a rate of more than 28% in 2017 and is still climbing.
In 2018 alone, book titles grew from 786,935 to 1,009,188, surpassing the million mark for the first time in human history!”
Then why isn’t anyone celebrating?
It’s never been easier and more affordable to publish a book to share our knowledge with the world.
Mass printers can get book costs down to $1-$3 per book.
On-demand printers that most independent authors use can get costs around $6-$7 per book before adding the author markup.
This Is a Good Thing Right?
We have more legit subject experts than any time in human history.
This is the single greatest achievement in book publishing since Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1454, over 500 years ago!
The reason no one wants to talk about this is that there’s a dirty little secret in book publishing…
A majority of books don’t actually make any money.
Seriously, it’s true.
With the introduction of e-commerce, authors can no longer rely on traditional retail, especially with the demise of brick-and-mortar bookstores.
Publishers Weekly is an American trade magazine which has been providing industry insights to publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents since 1872.
The industry has been keeping the sales numbers close to their chest for awhile now…
Book Sales By The Numbers:
Recent reports indicate that the average independent or self-published author will sell less than 250 books.
The average published author will sell less than 2,000 books, and only 62 out of 1,000 book titles will sell over 5,000 copies in its lifetime.
And someone you’ve heard of took notice a few years back.
The Birth of Amazon
Very few people would have guessed the quiet introvert who worked at the local McDonalds in high school would one day become the world’s most successful and wealthiest man to walk the planet.
The $126 billion dollar man by the name of Jeff Bezos started Amazon in 1996 with the wild idea to sell books online.
Bezos started Amazon with the brand promise as “the world’s largest bookstore.”
In the Beginning it Was Just An Idea
Amazon started in 1994, when at the age of 30, Jeff quit a high paying job at a quantitative hedge fund company on Wall Street to pursue a life-long love of computers.
No one knew he would become one of the early pioneers of the internet.
At that time, Bezos and a handful of others were watching internet usage skyrocket at a rate of 2300%. He had to get involved.
Bezos relocated to Seattle with nothing other than an interest to start an online business.
In June of that same year, Jeff came up with arguably the lamest namefor a business in the history of the human race, “Cadabra Inc.”
…Yes, like “Abracadabra.”
He then pivoted to “relentless” for about a day, until friends convinced him otherwise.
He ultimately landed on the name “Amazon” reportedly for two reasons:
To suggest the immense scale he was hoping to eventually accomplish; “Earth’s Largest Bookstore” (which is what Amazon was in the very beginning)
Back then, website listings were often alphabetical, so he wanted something that started with the letter “a,” which was a straight-up marketing strategy from the Yellow Pages era.
The Vision Grew and So Did Bezos’s Ambition
The vision for the company was to be the “largest bookstore in the world.”
Building an online bookstore wasn’t exactly a grand master chess decision. However, it made sense at the time because there were three million active book titles in circulation.
These numbers have only increased since.
Major bookstores could only hold a max of 150,000 titles in retail locations.
While that’s an impressively large volume to logistically support at retail level, there was still no way for most bookstores to profitably sell more books that were growing ever more niche in nature.
Thus, traditional bookstores couldn’t keep up with the large and growing circulation.
In addition, books were a relatively low price-point, the perfect combination for an e-commerce play. Therefore, the founding idea was a universal selection of books.
A literal “online library.” But the idea needed funding.
The Idea Needed Seed Funding
With the concept in place, Bezos raised seed capital to turn his idea into a working model.
Like everyone raising money does at first, he turned to friends and family to borrow money. The initial $250,000 investment from his parents to start Amazon.
When explaining the concept of his internet store to his father his dad asked Jeff, “What actually is the “internet?”
…Clearly, they were not betting on an ROI from the internet. They were betting on their son, Jeff, a powerful vote of confidence, in their willingness to invest in his judgment and ability to make something out of nothing.
Jeff raised another $1M from 20 additional initial investors who each contributed $50K for shared equity of 20% in the business.
