My buddy Kevin just got a new job and asked me for an informal critique of his company website.
This can sometimes be a delicate proposition, especially between friends.
Because however constructive, criticism is still criticism. And some people simply don’t have the strength to shed their defense mechanisms and welcome the unvarnished truth.
But Kevin can take a punch.
A good thing, since I didn’t have to get beyond the tippy top of his home page to unload this one …
They built it backwards.
What I mean is the message started with the product instead of the buyer.
It was heavy on the WE with barely a whisper of YOU.
Kevin didn’t disagree. He compared it to walking into a party and talking about yourself all night.
True. But in that scenario, the rejected narcissist only suffers a bruised ego. Behave like that with your marketing and you’re guaranteed to lose business.
If Julius Rosenwald were here, he’d tell you the same thing.
Assuming you’re not a rabid J-Ro fan like I am, you will be shortly.
Because under his leadership in the early 1900s, Rosenwald grew Sears, Roebuck and Co. from $750K in annual sales to roughly $50 million.
When asked how he did it, he said: “My ambition was to stand on both sides of the counter at once.”
That’s the key to selling anything. Because whether you’ve got a physical sales counter or a digital one …
You have to see the world through your customers’ eyes before you can be a part of it.
Seems easy enough to understand, right?
Still, taking the time to build an emotional rapport with your audience is something a lot of marketers want to rush through—if not skip altogether.
Kevin’s website proved it. And if you’ve fallen into the same trap, I get it.
Nobody’s closer to your product and the radioactive glow of its power than you are.
So, it may seem unfathomable for your prospect to see it with anything less than smiling eyes and jaws hinged open. But the truth is …
Nobody cares about your product. They only care about what it will do for them.
You’re not selling a thing. You’re selling a transformation. Or at the very least, an escape from somewhere they don’t want to be.
Maybe an example would help.
This is a snippet of web copy I show to every marketer who wants to be cured of leading with their solution …
112 words and not a single product mention. It’s a message soaked with empathy, using language that was undoubtedly mined from the market this company serves.
So how can you do the same?
How can you resist the temptation to talk about yourself first—to keep from building your marketing backwards?
Maybe you’ll print out this email and store it in a fireproof box for emergencies.
Maybe you’ll have that old Rosenwald quote engraved on a whiskey tumbler.
Or I could just give you a simple trick that’s less fussy and more habit‑forming.
That brings us back to Kevin’s fictional party scene. Since the cocktail wienies are gone and I’m clearly too sober for karaoke, let me get straight to my point.
When you’re among strangers in a social setting and somebody inevitably asks you about your job, instead of starting with what you do …
Start with who you help.
Then, just like your customers will—they’ll lean in.
Here’s a song to play you out >>>
See you next time. — Matt
If you want a fresh marketing nugget emailed to you every week (give or take), join here.
