Your Customers Don't Care About Your Brand

[00:00:00] **Matt Edmundson:** Most businesses build their brand messaging around themselves. Now, you may well be one of them because I used to be one of them. You know where the messaging is all about me and my story. It's all about my logo and my history. And if I'm honest, when I see it these days, uh, on people's websites, it really, really winds me up.

And it's not just me that it winds up because the truth is your customers, well, they get wound up by it as well. They could care less about all of that sort of stuff Now. I realized the importance of this distinction. Uh, w what? 'cause we had to figure it out for our own eCommerce business, right? And when we did, it completely changed the way our customers talked about us.

We went from being just another online shop to being something they genuinely connected with.

So in this episode of the eCommerce Podcast, we are gonna look at what I like to call The Story Overlap: which is this intersection where your story meets your customer's story. 'cause really that's the only place your marketing is actually gonna work.

Hello and welcome to the eCommerce Podcast. My name is Matt Edmundson, and it is great to be with you. Now, last time when I did a solo episode, uh, we talked about something called narrative binding. The episode I think was product copy that actually converts a very, very clickbait title. I know, but it actually it did and it worked.

Right. We talked about. Product descriptions that stick in people's minds. This whole idea of narrative binding. We looked at an example of a fountain pen where the standard copy was informative and accurate and completely and utterly forgettable, right? Uh, and then we looked at a version. We created using the ideas of narrative binding, um, and that we, and in that we made the customer the protagonist of the story.

Right? And I know this particular episode was popular with you guys because I get to see the downloads and I get to see the downloads of the freebie as well. And within just a few days, it was our most downloaded freebie ever, which I think is quite extraordinary. Um, so I'm glad you enjoyed it. Uh, and the key principle to narrative binding.

If you remember, if you listen to the episode, was something called causal sequencing. And honestly, I, I mentioned this before. I'm not making these names up. Narrative binding and causal sequencing. They're real. Uh, but

Causal Sequencing is where a feature leads to a benefit which leads to an outcome.

That's the sequence: feature, benefit, outcome.

Uh, and the way of creating product copy with that in works because it's speaking the customer's language, right? It's telling the customer's story. It's operating in what I call the story overlap. This overlap between our story and our customer story. And the more you understand this principle, the more you're gonna see that it doesn't just apply to product descriptions, it's actually gonna apply to your whole website.

Hence a reason we are doing an entire episode about the whole thing. So what I want you to do. Um, if it's safe to do so, uh, obviously is

picture in your mind a Venn diagram. Okay? So a Venn diagram is where you have two circles that overlap. The one circle.

The circle on the left is your story. That's all of your story that contains all the elements of your story, all the bits that you find fascinating, who you are, who you stand for, why you do what you do.

It is all in there because that is your story. Okay.

The other circle though, well, that's your customer's story. That's the story about why they do what they want to do. It talks about their needs, their desires, their problems. It's the movie they're playing in their head when they come to your website.

And the overlap, the story overlap is that little sliver in the middle where the two circles meet, where they overlap with each other.

And in marketing, if I'm honest with you, that's the only bit that matters. 'cause everything outside of that is just noise. Why? Well, because

Our customers care profoundly about their own story.

But they care very little about your story.

And so if your website is focused on your story, you are talking a language your customers care little about things like our company history, our awards, our finding year, our finding year, founding year. Uh, it's, it's all our story, isn't it? It's not their story.

And I know that you care deeply about it. I know it's important to you because the customer doesn't see the hours you've put into creating that story. Right? And I'm not diminishing it in any way. I'm not saying that it doesn't matter, but I am saying that I think to be successful online and in e-commerce.

I think that means

We have to come to this sort of painful place of realization that your customer just doesn't really care that much about your story because they're too focused on their own story.

And the goal then, of all our brand messaging, you know, on our products copy, our homepage, our about page, our packaging, our in-store experience, if we have one.

All of that needs to really operate in this story overlap. Okay, this overlap where it's not just about your customer, it's not just about you. It's this overlap where it matters deeply to both parties concern, because there we can do some really interesting things Now. Lemme show you what this looks like in the real world, right?

