The 3 questions you need to answer to kill it at customer engagement.

This is the second installment of our Snackable Series Live on Marketing Messages. The text below is adapted from our Live conversation.

Often I hear people say: “Well, we want to engage with our consumer, but we’re not exactly sure how. We don’t know what to say to them. We don’t know what will move them to take action. We don’t know what they are interested in.”

And so as I was getting ready for Halloween, and I was thinking about all the horror specials on Netflix, I thought, well, actually, engaging with your customers is a lot like solving a murder. You don’t believe me? Hear me out!

The 3 Key Pieces to Solving The Engagement Mystery

There are three essential components that you have to incorporate in every piece of customer communication, in order to be really engaging

The first thing any great murder mystery solver needs to solve is:

1. Who Done it?

In this case, you’re defining who your target audience is. Some questions that will get your wheels turning are: 

• Who’s your customer?
• What are they all about?
• Are they female? Are they male? Are they mixed?
• Are they young? Are they old?
• Are they local? Are they International?

You really want to get that customer profile down just like any great forensics expert does. You’re creating a profile of the type of person who typically engages with your brand:

Who does business with you, who needs the types of products and services that you offer.

You need to get really, really clear on that customer profile, and flesh it out just as much as you can, just like those great FBI experts do, so that you have a full picture of who they are, what they need, and what it is that they’re all about.

Now, the thing that might surprise you in solving this particular murder, and killing it in business, is that you’re not the murderer.

But you are kind of the mastermind.

You’re being an accomplice in this, because what you and your customer are trying to kill is a problem.

So, as much as possible, you need to link arms with your customer, you need to make that problem the villain and you say “you know what, together, we’re going to take it down. And I’m going to help you.”

As the mastermind of this amazing murder of this problem,  you are in the guide position, and your customer who is about to slay that problem. They’re the hero.

So you’re linking arms with them, you’re sharing a plan, you’re helping them figure it out. And together, you’re going to slay that problem.

2. Why Are They Doing It? 

The second thing you need to do to solve this great mystery of customer engagement, is figure out why they’re doing it.

What’s the evidence that you can see that this is a problem for your customer?

You look for the external motivator. And again, if we look at murder mysteries, the why is all about what’s the motivation:

• Are they after money?
• Are they after prestige?
• Are they after visibility?
• Are they making their lives better?
• What is it that this problem represents?

What is it that makes your customer just flip a table mad and say: “We gotta get that solved. We need better, we deserve better. Things should be easier for us.”

So again, link arms with your customer. Think about that problem and say: “Well, why is it that we’re going to take action against this and slay this problem?”

Why is it that this problem upsets, confuses, and makes life difficult for our customer? That’s the motive, and you want to look for the evidence to prove it.

Motivators for taking action are external, internal and philosophical.

The external motivators are everything you can see; that’s the visible evidence.

That’s the thing that says: “If I came to your business, or I went to your customer’s house with a video camera, what would I film? What would I see them struggling with?”

So I see them struggling with that, I see them procrastinate to do it, They’re frustrated, they’re angry. They’re confused by it. I see it causes tensions in the household, I see it causes fights.

That’s evidence that these are external motivators.

Then your internal motivators answer the question: “how does that make them feel?”

And then the philosophical motivator says: “why do we need to make this better? What should be the case? Winning in this space shouldn’t be this hard”. 

Those are all different ways that you can look at the motivation.

So, once you know the who, and you know the why, you have to figure out the third critical thing and get them to take action by answering “why now.”

3. Why Now? 

So often, our customers are sitting with a problem for a while.

It’s like a story that I heard about this old hound dog sitting on a porch.

A fella’s walking down the country road and hears through the woods this hound dog loudly moaning.

So the traveler finds his way to the old house, where he finds an old man on an old rocking chair. And he sees the old hound dog sitting right next to him.

So the traveler says to the old man: “what is wrong with your hound? He sounds pitiful. Clearly, there’s a problem, he must be in pain.”

And the old man says: “Well, yeah, he’s laying on a rusty nail. And it hurts him enough to complain about it, but not enough to do anything.”

That Hound Dog is not ready to take action just yet.

So what you need to figure out is: why now?

Sometimes this issue that your customer is having has been irritating them like that rusty nail for a long time. But what is it that motivates them to take action now?

When you can uncover that and bring them along with you, you’re giving them a call to action. You’re saying: “You know what, today’s the day that ends, I can help you, I’m going to make it easier for you. Here’s an intro offer, here’s a free trial, here’s a guarantee that I will extend to you.”

What is it that helps them take action now? That is the final component that you need to understand how to slay this customer engagement issue and kill it at engagement.

And together, you’re going to mastermind how to kill the problem that has irritated them for so long.

If you want to know a little bit more about this, there is a free mini course that I offer that helps you get more into the who, the why, and the why now, while also helping you organize your content so that you can really outline a year’s worth of content in about a day.

If the larger problem of great marketing messages is something that you struggle with, there’s a unique opportunity coming up in just about four weeks.

As a Storybrand Certified Guide and Coach, I love the methodology that StoryBrand brings to Marketing Made Simple. They’ve got a Marketing Made Simple workshop coming up on December 6 and 7 to fast-track your marketing results with clear and compelling messages.

There are different ways for you to get in on the workshop, get additional coaching from me, get an action toolkit, and make sure that your marketing, whether it’s for recruitment, products, services, whatever it is, is top notch, and you’re killing it for 2022.

I can’t wait to see you on the inside of the Livestream experience!