Bezos Launched Amazon From His Garage
Well technically the garage part is in mostly a myth. But close enough, he launched from his new home in Bellevue, Washington.
In 1996, Amazon sold their first book and quite possibly the most boring name and niche book of all time.
Two months later, Jeff was selling books to all 50 states in the US and 45 countries worldwide with weekly sales up to $20,000.
Amazon Expanded Out of Book Sales
By October, that same year, he announced his decision to take the company public. Amazon swelled to 11 employees, and the company started expanding outside of book sales into music and videos.
Wondering what to sell next, the small team emailed 1,000 randomly selected customers for what they would like to see Amazon sell outside of books.
The results were interesting and surprised everyone working for the e-commerce startup.
What the customers wanted was the most randomness of anything happened to need or desire in that very moment including obscure things like windshield wiper blades.
That was the feedback the team needed. This was no longer a book play. This consumer feedback changed the world as we know it.
At that point, Bezos realized the true potential for Amazon.
From Selling Books to Selling…Anything They Wanted
They were going to fulfill and deliver every purchase of any product their customers wanted right to their front door, including front doors from door manufacturers.
The doors literally flooded opened with orders of the most common and most obtuse products. Amazon was in a dead sprint to connect their customers with EVERYTHING their shopping cart hearts desired.
When Amazon’s Success Threatened the Status Quo
The following year, in May of 1997, the company issued their first stock option valued at $18 per share. Today, the stock price is over $2,000 per share.
They were well on their way to becoming a major player.
However, business is business, and the excitement was met with resistance from the industry when Barnes & Noble sued the new company over their slogan claiming to be the “largest bookstore on the planet” when they didn’t in fact have a physical store.
Their case was that Amazon was not a bookstore rather they were a “book broker.”
While they were technically correct, Amazon is a broker, and Amazon eventually settled the claim out of court.
What the retailer, and others to this day, would soon come to learn, is that to us, the consumers, brick and mortar bookstores were also “just brokers.”
We’re All “Just Brokers” Now
At it turns out, people prefer to order products from the comfort of their own homes rather than venture out to do all the tedious brokering themselves for products in massive retail locations.
To think we should somehow value going into a retail store over having whatever we want delivered to our front door for FREE SHIPPING, is absolutely ridiculous.
Convenient e-commerce shopping and delivery has been the driving force behind why more than 9,300 retail stores closed their doors in 2019 and more since, as the retail apocalypse peaked.
BARNES & NOBLE RETAIL CASE STUDY
In 1996, Amazon became a major threat to bookstores with $16 Million in sales.
Barnes and Noble took in $2 Billion that same year.
Today, Amazon controls half of the entire print book marketplace, while B&N has only one-fifth remaining. Amazon’s sales jumped to 84% for e-book sales, while B&N held at 2%. Amazon’s e-commerce revenue is around $1 Trillion in market cap while B&N has dropped to $475 Million, a .05% of Amazon’s revenue.
Today, people claim Amazon is the biggest threat to retailers
But in my humble opinion, retail disruption wasn’t Amazon’s fault. Amazon was simply the first company to offer the first online retail experience; and consumers have accepted the alternate shopping experience and prefer the convenience of it!
Amazon capitalized on the way people prefer to shop today.
The customer is not always right, but they have options for how they prefer to consume products now.
By 2010, Kindle sales exceeded print sales for the first time in the history of the company.
Amazon didn’t kill the book publishing industry!
The consumer did when we made a choice to add a premium on preferred digital consumption.
At the start, Amazon employed a handful of workers.
Growth accelerated at lightspeed with 30,000 employees in 2010, exceeding 750,000 employees today; not too shabby considering when he started, Bezos hoped that at one point, Amazon would be large enough to purchase a forklift for the warehouse.
In 2013, Amazon’s site went down for 45 minutes, and the company lost out on $5.7 million in revenue!
Since 2014, Cyber Monday has been the “online Black Friday” post-Thanksgiving holiday online shopping day. History was made, again. Analytics showed Amazon sold over 300 products per second on the first Cyber Monday.