And I want you to try and exercise with me again if you can, if it's safe to do so. Uh, if it's not, don't do it. Uh, but, um, I've done this with, with, with, with people literally all over the world, and it's quite a fun exercise. Okay? I want you to go to Google. And I want you to type the phrase, accountants near me.

Now, pick any natural organic results that comes up. It tends to work better with the, you know, the first 1, 2, 3, uh, organic results. Um. I think it's important. Now, I did this, uh, again just a few days ago when I was preparing for this episode, just to make sure it's all still real and relevant. And the first organic site that came up was for a company called Jonathan Ford and Co.

Now, I want to be clear, I'm not picking on Jonathan Ford specifically. They're probably lovely accountants. Uh, but their website is textbook example of something just about most businesses do without even realizing it. They have. Done it beautifully and highlighted my points very well. Uh, but you find yours right?

Pull up a homepage. I did it with Jonathan Ford. Um, and the page started with the text. Welcome to Jonathan Ford and Co. Right, so right from the very first line of text, they have made this all about them. Now. Sure. They said the word welcome. That's very kind of them, but welcome. Uh, but most of that line is their company name in huge text.

Right? And you add in the accreditation Badgers, the Zero Gold Partner, the I-C-A-E-W, which shows the institute of. Chanted, uh, chanted. Yes. Maybe chanted, chartered Accountants of England and Wales. Sorry, I'm just, uh, this is amused me. Uh, I have a degree in accounting. That's why I pick on accountants. You know, I consider myself, uh, a lucky escapee from chanted.

Ah, that's gonna stick with me all day anyway. The I-C-A-E-W. Now these are all credit back contract mate. Uh, these are all, uh, credibility signals, but they're positioned when you think about 'em as, look at us, look at what we've earned, look at what we've done, rather than here's what this means for you.

Now, it's implied possibly. Um, you know, we're qualified. We're a member of the chartered accountant, so we follow a code of conduct, which protects, protects you, but that's not obvious, is it? And the service cards frame everything through the firm's expertise. Right? And the copy is full of. We language, you know, we save you time.

We are one of the friendliest firms of accountants on the planet, which I think is a really interesting thing to claim. Uh, and, uh, and maybe they didn't say on the planet, maybe that's just me adding lib, but Do you know what I mean? It's, it's an interesting thing to say. We are the friendliest firm of accountants.

Uh, aims are pretty simple. It's all we ours, US hours. And if I'm honest, whilst I'm making fun of their website slightly, it is actually one of the better accountant websites that I've seen. Um. So they are doing actually quite a good job compared to some of them. Um, it's just, it's really fascinating if you have time, uh, and you have the homepage up count the amount of times on that homepage.

You see the word we, our and us, right? And then count how many times they use the word you or your, now if I do this for Jonathan Ford, the ratio was 2.6 to one in favor of brand language. In other words, for every time they mentioned themselves. Sorry. Every time they mention the customer, they mention themselves two and a half times more, right.

Everything on that homepage is in essence from their circle of the Venn diagram. Very little was from the overlap. Very little was from the customer's circle, and that is just almost entirely empty from their website. And of course. If you've made it this far,

The question instantly becomes what's the ratio on your page,

right?

If you go to your website, your homepage of your e-commerce site, count how many times you see the word we as our count. How many times you see the word you, your, et cetera. What is that ratio? What are you like? Are you above one or below one? I'd be curious to know. Now, as I've said, I've done this exercise with people all over the world.

Um, I remember. Several occasions, actually, some really interesting things happening as I walked through each point. Um, we had the accountant site up, had the big logo, the self referential copy, and it was great, but, and you can see people's faces changing. One guy especially was like, I mean, it was like, oh.

Bleep de bleep, bleep bleep. I, I, I'm doing the bleep because I know, uh, sometimes people listen to this in the car, uh, with children. Hello children. Uh, but I could see his face literally changed in front of me. He was having one of those Oh, no moments because his own website. Did exactly the same thing. Uh, and having, like I say, done this a fair few times now, there's always someone in the room having that moment.

