Month: March 2020

In just a matter of days, we’ve all been forced to confront the reality of the current global pandemic.  The new normal for most of us involves many changes to the very basic ways we conduct business.  It’s been dramatic shift in a short time, and we are all trying to figure out how to adjust and move forward.

The good news is that your company’s website and your digital marketing tools offer fantastic opportunities to respond to our changing world.  Learning to fully utilize digital tools and resources is perhaps more important now than ever to your company’s success.  While this could feel overwhelming, please know that we are here to help.      

Our team at Bellaworks specializes in selecting and implementing digital marketing solutions that can make life easier and more productive for our clients.  It’s what we do and have been doing for over ten years. 

Below are some website changes and other tools to consider that might help your business right now.  Please take a look, and if you think we can help, let’s talk.  We’re all in this together. 

WEBSITE UPDATES TO CONSIDER NOW

Add Website Special Alert Messages

Many companies have critical messages that they need customers to see right now.  Here are a couple of options.

• Banner alerts– These typically sit close to the navigation bar on your website.  You can put information here and include a link to a page that contains more details.
• Pop up boxes- These are normally used when someone first visits a home page.  They are great for communicating key information quickly.  

CLEAN UP YOUR CONTACT INFORMATION

As companies switch to working remotely, one of the top priorities is making sure customers and clients can still reach you.  Here are some ideas that can help.

• Website contact page information– Make sure to check and update all of the contact information on your website.  Have your hours of operation have changed?  Is anyone checking the phone numbers that are listed?  Are the right people getting the right messages?   
• Website contact form– A simple contact form added to your website can help your customers reach you quickly.  When a form is filled out, it can be sent to one person or to multiple people who can help field inquiries.
• Get on my calendar­– Offer your clients the chance to immediately book a phone call with you.  Links to services such as Calendy can sit on your website and also be included on your email signature line.  They keep business moving by reducing the time spent on scheduling. 

UTILIZE YOUR DIGITAL COMMUNICATION CHANNELS

Your customers need to hear from you.  Make sure you stay in front of your customers by using digital communication channels.  These channels can be added at any time, so it’s not too late to begin using them.  Now could be the perfect time to start.

• Blogs- Writing articles and posting them to your blog is a great way to get the word out about your business.
• Email Newsletter- Digital marketing platforms like Mail Chimp and Constant Contact are excellent tools to use to send out important information to your customers. 
• Social Media- News can travel especially fast over social media channels and the interaction with existing and potential customers can be invaluable. 

ADD TOOLS FOR WORKING REMOTELY

Whether you need to meet with your internal team, host a project session with a client, or offer a yoga class online, there are digital solutions that can help.  If you are struggling to meet the needs of your clients remotely, please talk with us.  We’ve been using many of these tools for years and can help you find the best solution. Here are a couple that we love.

• Zoom– Zoom is a fantastic tool to use for hosting online meetings.  It has some very flexible features like using audio only, audio plus video and chat.  Scared for everyone to see your messy house during the call?  No worries.  Zoom even has a way for you to select a background.
• Google– If you are collaborating on a project or teaching a class and would like to share documents or spreadsheets, Google has you covered.  You can use this tool to collaborate on documents together and in real time. 

TALK WITH US – WE’D LOVE TO HELP YOU

We know that the thought of having to learn to use and rely on more technology can be daunting.  Talk with our team at Bellaworks.  Let us suggest, implement, and teach you to use tools that can make your life easier.  Contact us today, we’re here to help.          

Automobile marketers are a savvy bunch.

At its core, their product is a smartly connected collection of metal, plastic, rubber and glass. Vehicles are a utility designed to move us, and our stuff, from point A to B.

What those marketers sell, however, is so much more. 

Take this Jeep ad from 2012, for example.

Notice the ad team didn’t spend space telling us about the engine’s horsepower, displacement, or lb-ft of torque. They didn’t detail Jeep’s experience building rugged, off-road vehicles or explain their exacting manufacturing processes.

Instead, they show us what life will be like behind the wheel of our new Jeep. They help us imagine tackling snowy roads and rugged trails with ease. If we buy a Jeep, the ad tells us, life in winter becomes so much better.

So why didn’t those marketers just provide us a list of comparative specifications? Surely that would appeal to our logical brains. And we all make decisions based on logic, don’t we?

That seems, well, logical. But research on the topic tells a different story.

In fact, 95% of our buying decisions are based on emotion. It’s only after we’ve mostly made up our mind that we use logic and comparison to justify that choice.