Bezos can now afford to buy 105 million forklifts. Just saying…
Bezos made a fortune by building the most efficient platform of the era by focusing on one core principle…
“Give the customer what they want. The way they want it.”
This is the advice marketers should wisely and carefully consider.
People don’t buy most books because most people don’t want to consume them in the manner they are offered.
In today’s media world, when the consumer can consume limitless amounts of content on their own terms and devices, they have many other avenues for consuming the information they want.
Often times on platforms that make it easier to consume the information like YouTube and Podcasts.
When was the last time you went online to look for a premium content subscription to pay for?
Not for at least 10 years for most people!
In order to get your business, publishers first have to create content you actual want before they can sell you anything whether via ads or god forbid an actual premium subscription.
For a long time this has been a problem plaguing publishers of all shapes and sizes.
Getting anyones attention these days is no joke.
The Content Dilemma
When everything consumers want or desire is now only a “google search” away, the battle for their attention has now become the war.
But up until recently the pawns of the war have been traditional media publishers. But that has changed forever.
For example, YouTube is now the second largest search engine with how-to videos.
Podcasts are now exploding in growth with over 900,000 podcasts delivering amazing insights on any topic.
Anyone with a blog is now a “media site.”
In other words, anyone can create and compete in the media game. And so everyone is.
If you have anything to sell. You’re now part of the content wars. Here’s why…
The Death of Traditional Media
When digital content took over, consumers were no longer willing to pay a premium for content the way they did in the past…Why should they it’s free?
For the first time in history, publishers had to ask themselves; what the hell do we actually sell?
Content? That’s what they thought they sold. But the digital age proved that idea wrong.
Publishers of all types, from news to music, are less than pleased that consumers won’t pay a premium price for content anymore.
What they’re learning to understand now is that they never sold content. They just sold access to content, and the price consumers paid was dependent on the cost of the format.
The music sector sold records, then tapes, then CDs. Now, they sell the devices to streaming services.
Print publishers sell paper via magazines and books, the content of which, only determines how much paper they can sell off each author or issue.
Publishers simply sell paper in binding form.
Economically, the print media are in the business of marking up paper. Now, traditional publishers are realizing that they never really sold content. They just assumed that’s what the consumer was paying for.
Traditional publishers had a monopoly and ability to the access the information we wanted.
But now that access can be created by anyone who produces content. Traditional media is dead.
Music Platforms Don’t Actually Sell Music…
Building an audience in the digital age is about capturing the access point to where consumers consume content. That’s why traditional media can’t keep up.
It can’t move where consumers prefer to consume their information. Take music for example.
Napster (the original digital stream source for music), crashed the music party in 1999 and started giving music away for free.
They attracted the masses onto one platform (illegally) to consumer music the way they wanted it (free).
Then advertisers took note and copied the model, taking over the music industry by controlling the distribution (legally through royalties (that they were willing to pay for on behalf of the consumer).
Now the industry doesn’t care about making money selling music anymore. They pay to give it away instead.
Today, iTunes is the new version of the brick-and-mortar record stores of the past.
Apple promotes extremely discounted music to sell Apple’s lucrative products, such as phones, tablets, earbuds. Music is just he bait.
Think about it. How is it that music streaming services like Spotify and Pandora, whose sole business model is to make money from the streaming of music, DON’T ACTUALLY MAKE ANY MONEY selling music?
80% of Pandora’s net revenue comes from the ads playing to people listening to free music.
Only 20% comes from users who pay for ad-free listening.
In turn, Pandora pays musicians ridiculously low royalties established in 2016 at $0.00176. For each single song played by a single artist for one million times, the artists grosses $1,760.00. This fee is treated, essentially, as Pandora’s marketing expense.
They Sell Ads. Content Is The Bait
The kicker? THEY DON’T EVEN SELL CONTENT! They provide access to it. They pay to give away content for free, in order to sell advertising.
Pandora hasn’t turned a profit since it started in 2000.