And in fact, I'll never forget one time I was in the beautiful part of New Zealand, actually this beautiful setting and this incredible hotel. We were talking about it, we pulled up an accountant's websites, right? And you can picture this in your mind. Top left of that website was the logo from that accounting company, and it was a huge logo.

It took quite a bit of the screen, if I'm honest with you. And then we went into the hero, um, which was carousel images, and they were beautifully shot images, but guess what? They were images of, the first photo was a picture of the outside of their building. And guess what was on their building? Massively.

Yes. You've got it right. Their logos. We had a, I, I guess they just had their logo redone. They were very proud of it. But it was you, you know, you had had it on the top left and then you had a big picture of their building with a big picture of their logo, uh, as the hero image. I mean, that was a bit OTT, but it was a carousel.

So then you let it slide to the next image. And guess what? That was? That was a picture of their business cards. Which was predominantly the logo, right? I'm not making this up. I genuinely am not, and. There was like three or four photos, the business cards, stationary, all the things that had, they'd got their new logo on and then all of the copy was about them underneath, you know, established in 1972 and all that sort of nonsense.

And I was just like, this is brilliant. I wish I'd bookmarked it 'cause I can't remember which side it was. Um, and I'm curious to see if it's still the same, and I've always remembered that because it's so into themselves thinking, isn't it? It would, it's. They didn't do that because they're trying to turn people off.

They did that because they're proud of their new branding. They probably spent a lot of money on it. They were proud of it and they actually thought, this is probably gonna help us win customers. They didn't put it on their website thinking, well this is gonna turn people off. Is it our shiny new logo? Um, but.

It does not speak the customer's language, right? You'll have been sites like this yourself and I, like I say, I pick on accountants because it was my degree, uh, and I apologize to all the accountants out there. Um, it's, it's just an, an easy, easy target. I'm very sorry. Now, the interesting thing, right? When you look at this, if you go to a website of a more established brand.

The more established their brand is, the smaller their logo gets.

Go and have a look at Apple's website, their logo's. Tiny. Same on Nikes, right? Or Nike, depending on how you pronounce it, because they've realized quite quickly that this is not about them Now. Contrast this with my own first website, which was ironically for my accounting and bookkeeping company.

This, this was back in the day when, uh, flash was a thing. If you, if you go back and you know far enough in the internet and you remember those days where flash animation absolutely was this incredible thing that added animation to our website. And so my homepage was literally, I shouldn't admit this, should I?

It was literally my company logo spinning around. It's sort of, it was two halves of the logo coming together and then spinning around. That was it. That was the homepage. And it's like, I thought that would just wow people over because I thought it was amazing. I thought technically it was great spinning logos.

It was trendy. It was like everything, right? I thought it was the highest sophistication. Um. It's funny when you look back, isn't it? I thought it was the coolest thing, uh, ever on the internet. And it maybe, maybe it was. I don't think it was, but I thought it was. Uh, but I was so wrong, wasn't I? Um, but that's what our default thinking is.

Maybe your whole homepage is not your logo, your branding, um, but I think there's this subtle underlying. Idea that in our marketing, in our copy and what we do, we try and make everything about us rather than about this story overlap. And as we mature, I think we learn to shrink our logo and grow the customer's story.

I think that's one of the things that happens as we mature in marketing. Lemme take a quick aside here. Now stay with me 'cause it does connect, right? But there's something I wanted to draw in here, which might sound a bit odd. I have done the Lee Childs, he wrote the Jack Ridge series, James Patterson, he's another thriller writer, and Harlan Cobin.

All three of those prolific thriller authors have done. Courses, online courses, and I have done all of them. And I have a theory, right, that I think everyone in e-commerce should do them too. Now I'm not on commission. Maybe I should be. Um, I, and it's not because I think you should become a novelist. I mean, if, you know, have added, if you want to do that, send me the book.

What I learned by doing those courses was in some respects, more than I ever learned in all the marketing courses. Because I understood for the first time story structure. And what story is. And how to tell story better. Which I think makes us better at communicating with our customers.

