Shhhhh! I’ll let you in on a little secret: most marketing starts by focusing on the wrong person.

What I mean is, when you look at most marketing, the spotlight is on the company. “We have 50 years of experience building widgets.” “Our doohickeys have won these awards.” “My grandpa started this company out of a closet just after he came to America with $20 and an old pair of shoes.”

You’ve read that sort of thing on websites and in marketing assets. You might even be using phrases and ideas like that yourself. If you’re the company, that all sounds great. And it’s a great story to tell by a roaring fire with someone looking to learn how you grew the business from those humble beginnings to a national chain with 500 stores. (If that's you, by the way, I would love to talk with you!)

But - let’s be honest. Your customers... simply don’t care. If you put these kinds of statements on your website – and a lot of businesses do – your customers are going to read them and say, “that’s nice – but so what?”

According to Donald Miller, author of Building A Story Brand, there’s a reason your customers aren’t interested in your company’s story. It’s simple, and once you understand it, it’ll change the way you talk about your company.

Your customers don’t care about the history of your company, the awards you’ve won, and so on, because those things just don’t help your customer solve his problem. Since solving your customer’s problem is the reason you went into business in the first place, it doesn’t really make sense to start by talking about yourself and how great a company you are.

Savvy marketers know that it’s better to start with a focus on the customer and what he wants, rather than on your company and how great it is. (There’s a time and place to toot your own horn, but it shouldn’t be the initial focus of your marketing.)

You see, when you focus on the customer instead of your company, you pull the customer into a story – you invite him on a journey. Everybody loves being a hero – but they want to be the hero of their own story, not yours.

Here’s the bottom line: start thinking through your marketing by focusing on the customer and what he’s looking for. It seems counterintuitive, but it works!

This month's resource:

One of the keys to successfully focus on the customer is to think about where the customer is today, and where he wants to be. Every story starts with "once upon a time there was a hero who wanted..." and ends with "and they all lived happily ever after." By thinking about how the customer will be transformed by what you offer, you'll have the starting point and ending points for the journey you're inviting him into!

To help you think through the before and after  - the transformation you want to help your customers achieve, we've put together this handy Customer Transformation Worksheet. Download it below, and if you have any questions, just schedule a free marketing consultation.