After 13 years and 96 million subscribers, Spotify finally reported a profit for the first time in 2019 of $107M. They plan to spend all of it and another $500M to acquire podcast networks to build the same model.
They’re not in the business providing music to customers as that would require consumers to actually pay them for that service.
They are advertising companies, which we allow to advertise to us, in exchange for listening to the music they purchase, just like advertising during television programming.
By now you’re wondering, what the hell’s your point?
The Rise of Content Marketing
In 1995, internet pioneer, Esther Dyson asked an important question about the burgeoning web.
“What new kinds of content-based value can be created on the internet?”
– Esther Dyson
More than 30 years ago, Dyson observed that as the internet would become more populated with various content, and that the content owner’s intellectual property would depreciate in value.
“The likely best defense for content providers,” she argued, “is to distribute intellectual property free in order to sell services and build relationships.”
What worked in the past, won’t keep working in the future.
In a world with unlimited competition for attention, we must find a way to deliver value to our customers before they ever pitch to sell because if we don’t, someone else will.
The modern era of marketing has been an entire shift from advertising benefits, to teaching what we know to help the most people.
Businesses today are treating their content as the carrot to capture people who may be interested in learning about their field and who may likely become customers.
The Rise of Value-Rich Content
Subject matter experts today are standing out by providing the most useful, easy to find content to create a community around the passion they share for their subject matter.
It was simply adopted by the marketing industry wishing to put a stake in the ground.
In 2007, the industry wanted to highlight the shift away from annoying traditional interruption advertising to a more mature discipline of differentiated value-oriented content creation that would help people not just sell people.
78% of CMOs believe custom content creation is the future of marketing in order to sell our products and services in today’s cutthroat digital battlefield.
It’s not surprising, given how it influences 61% of consumer’s buying behavior with a 6x higher conversion rate compared to marketing that does not include a digital content strategy.
Businesses today that produce the most relatable content WIN.
With Today’s High-Volume of Experts, You Can’t Move Up If You Don’t Stand Out in YOUR Field!
The key to getting ahead was then linked to your ability to establish a personal equivalent of the Nike swoosh.
The conclusion: “It’s that simple, that hard, and that inescapable.”
Fast forward almost 25 years. Peters and his original article still remain a leading authority on the topic.
But now, because anyone can be positioned as an expert, everyone is.
“The Brand Called “YOU.” You Can’t Move Up if You Don’t Stand Out.”
The Rise of Thought Leaders
In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a growing rate of increased competition for subject matter experts and ideas.
With so many “experts” right now, how will B2B businesses differentiate themselves to their desired customer in an era when everyone is a consultant, speaker, author, and coach?
How will we find customers in such a crowded space?
The good news is that demand for information is at an all-time high. The bad news?
The rapidly increasing supply of on-demand content. It’s definitely becoming difficult to stand out from the crowded room of other experts.
Based on a simple LinkedIn search using titles, there are:
22 million consultants
12 million authors
6 million experts
300,000 coaches
300,000 trainers
40,000 speakers
6 Million Experts
The Rise of Coaches
6,109,719 people identified themselves as “experts.” There’s an expert on every topic!
Consultants surpassed experts with a whopping 22,009,581 million results.
Fortunately, if anyone desires to be coached, they will only be able to find the best fit by searching and meeting with the 5,904.507 available to assist you.
Even celebrities are coaches. For instance, Gwen Stefani identifies as a “music coach” because she is a judge on “The Voice,” a television show that evaluates musicians for the “next big star.”
The Rise of Media Brands
Today, every person and business has access to the same distribution tools as the largest publishers and media networks.
Today, anyone can create a brand reputation on any topic.
While it may appear that the rise of people as brands is a relatively new phenomenon, in reality it has been a 50-year overnight development in the making.
Only 4% of consumers believe marketers practice integrity
While I’m not here to bash advertising as they can be highly effective, for most of us as B2B brands, we need to re-calibrate our sales approach into a customer approach.
For example, most people today don’t care about most ads they receive, but a surprising 84% of people actually expect and want brands to create content for them!