A really simple example, um, from the Lee Childs course, the guy that wrote Jack Reach novels, I learned about creating suspense right through showing the effect before the cause. So you take this really. Boring example. Okay.

Donny spilled his coffee, and had to change his shirt.

A really simple sentence, and whilst it's informative, it contains not really any surprise.

Other thing you might go, well, why did he spill his coffee? But if I just change that sentence around slightly and start with,

Donny had to change his shirt. Because he s spillt coffee over it. Now you see there's a micro mystery. So the reader's now leaning in wondering, well, why does Donnie need to change his shirt?

And then I tell them, and actually the secret to story, that suspense is basically right there. It's showing an event and revealing the why later. It's like you, you're giving the customer the question why, and then leading them on of an adventure to find the answer right. And here's why that matters for this thing called the story overlap.

It's how the brain leaves in. It's how curiosity pulls people forward, right? And we can use that to pull customers into the narrative, into the story. This story overlap the narrative that they care about, the one that they want to lean into because it's their own. And this overlap is where we take our story and make it feel like their story.

Because that's what good storytelling is all about. Lee Childs talks about he wants to be Jack Reacher, and he just tells that story on paper. So we all want to be Jack Reacher. Well, maybe not all of us, but you get what I'm saying. So bringing that idea then into e-commerce is a really quick and obvious example of this story.

Overlap in action. Um, probably overused, but you'll get the point. When Apple launched the iPod in 2001, everybody was talking about specs. This has got a five gigabyte hard drive. This has got fire y connectivity. This is an ultra portable MP three player. All very true, all very informative, all very accurate.

But Apple turned around and said, ah, this is 1000 songs in your pocket. Might not have had the biggest hard drive, might not have had the best specs, but they understood how to talk the language of the customer. Five gigabytes of memory. Well, that's Apple's story. That's maybe the feature that we've added to it, right?

It's the technical achievement, but 1000 songs in your pocket is actually that overlap. That's the customer story, and it's what they actually want, right? I didn't know what five gigabytes meant, but I met, I understood a thousand songs in my pocket, and that meant my music was everywhere easily without carrying a whole bunch of CDs or tapes.

If you go back far enough, right? It's what we understood to understand how many songs a gigabyte could carry you needed to do maths. And the genius, right, is that both statements describe the same product, the five gigabyte or the 1000 songs in your pocket. But one operates in the overlap and the other Doesn'ts and Steve Jobs, I think had this real talent, um, to do this well.

He had this clear in his mind, didn't he? Months before they named the thing and he pulled when he does a demonstration and he pulls it out of his pocket, uh, his gene's pocket at the keynote, and he says, the iPod, 1000 songs in your pocket. That's the overlap. That's where the message lands. Now this principle doesn't stop at product descriptions.

As I said, it applies everywhere. Uh. Especially where our brand meets our customer, let's, is we call them touchpoints, right? It applies to all our touch points. Take landing pages, for example, are they about us? Or are they about the customer's problem? Our homepage, is it a brochure about our company or a gateway to solving customer's problems?

And even our about page, which by the way is consistently in the top five, most visitors visited pages on any e-commerce website even that should ultimately be. About the customer. We use phrases like we exist because right, which leads straight into the customers story. We exist to solve this problem for you.

And a tactic that I found really helpful over the years. Which you may or may not wanna rob is simply to keep an eye on the Netflix sites. I think they're really good at the at headlines, at mastering, right? So their headline currently is, if you're not logged in

Unlimited Movies, TV Shows, and More. Watch Anywhere. Cancel anytime.

There's not a single we in site, there's no mention of their streaming technology. There's no mention of their content library other than it's got the word unlimited. Uh, there's no, no founding story. It's just what the customer wants. They want content, they want freedom, and they don't want any risk.

Right. And over the years, I've noticed with Netflix a formula underneath how it writes its headlines, which I think is quite clever. Um, it consists of three things, okay? And you can steal these for your headlines on your own e-com sites.

It consists of a verb. It consists of an object and it consists of something I call the sexiness factor.