So that’s what the savvy Jeep marketers did. They lead us to answer the question “why would I buy this” without muddying up the copy by answering “what did we make” or “how did we make it”.

The influence of our ‘why’ is rooted deep in our brains. If you take the time to understand and expose your customers’ why, you’ll jack directly into the center of their decision making process.

Why ‘why’ works: the Golden Circle and the limbic brain

Humans have the largest brain to body-size ratio of any living creature.

We didn’t start out that way, though. Our brains have tripled in size since our earliest humanoid forbearers. What’s really cool is that you can track some of our newer abilities to the most recently added layers of grey matte.

Language, for example, gets processed in the neocortex, the newest and outermost layer. The limbic system sits behind that, is older (evolutionarily speaking), and concerns itself with feelings and emotions. The limbic system is also where we make decisions initially. And that’s why we don’t first make them with logic.

The problem is that the limbic system can’t process language. So it doesn’t do a great job of explaining its decision making process to the more rational parts of your brain. That’s why we call it the subconscious. Incidentally, it also explains why we often have a hard time putting feelings into words.

Simon Sinek, an author and speaker, has created a simple framework to help us think about how we can jack directly into the limbic system. He calls it the Golden Circle.

His framework breaks down messaging into three questions: why, how, and what.

What: product features

How: company values, experience, processes

Why: benefits and outcomes for the customer

Notice that what and how are all about your company and your products.

Why, on the other hand, is customer-centric. It inhabits the same center of the circle as the limbic system because it speaks directly to our decision-making, emotional brain. The why inspires action which will be justified with logic later. It gets us excited thinking about how badass we’ll be gliding through snow drifts that stop lesser vehicles cold.

Answering why before we get to the what and how, according to Sinek’s model, means our communication will more naturally follow the steps we all take to make decisions.

It’s not always easy to do. The first challenge is learning what your customers’ why really is.

Getting to the real ‘why’

Theodore Levitt, a Harvard Marketing Professor, is famously attributed with the quote: 

“No one wants a drill bit. What they want is a hole.”

It’s a keen insight for marketers. It says they should think more about what their products actually do for their customers and less about the features of the products themselves.

But is it true? How many times have you, deep in your subconscious, really wanted a new hole in your wall?

More likely, you wanted the peace of a well-organized space and the new shelf that would get you there. Or you wanted the satisfaction of showing off your DIY project. 

The point, says Marketing guru Seth Godin in his book This is Marketing, is that there may be many different reasons why people buy one product. Your job as the marketer is to know what they are.

“Don’t reverse engineer a why to fit your audience. Understand their real why and create a product, and marketing, to support it.” – Seth Godin, This is Marketing

Your customer’s why, Godin explains, is really the change they seek. What is their problem today and what could be their new reality be if they use your product?

To get there, you’ll use two things:

• Empathy, one of the most powerful tools in sales and marketing.
• A tactic from your average preschooler.

We’ve written about empathy before. It’s powerful because it allows us to go beyond our own experiences and understand what change our customers are looking for. Even when they don’t know how to articulate it themselves.

If you’ve ever spent the day with a preschooler, you already know they are unabashed champions of asking why. We’ll use their strategy to learn what change our customers are looking for. 

It goes a little like this:

Why do you want a new vehicle?

I want an SUV with 2nd-row captain’s chairs

Why?

Because I’d like to give my kids their own space

Why?

Because they fuss at each other on road trips.

The real change that’s desired here isn’t actually 2nd-row captain’s chairs. It’s a peaceful road trip.

Likely, other parents would be interested in the same change but haven’t considered how to achieve it. You can use this insight to guide your copy.

“Individual seats for them. A peaceful roadtrip for you”

For a harried parent, a peaceful roadtrip probably sounds like a pretty good idea.

Conclusion

Humans make decisions in our subconscious, limbic brain first and then use our logical neocortex to justify those choices.

In short, people don’t buy what you make or how you make it. They buy what your products will do for them. 

As marketers, our job is to uncover the why that will motivate action. Then build website copy, advertisements and other customer-facing communications around it.

As Seth Godin says: “Don’t begin with your machines, your inventory, or your tactics. Don’t begin with what you know how to do or some sort of distraction about your mission. Instead, begin with the dreams and fears, hopes and emotional stakes, and with the change your customers seek.”
If you’re ready to create the kind of customer-centric website that will motivate your audience to take action, contact us today and let’s get started.