What customers want to know is how your new product can solve their problems – what’s in it for them. That’s it.
It’s simple. Traditional advertising is (broadly) about companies shouting about their own merits. If you tell people enough times how wonderful you are, maybe eventually they will believe you.
Social media is about building deep relationships with your potential customers. If you talk to them enough about the things they care about, and listen to them enough as well, maybe eventually they will trust you so much that they will buy from you.
As soon as you understand that what they are really interested in is themselves – and not you – it completely changes the nature of this conversation.
Say, for example, you’re selling clocks. To really tug at your potential customers’ heartstrings, you need to focus on how your clock will help them get their children out of the door on time – and not on its super-cool new mechanism.
To really make yourself relevant to their lives, you must talk about how hard it is to wake up after feeding a baby for half the night – not about the range of 12 colors the clock comes in.
In short, you need to get into your audience’s heads, and approach your sales entirely from their point of view – not your own. The more you know about them the better. Ideally, you should be building detailed portraits of composite figures that represent your target audience, so that you can really get a keen understanding of what makes them tick. (These are called “buyer personas”.)
It’s counter-intuitive that to succeed on social media means talking about yourself less, not more. Nevertheless, that’s the reality.
Your customers? They’re just not that into you, I’m afraid.
Read the full article by Miriam Shaviv at LinkedIn.