Oh, yes. Now, uh, if you think for Netflix, the ideal verb is always watch, right? To watch. That's what you do with Netflix. You watch the object. Whereas movies and TV shows, that's what I get to watch, right? That's the object. But FRAs is like unlimited anywhere, anytime. That's the sexiness factor. That's what makes it really interesting, right?

That's the formula. And the cool thing about that formula is it operates entirely inside the story overlap, which is why it works. And this isn't just for big brands as well. We see this all the time. There's um, a small denim company in Wales. They come up on my Instagram feed every now and again. I've noticed them.

Um. They, they, they're just, they just make handmade jeans. We make the best jeans, not the most jeans. Um, and it's sort of, they, they talk in this language of the customer's story about craft and reviving traditions and something that's made with care that actually lasts because that sits in the intersection, doesn't it?

It's not about them. It's not about their craftsmen, it's about me buying something of quality. And that's how you tell the story. So the question is, could we describe what we offer with that Netflix formula? What would it look like, uh, for our brands? Yeah. So every touch point where our brand meets our customer is an opportunity to operate in this overlap or miss it entirely, like I said, right?

This is the option that we have. And when I started out at Jersey Beauty Company, we shipped everything out in Jiffy bags going back a long time, okay? And we did that because everybody else did that. Um, uh, one top tip, if you haven't done it already. Go and buy whatever products you sell from all your competitors' websites, your main competitors.

Go buy it from them. Check out their website. Check out the checkout process. How's it delivered? What curries do they use? What boxes or bags or how does it come? How's it delivered? How do you feel about that? Um, does it reflect what you do? All these kind of things, right? And we did that. We bought a bunch of stuff and everyone was shipping 'em in Jiffy bags.

Let's ship everything out in Jiffy bags. 'cause that's the tried and true method. It was quick and it was cheap. Um. Excuse me. It was the standard operating procedure, uh, procedure. Procedure. Um, and we started getting feedback from customers about damaged outer boxes. Now you gotta think this, these are beauty products.

The beauty products sit in a cardboard box, and the cardboard box was set in the Jiffy bag, and the customers were starting to feel disappointed before they'd even opened the product because the packaging, the outer packaging had got damaged in these envelopes. Now. At first, I was literally like, dude, just get over it because you're taking the beauty product out of that box, and that box is going in the trash in the bin like two seconds later, right?

It's just something you would literally throw away. And at first I didn't quite understand why they were complaining about that, but then I realized, because when I go to the supermarket, right? If I'm buying a 10 of beans. I'm not buying the tin of beans. It's been dented. I'm just not, I'm, it's just, it's the same reason that supermarkets throw around 50 million tons of perfectly good produce, uh, in the trash every year.

And just, and that's in Europe alone, right? Every year. And they do that because it doesn't look right. And there's actually a name in marketing psychology for this. Uh, I think it was

Louis Cheskin who called it, "Sensation Transference".

These names, I just love them.

Sensation Transference. This is where people transfer their feelings about the packaging onto the product itself.

And he proved this with Seven Up, right, which is, um, he did some experience from same drink, different colored can, and people actually thought the flavor changed because the color of the can had changed. The packaging is the product. The customer's mind. And so I had to get over myself and stop applying what I thought was sensible logic 'cause it's not right.

And so to stop the damaged outer boxes we sw to, we sw, we switched. I dunno what's going on with my speech today. Uh, we switched to shipping products out in strong brown boxes. And this resolved the problem. So when you got the products, the outer box that protected the product, uh, boxes on the inside, so they never came damaged.

You still threw 'em away a few seconds later, but there wasn't that transference, uh, onto the product itself because of damaged packaging. Okay. But then we had this insight, which I've talked about before on the show, which changed everything. Um, again. Our customers weren't buying beauty products again, we needed to understand their story.

Okay. What was their story when buying our product? Well, they were buying a gift for themselves, a treat. Um, it was their special thing, if you like. And once we understood that we had our story overlap, not one person was thinking to themselves, I need 200 milliliters of a moisturizer. Because that's not how their brains were wired, right?

