The best subject about which you can write on your business blog is not your business, but your customers. Make your customer the hero. You are the that person in the hero’s story who provides the sage advice or the whiz-bang gadgetry the hero needs. But you’re not the hero. Your customer is.
People don’t want to hear about you, they want to hear about themselves. More precisely, they don’t want to hear you talk about yourself. They want to see their own fantasies and fears confirmed and reflected back at them. They want to know that you get them. Adopting this point of view and remembering to do this isn’t easy.
How to Make Your Customer the Hero
- Feature extended customer profiles or write-ups. Treat your customers as heroes who are solving problems and succeeding.
- Publicly point out on the blog when a customer does something noteworthy with your product or as a result of using your services. Give them a gold star, a pat on the back, a high-five on the blog.
- Invite your customers to tell their success stories in their own words as guest posters on your blog. Especially if you can get them to do it in a video.
- Interview your customers: grab your Flip or your video phone or whatever and visit them. Talk with them about what they’re doing and the results they’re achieving. If you don’t have a video camera, then use Skype with PrettyMay or a service like FreeConference.com to record your interview. This is a case where video or audio will make a more visceral impact on your blog readers. Certainly, you can just do a written interview.
- Subscribe to as many feeds from your customers as you can so you have access to this information. Your customers, by the way, will be flattered you’re paying attention. Call them up and email them to specifically ask what they’re doing (bonus result: you’ll be able to use this information to improve your business, not just market it more effectively).
Why You Want to Do This
Write about what your customers are doing, and prospects will want to become customers more readily. Why? Because they’ll see what they’ll get. They’ll imagine themselves being your customer more easily. And that, my friends, is powerful mojo.
Now Go Make Some Heroes
Begin making a concentrated effort to do this, at least once a week on your business blog, and I believe you’ll pull in more customers than ever before. You may not get results immediately (although I have landed clients almost immediately after publishing posts like this), but I’m sure you’ll get them.
Michael,
How great of you to remind us. It is all about me, what I have done or what I can do. I absolutely must change this and glorify the client! I might add that it is easy if you remember the Golden Rule. “He who has the gold, makes the rules!”
Thanks.
Rich Hill
Rich, I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not (which would be the mark of great sarcasm).
The golden rule you mention only applies until people get sick of it. There wasn’t a king or queen who ever had enough gold to keep their heads on their necks when the time came. On the internet, trust is more valuable than gold. Trust precedes money.
Setting up Google Alerts for your customers’ names and products or brands, in addition to RSS feeds, is a good way to stay engaged with what’s impacting them. As you suggest connecting with them about their business not yours is a more effective relationship marketing strategy.
Absolutely love this post. Some great ideas in here that I’m eager to get started on. It is hard to find the time, but just making the effort says a lot about someone.
On a side note, where do you get your images?
Thanks, Nathan. I get the pictures from iStock, and I edit them in Photoshop.
Excellent Advice Michael,
We have re-posted this over on our small blog about apartment marketing and apartment management with links back to your site, for both the article and your coaching and blog consulting.
A lot of apartment communities are starting to blog in lieu of what used to be a community news letter, and some are seeing the rich and significant SEO value that a blog enhances
Thanks again for all your great work,
Eric, I appreciate the links and I’m glad you find the post valuable.
I’m especially digging the idea of customer testimonials. For us freelance writing types, there can be no stronger endorsement than the words of a delighted customer.
George
Slap on the forehead. So obvious and yet I never considered this. The gem in the post is getting your customer to provide you material for your post. That is truly genius. It gives them opportunity to get their name and story out through you and validates you at the same time. Awesome.
Allan, it’s a classic win-win situation. Glad you see how it all fits together.
[...] Make Your Customer the Hero Remember that customers don’t want to hear about you. They want to hear about how you can help them, what you are doing for them. Michael Martine tells you how to focus on your customers in your company blog. [...]
[...] Make Your Customer the Hero Remember that customers don’t want to hear about you. They want to hear about how you can help them, what you are doing for them. Michael Martine tells you how to focus on your customers in your company blog. [...]
Great thoughts and I wish more businesses practice the hero mindset.
BRILLIANT!
This post has a thought changing idea which I actually never imagined. Although, there are numerous articles which actually discuss about how customers should be valued and treated as VIP, this post is pretty unique to me. I guess it’s because of the catchy title.
I like the idea of making the customer the hero instead of putting the author’s name in the pedestal. You know, behind any success of a student is a mentor which is will always be appreciated in the end. ss
Alex, thanks. People don’t want to know what you can do. They want to know what you can do for them. When they see what you’re doing for others, they transfer that to themselves in their imaginations.
Useful tips Michael. We’ve been doing some of this on our blog and I found that it deepens the relationships and trust level with customers as well. The feel proud to have the opportunity to share and it brings a different element to the relationship because they are now the one in the lead or sharing the useful information with you (and your blog readers).
http://twitter.com/franswaa
Hi Michael,
This is a great discussion. Some very good tips here that can help everyone!
Good stuff michael
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