Unfortunately, our initial content marketing attempts have missed the mark with consumers, especially considering 60% of branded content is reported as poor, irrelevant, and fails to deliver.
That’s a massive gap in consumer expectations and what we’re delivering against so far!
Most businesses produce content to fill sales quotas rather than produce content designed to inform, delight or entertain audiences.
In this new media economy, consumers are demanding high volumes of relevant information, so it only makes sense that we move in that direction.
We now all have an amazing opportunity to publish information people actually look forward to learning and enjoying.
Today, brands can act much more like media companies to deliver quality and engaging content for the consumer they want to reach.
Whether through articles, videos, or podcasts, we can publish content designed to help our audience achieve the results they desire through content pieces such as the following list.
The Growing Marketing Mix
Social media marketing
Blogging
Vlogging
Podcasting
PR
SEO
Email marketing
Influencer marketing
For a full review here’s a list of the75 marketing tactics every entrepreneur should know.
“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits them and sells itself.”
– Peter F. Drucker
To best serve customers today marketers are turning to content. What types of content can we build for the customers we want?
Isn’t There Already Too Much Content Out There?
Hell yes!
But also, no. In the age of information, everyone can publish anything. So, everyone does. Now, the Internet’s filled with a lot of uninspiring and mediocre junk.
And think about it this way; the average person today receives over 5,000 ads per day! Insane, right? And harder yet for advertisers.
As Bill Gates stated in 1996 his Content is King Essay in 1996, “Content is where I expect much of wealth will be generated on the internet, just as it was in broadcasting.”
Connect With Your Audience on Share Interests and Values
The core of the human experience is looking for solutions we need and those in which we feel we belong.
People want to feel that they’re getting closer to the goals they have set out to achieve on their journey. Passion is one of the great drivers of building a business.
When you started your business, why did you start it? What’s the purpose behind your business? Which passion are you sharing with them in this journey? What goal are you ultimately looking for your customers to experience or achieve?
People are Tribal
We join tribes to surround ourselves with people who share the same journey and want the same outcomes.
Our tribes bring us together around a common goal. So, build one.
Whether it’s politics, religion, national identity or a brand, people are hungry to define who they are and what they want. We join communities and clubs to find other people who are like us.
We do business with brands that “get us” and who understand what really drives us forward. This is why the largest, most successful brands think of themselves and communicate as “movements” instead of products and services.
People are looking for new and exciting solutions to change their lives We’re not just selling products or services.
If we did, we would risk becoming a commodity. Today, business leaders are learning that most businesses fail because they fail to capture the attention and interests of the customers they really want.
Want to Hear About a Marketing Lesson Worth $883 Million?
The buyer is in control, but we’re still marketing as if that’s not true…
Mike Volpe was the original CMO of HubSpot, a leading tech platform for marketers.
He had been with HubSpot since he was their fifth employee. Volpe helped scale the company from 12 beta users to 1,000 employees generating $150M in revenue with a successful IPO leading to a $1.78 market cap.
Today, they’re valued at over $883M.
How did they do it? In part, they created content to attract and add value to their ideal client marketing companies.
Mike focused on creating content to help other marketers be successful.
By teaching potential customers how to be impactful in their messaging and marketing strategies, HubSpot became a tool, or resource, for best marketing practices taught by HubSpot.
The focused on teaching over selling.
“You don’t want to interrupt the content that people are trying to consume but be that content they want to consume. The buyer is in control, but you’re still marketing as if that’s not true.”
– Mike Volpe
Buyers Consume Information. Give It to Them!
If you weren’t reading this right now, you would be consuming information somewhere else.
Do you know how much time the average person is consuming information online today? Over 11 hours each day — that’s how much time.
US adults are spending more than 11 hours a day on average, or about two-thirds of their waking time, consuming media information.
Peter Katsingris, who led the report at Nielsen, attributed the rise of online streaming services due to the fact that it made it easier for consumers to tune in anywhere.
People don’t want to buy from us. They want information to make their lives more enjoyable.