They were thinking, I deserve something nice today. I want something nice for my skin that's gonna make my skin look and feel great. And that insight changed how we did everything at the company, including the packaging. So we started to wrap the order in tissue paper so that the unboxing felt like you were unwrapping a gift.

We added popcorn packaging material actual. Popcorn itself, not just little bits of polar styrene and all that sort of stuff, but popcorn itself because it was biodegradable. It was fun. It was sustainable, and customers love that. They started posting about that on social media.

And actually research shows that customers who have a positive unboxing experience are 50% more likely.

I want you to really understand that number. They are 50% more likely to do a repeat purchase if the unboxing experience was positive, right?

That's insane, and

about 40% of them will share it on social media if the packaging feels special.

Remember that whole transference thing? Right. Our packaging had to become remarkable in the sort of Seth Godin sense.

It had to become something worth remarking about, and then we went deeper. We knew our customers were being bombarded by thousands of manipulated beauty images every day. Right? Estimates range. Check this out that you will see between 4,000 and 10,000 marketing messages a day. A day, ladies and gentlemen.

That is nuts. Now, we may only consciously notice about a hundred of them, but the beauty industry specifically, when you looked at these messages, I thought that they were relentless and they were all saying the same thing. And I was in this industry and the message that you perpetually received from beauty was you are not good enough.

Um, you are. Ugly. And you need this product to make you beautiful in essence. Right. Give somebody a headache and sell them the aspirin. And that's what we did in the beauty industry. So we, we had a salon at the time, a beauty salon, right? And I, I asked the staff to bring from that salon. I just, I just got annoyed with it one day and I asked the staff to bring.

All the pictures we were using in the salon, right? Uh, the posters, the magazines, everything, the marketing material, everything that had an image of a person on, usually a lady. Um, and then I said, listen, let's keep any photograph, any posted, any image that is not digitally manipulated or enhanced in any way.

I'm not talking about brightening. Or any of that sort of stuff, you know, to, I'm talking about an image where skin wasn't perfectly smooth, where, you know, eyes weren't maybe widened slightly. Do you know what I mean? All that sort of stuff people do to digitally alter images, the filters, um, that everyone is so quick to add to them.

And you know what? By the time we'd understood what it was we wanted to throw away, we wanted actually natural organic photographs. Do you know how many we kept from a beauty salon? Out of all the hundreds we took down, not a single one, not one genuine unaltered image of a real person was in our entire salon.

So I, we threw them all away. Uh, and we replaced the magazines with time, photo books, um, time do these books where they just show, um, portraits of people from all over the world from. Um, all different cultures and tribes and skin tones, and they're just beautiful. Uh, and so we just replaced them with those and the customer feedback was immediate, right?

There was something different about this place. Now they would say, you know, something like that. We didn't tell them what we do. They didn't even figure out what we'd done, but they felt the whole place had changed. So we did the same thing on the website as well, right? We took all of this out because it was important.

It was important to me. So from my story's point of view, the reason why this was important to me was because I have a daughter and I understand my role as a dad was to teach her what beauty really is. Not to tell her that she wasn't beautiful, not to tell her that she wasn't good enough. So there was a, there was a personal mission, I suppose, from me in, in all of this.

'cause my daughter was young at the time, but also I understood that from a customer's point of view, I don't think they wanted to be told it either. And this was our overlap and this was our mission. And this is, uh, this is where we hit. So we understood that customers wanted to actually treat themselves and take care of their beauty, but they didn't want to be constantly told that they weren't beautiful and that they weren't good enough.

And so we didn't tell them that. And that was our story overlap. Everything we built, the packaging, the imagery, the messaging, the salon experience, everything then came out of that intersection and it had a huge impact. So what about you? How do you actually find your overlap? I think it comes down to three simple steps.

Okay.

Step number one, you're gonna define your brand story in one paragraph.

And I don't mean your history or your awards, I mean your why. Why does your company exist? Why do you believe. What you are fighting for and use emotive language, not corporate speak. Don't use the word integrity and tell me what it means to you.

