Are you interesting enough to customers?
As a frequent user of LinkedIn I have spotted a marked shift in recent months in the number of people sharing posts that communicate how ‘great’ their people and businesses are – ‘great’ in their view but not necessarily in everyone else’s.
It is likely that they’re doing this in the hope (perhaps expectation) that this will pique the interest of potential new customers – “If we talk about how great we are then they will think that of us, too” goes their thinking. Rarely, however, is that the case.
This approach is doomed to fail. That’s because these people are centering their communications on themselves.
The attention needs to be on sharing stories aimed at reducing the anxieties (challenges and pain points) that customers experience and eliminating the barriers that currently hold them back from engaging with similar businesses.
Now if that sounds a little waffly, think of it like this: if you want to better engage with your audience (customers, potential customers, investors) think about them in terms of:
- Where are they in the buying cycle?
- What turns them both on and off businesses like yours?
- What issues are they facing that they want support with or answers to?
- What do they want to get out of doing business with a product or service provider like you?
Potential customers care about three things when choosing a provider:
- Can this business do what we need them to do?
- Will this make me feel and look good in terms of the association with this provider and the outcomes they may deliver?
- Do they have the credibility to back this up such as winning awards for their work or having an obvious competitive advantage?
Bragging about how ‘great’ you think you are has no place in any PR campaign. It is a potential brand killer and a guaranteed reputation management issue. I mean, you wouldn’t walk into a dinner party and launch into a speech telling the guests all about yourself and what makes you so fabulous, so don’t do it in the domains where your target customers are hanging out.
Engage people, listen to them, understand their thoughts and feelings, and relate to them in a way that shows you ‘get’ them and genuinely care. You need to be interested to be interesting.