Attention is what we want, and it’s certainly true that it’s becoming more difficult to get noticed.
Customers now have a new level of control over how, when, and where we’re permitted to attract their attention.
Why it Pays to Create Content For Your Business
Companies that put out 16 or more posts a month receive 3.5 times more traffic to their website than companies that post four or fewer posts per month.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing attracts three times the number of leads than outbound marketing and costs 62% less.
Small businesses with blogs get 126% more lead growth than businesses without them.
But 94% of B2B companies are doing some form of content marketing and yet ONLY 9% rate their efforts as highly successful.
The truth is marketers have become more fixated on HOW to promote than WHAT consumers actually want or care about.
Ask most people what they think about marketing, and they will tell you it’s an ad or some form of promotion.
In the real-world, marketing is just the process of building relationships and satisfying customers. Customers who understand their buying power know they have many options.
The brands who win more customers are the ones who put their customers’ needs ahead of their desire to sell more stuff.
Promoting ads that don’t have a customer acquisition strategy is like throwing good money out the window.
Once we’ve nailed our audience’s interests there’s no shortage of tools to reach them.
Hands up if you’re a business owner concerned about the growth of your business?
Now keep your hand up if you’re struggling to put together a plan to grow in today’s digital economy?
If your hand’s still up, you’re not alone.
In fact you’re actually in good company. Surprisinglyhalfof B2B companies are approaching digital without any strategy whatsoever.
Why Is No One Talking About This?
It’s the fact that almost EVERY single one of us is struggling to get up to speed with digital marketing.
Not even just the strategy part, like actually getting online.
Did you know, that only 64% of small businesses actually even have a website?
Not shitting you I heard this and had to look it up for myself (here) and it baffles me!
Could you imagine? Thats like Guttenberg inventing the printing press and the Catholic church saying, “nah we’re good. We’re gunna keep on hand writing the bible thanks.”
WTF?
The internet is the biggest revolution in human communication technology and a ton of us are not taking advantage of it!
Before We Put 2020 in the Rearview
Before we put 2020 in the rearview and wave goodbye to the complexity of running a business during a global pandemic, there’s one lesson that stood out like a sore thumb…
We Need a Digital Roadmap
Thinking we will grow in today’s digital environment without a plan is like trying to drive from Dallas to Seattle without directions.
2020 offered a really interesting glimpse of what doing business in the future looks like. It’s completely digital.
We all need a game plan to amplify our success.
We’ve been dancing around this issue for a decade. How to leverage the internet to grow our business?
I don’t know about you, but I don’t intend to be the next Block Buster.
Let’s Netflix This Baby!
Having a plan to engage an audience, create awareness, and convert new business on digital platforms has now become mission critical for businesses moving forward.
And it’s about time we get after it.
Take Advantage of New Media!
Take advantage of new media.
Im gunna skip the part about the importance of having a website and assume YOU have one. Good job!
Now you need to get people to it…that’s where traffic come in.
Here’s the thing about traffic. You don’t create it. It already exists. That’s what the internet is.
Your job is to get peoples’ attention and convert traffic.
Publish Content Your Audience Actually Likes
There’s a number of ways of creating content to add value to the network your building .
YouTube is’nt for the youngsters anymore. It’s a massive platform of people looking to discover informational content.
Take a look for yourself, heres an example of Patric Bet-David’s Valuetainment channel (home to 3 million subscribers) that creates content for entrepreneurs.
Get Active On Social Media
Over 80% of all content that gets consumed is discovered and shared on social media platforms.
So…share your content on them.
Consumers Can Access Anything Almost Anywhere
Consumers today expect to receive a B2C content experience.
Meaning they expect the content you produce to be for them, not your sales quota.
So just be sure to make your content personal, like-able, and shareable.
When consumers can consume limitless amounts of content on their own terms and devices, the battle for their attention is the new game.
Creating content they will actually like is the finish line.
Learn 5 ways C-Suite Media can help you publish content like a pro. Click here.