Right? Don't say increasing shareholder value. Use something real. Um, I liked, uh, the phrase, we came ultimately with the phrase:

Happy. Remarkable. You. We just love this. We were about. Um,

enriching people's lives, telling people that they were remarkable. It was, it was a really good mission we could all get behind.

And of course, if you are sitting there thinking, Matt, I can't even articulate my brand story yet, that's completely fine. Uh, we, we've all been there. Let's be real. Right? Uh, and it might be easier to start with step two, um, and see what comes out of that. Okay? Uh, step two's, uh, is your customer reviews.

We're gonna look at customer reviews and a few other bits and bobs, um, bits and bobs is the technical term for it as well. Uh, so maybe doing that first is gonna help you. So let's look at

step two, uh, map your customer's story, okay? And there are

a few ways to do this. One exercise I love is to do what

I call image buckets, which is where you're gonna gather 15 to 20 images that visually represent your ideal customer's world, right?

I do this in keynotes. You can use whatever piece of software you like. I have keynote on my left screen, I have Google, uh, image search on the right hand screen, and I'll just scroll images. Um, and I will drag them across to Keynote. The images are gonna represent their morning routine, their workspace, their aspirations, their frustrations, their visual clues, all those kind of things that what you want to reveal.

Insights. Okay. So. Um, you'll start to notice things like fonts. There'll be consistency of fonts, consistency of colors, uh, clothing, what color are they wearing, and what type of materials is it? What geometric shapes are involved. You're starting to pick up on all these subtle cues because if I'm doing a website aiming at someone in their twenties, it's gonna look different to someone aiming in their forties.

I don't necessarily need a big brand agency to help me do that. I just literally need half an hour with Keynote and Google Images and I can pick out from those images. Everything that I need. And it might feel, it might feel a little bit abstract, but it's a really worthwhile exercise to do.

The other thing you can do is start, um, is to do, sorry,

a review mining exercise.

And I quite like this. Um, and this is super concrete,

right? Uh, this is where you just literally go and copy. All of your customer reviews on a product or about you as a company, you're gonna want a mix of five star or three star or one star reviews, and you are gonna look for why people buy, um, not just what they buy, but you wanna look at why they buy.

You want to understand what words they use, what emotions come through, what do they mention that maybe you didn't expect? What phrases, these are all wonderful things because that's your overlap language. That's all the stuff that you can use. You know the stuff that they say that connects with what you are wanting to do.

Well that's gold right there 'cause it bridges your story and theirs. And so, like I say, with with Jersey, the insight about buying a gift for themselves came from understanding the motivations from the reviews. We did this review mine exercise, and this was where that whole idea came from. We weren't guessing, we were just reviewing the reviews, if that makes sense.

Reviewing the reviews.com, uh, you can sign up to that service anyway. The good news is, of course, um, AI can make really short work of this. Now, you can just literally copy all of this into AI and give it to you. And I'll talk about, uh, this month's freebie with the prompts in just a second, which is gonna help you even more, uh, do this.

So once you've done that,

step number three is find and articulate the overlap.

So for me, I just literally draw a Venn diagram, okay? So my story on one side, the customer story on the other side. Put in those things and then understanding what the intersection is all about. What do you believe that your customer also believes?

What do you care about that your customer also cares about? So with Jersey, it was obvious, right? I cared about authentic beauty. They cared about authentic beauty. We were both rejecting, manipulated images. Maybe I had the ability to see those more, and maybe I had the responsibility to get rid of those more.

Um, both of us believed people were remarkable. Um. Should be celebrated, not downtrodden. Right? And so we wrote that overlap in a single sentence and it became the very foundation of what we created. And it was that phrase I mentioned, happy, remarkable you. Um, and it was a wonderful thing. So. They're the three things you do, your story, customer story, and what's the overlap.

And of course this is a solo episode, so you should be getting used to this by now for you're regular to the show. And of course if you're not, you are new to the show. Very warm. Welcome to you. When I do these solo episodes and I'm not talking to a guest, I like to give you a workbook. Yes, I do, because. I should probably stop calling them workbooks.

