On Wednesday, we shared our scoring rubric—R.A.C.E.S. & C.A.R.S.—as a method for amping up your messaging. At the heart of those messages are captivating stories.
On Tuesday, we talked about those stories. We talked about building bridges from you to potential customers through metaphors and other symbolic language. By telling stories about familiar things to those potential customers, you enter through the side-door of their brains to help them understand how your company thinks, acts, and sees the world.
We connect to each other through such stories and through the values behind them. Your values are the key to building bridges to potential customers. Think about your company’s core values… because those core values, they’re iconic right? We can all relate, and many of us even share those values.
How to use core values to uncover bridge-building stories.
So, let’s say one of your values is Servant Leadership.
Great… let’s make sure it’s truly one of your values.
1) Ask your team what systems, policies, and procedures reflect that value to customers and employees.
2) Ask your team to tell you a story about how they used servant leadership to benefit a customer or a co-worker in the last week or so.
Those first two questions will help ensure Servant Leadership—or any other value—is truly one of your authentic core values. Now, let’s continue to build our collection of stories that will help potential customers know who we are and what we believe and what we stand for and against.
3) Ask your team: “What are famous stories in history of Servant Leadership?”
Have your team do research. Have a contest. Share prizes for great stories! Then, give those examples to your marketing team and allow them to bridge between you and those stories… there’s a solid start to your marketing campaign!
4) Ask your team: “Tell me a story about a servant leader that, growing up, influenced you?”
Collect and share those stories with your marketing team as well. Then, take that question a level deeper.
5) Then, you ask: “Can you write a letter to that person telling them how they influenced you, and then can you imagine what they’d write back to you?”
By asking them to write letters, they’re giving you authentic, adspeak-free communication that’s filled with iconic, archetypal language your potential customers use, too. Now, flip over the coin.
6) Ask your team: “Now, can you give me examples of weasel leadership… tell me a story about a famous selfish, awful, poopface leader?”
By doing so, you have another great message development technique: One of the great tools your writers can use is to exaggerate the opposite of your value to highlight what you stand against. Finally, here’s one more question to help you not only better convey who you are to potential customers, but it will also help you better understand who you are… by understanding who you aspire to be.
7) Ask your team: “So, what giant, awesome, famous companies do you also think have servant leadership as a value? How do they show it? What can we learn from them?”
By thinking about, discussing, and collecting answers to these questions, not only will you solidify your core values, you’ll build such a long, strong bridge between you and potential customers, you’ll one day find yourself being another company’s answer to question #7.
Ready? Grab your hammer and your shovel and get to work.
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