Thinking about it, it's not really great language for you, is it? Uh, maybe I should call it, uh, profit enhancing exercises

also. P I'm just losing it now. Um. But we've got the story, uh, overlap workbook, um, that walks you through these three steps, right? It's got the Venn diagram templates, and of course, being ai, I've given you the prompts that I use now in ai. Before we used to all have to do this, and it would take days and days.

Now you can do it in a matter of, you know, an hour or two. With ai, uh, it's just a wonderful thing. So you've got the prompts for mining your customer reviews. Um, there's even prompts you can use for the image buckets exercise. If you find extracting images a bit too abstract, that will ai can give you the kind of images that it thinks you would see if you did that exercise.

It's not as good, I don't think, but you can do it. That may be helpful. It also might help you, um, search for images along the right track. Of course the download is entirely free. Um, and the link is in the description below. Or you can just go to eCommerce Podcast dot net, click on the resources link and look for the story overlap.

Uh, and you will find that there. Now the story overlap, right? This isn't just about copy, as I've mentioned. This is an important point. It applies everywhere to. Um, every touch point where your brand and the customer intersect. So with Jersey, we learned it wasn't just about the copy we put on the website, but it included the Jiffy bags and transforming those into the brown box and transforming the brown box into a GIF box.

It included the salon experience where we replaced the manipulated images with real photos of real people. It included every visual element on our website, every photograph in our marketing, and even. Um, how we developed our own skincare range that sort of all came out of it. And this principle, I think, carries through what I call the Slingshot framework.

The framework which underwrites everything, um, to running a successful e-comm business. We're gonna be learning more about this as we go along, uh, over the coming year. A lot of good stuff coming out, so make sure you stay connected with us on that. Okay. And it applies to, so the story overlap, sorry, applies to how we sell, how we market, how we optimize, the experience we create, how we grow, all of it.

Super, super important. So let me bring all of this together. Okay. The key takeaway from today is this, our brand messaging. Only matters and is really only effective in the story overlap. If you find that story overlap, everything becomes clearer. Your copy, your packaging imagery, customer experience.

Everything becomes clearer, so make sure you get the workbook or the profit enhancing, what did I call it? The profit enhancing, uh, experience. Like p whichever title you prefer, right? Um, pull that out and start working through the exercises and find that. Language for you that, that sliver, um, because it's gonna have a remarkable impact on your business.

Yes, it is. Hopefully you've got some good stuff out of this. Like I say, more good stuff coming as we go through the Slingshot framework over the coming months. Uh, but that's it for this week. Let me know how you get on with the workbook. Thanks so much for listening. It's been an absolute joy and privilege to, uh, I, I really am enjoying.

Um, these solo episodes, I'm not gonna lie, I, I love talking to guests and we still do the guests. Obviously, three out of four episodes is all about the guests. But preparing these photo episodes really is challenging for me because I have to think about the frameworks and how to communicate them in a way that makes sense.

How do I get things outta my head, which is really, really helpful. Um, and I've really been enjoying them. So thank you for allowing me to do these. Thank you for listening to me as we go through them. Um, I just love e-comm and helping you guys, uh, get better at it is just a real joy and privilege. Um, if you would like to know more about working with.

Me,

we have something called Cohort, which are also free groups by the way.

You can come join co Cohort where there are other eCommerce, and we are all trying to figure out this eCommerce journey and story together. Um, we would love to see you in that's entirely free. Do come, um, and join us. It's on Zoom.

It's once a month. Um, it's really, really good. People are loving it. Some great testimonies coming out of it. Some really good stuff actually, which we'll put on the site soon. But you can find out more about Cohort at eCommerce Podcast dot net slash Cohort. Um, you'll find a form there which enables you to sign up.

And I think if memory serves me correctly, a memory could be playing tricks on me. I, I, I don't hold me to this, but I think. Um, in this week's newsletter, the newsletter that we send out every week, uh, attached to the eCommerce Podcast will be Tina's story from the Cohort. So go check out Tina, um, at tile.co uk and um, yeah, I think, I think that's it from me.

Thank you so much for joining us. Have a fantastic week wherever you are in the world, I'll see you next. Bye for now.