Why do you think your Company Story is still crucial, despite all the marketing automation we can use today?
What do you think?
Why is Your Story, and your purpose, your mission so important for the survival and the success of your business?
It is pretty straightforward, actually …
Your story is what distinguishes your business, your products or services from all of the competition.
Your story is what focuses you, what pulls you forward, what motivates you, and what makes you hugely successful. I’ll give you a great example in a minute but before I do I just want to briefly introduce myself to you.
My name is Karl zu Ortenburg and I have been helping people on the Internet with their marketing and marketing automation for over 12 years. I have worked with entrepreneurs and multi-million dollar companies and for most of them, their story made a difference. If you have any questions feel free to give me a call, send me an email, or connect via chat on this website.
Now let's get back to the business example that I mentioned.
Maybe you have heard about FLEX Watches: it is a company that produces watches with a twist or actually with a story:
The story is that if you buy a watch you also support a charity because 10% of your money goes to the charity.
You can choose which charity you want to support by choosing the color of the watch.
It's a great story and it's the company's purpose and it distinguishes them from other watchmakers.
Flex Watches started really successful they made over $500,000 in 2011 and $979,000 in 2012. But in 2013 they lost $200,00 and turnover almost halved. In the following year, they again lost almost $80,000 and in the fifth year, they lost $34,000 putting the company in debt.
Why did this happen?
Why did the company go from being pretty successful to losing money?
When Flex Watches became successful, retailers told them to produce watches for hire prices and they did. But these watches didn’t have anything to do with their original purpose anymore.
They were rushed into production, and they lost their original features, meaning one color for supporting one charity. Basically, these watches started to look like any other watch.
They just left their original branding behind. Their branding and their story AND the reason why their customers had bought from them in the first place.
So sales plummeted …
Until ‘the Profit’ stepped in …
You might have heard of the CNBC series ‘The Profit’. Basically, the, so called ‘Profit’, Marcus Lemonis stepped in to help.
He quickly pointed out to the Flex team that diverting from their original concept, their story, leaving behind their reason why they had started the company had been their downfall.
Their reason, their cause, had been that the chief of marketing had lost his beloved mum to cancer after years of suffering. Abandoning their reason and leaving their BRAND behind, had taken them from success onto a downward spiral to failure.
So Marcus stepped in and reminded them of their story, their purpose, their mission then got the company back to focusing on telling their original story and focussing production on their original set of watches.
Marcus also called in Russell Brunson to put their story on their website and into their sales funnel. Russell is a really professional at designing sales funnels and did a great job by connecting website visitors instantly with the company's purpose.
Russell also suggested using videos. These videos allowed to personalize the company, its purpose and the charities at a deeper emotional level.
As you probably know ‘personalization’ today is one of the key components of great storytelling and often is one of the deciding factors for a successful advertising campaign and the success of a sales funnel. Here are some abbreviated quotes from industry experts about personalization to give you an idea about its importance:
“Personalization is one of the best things since email marketing. […] you’ll see your conversion rates skyrocket [and] all industries experience a lift in conversion rates when personalization is applied.” Sean Si, CEO of Qeryz
“Some industry publications and research point to a 12% increase in conversion through personalization or 16% increase when using real time personalization. Anuraag Mohan, Head of Search, Optimization and Personalization at Telstra
“If you are a woman in the US and were shown men’s watches and offered free shipping in the UK, would that be as appealing as seeing watches for women and free US shipping? […] I believe website personalization will be a game changer.” Jason Quey, Cofounder of Decibite
“People want a customized experience and if you can provide it you will generate more sales. That’s also where conversion optimization softwares are heading in which they will help you personalize your website.” Neil Patel, Co-Founder of Crazy Egg
“I’m a big fan of website personalization and [the] personalized experience leads to a higher conversion rate on landing pages and a more engaged audience.” Irina Jordan, Director of Inbound Marketing at Fanatics Media
The example of Flex Watches really shows that if you want more business and sales you need to emphasize your story, which makes your business more personal.
And as you know, “People buy from people, not from companies”.
Use your story in your Sales Funnel, too, as Russell pointed out to Flex Watches and you will see that your Sales Funnel and your business will become much more successful. So much so that you can get to the point where your sales funnel starts to break even, which really is the minimum goal for any sales funnel.
Breaking even can mean that if you spend $100 for advertising you will make at least $100 in sales from that funnel. Which also means that you are getting new customers for free! And once you have reached the ‘break-even’ milestone, you most probably can get the funnel to become rather profitable for you.
Which means that when you invest $100 in advertising you get back $110 or $150 or more, which again means you can scale your business and generate profits almost at will.
Here is a tip on how to get your funnel to improve quickly: You probably know how important videos have become. and we use videos in our sales funnel to a great extent.
Why?
With a video you can tell your story much more lively than with text and some images only, it instantly personalizes your online presence and it creates trust the fastest way I know.
When people come to us for help with their Internet marketing 80% to 90% of them do not know what their story is, their purpose, their mission. And I can relate to that. If you are already clear about your story and your purpose you are in luck and I can only advise you to use your story in almost all your marketing. If you don't know what your purpose is I understand.
I didn't know my purpose for quite some time and I even did a Tony Robbins seminar to find my purpose. Now don’t get me wrong Tony Robbins is a great guy and when you get the chance to do one of his seminars do it, they are great.
I even walked on hot coals, and did without burning my feet 🙂 (And I also didn't pause for selfies …) It was amazing but let’s leave that story for another day.
In the seminar, I was asked to go back to my childhood days to find something that would show me my purpose anything that could have triggered a purpose. Most of the other participants were delighted and upbeat but I couldn’t remember a thing from my childhood that could have triggered my purpose.
Null, nada, silch 🙁
So, when I was asked to share about my purpose I kind of had to make something up and hoped it would work for me.
But it didn’t.
It just didn’t motivate me and I kept looking for my purpose. Then one day I just got that my purpose had been in front of me for quite some time.
My purpose wasn't triggered by a voice from heaven or an incident in my childhood, my purpose it got triggered by statistics.
Yes, STATISTICS!
What was that stat?
When I was at London Business School for my Sloan Masters degree one of the professors showed us this statistic that of all startups large or small, 90% go out of business over the course of 20 years.
I was shocked and thought long about all the hard work lost, all the sorrows, marriages breaking up, money lost, the amount of people being miserable added to the majority of Americans—52.3%—who are unhappy at work (according to a report by the Conference Board.)
So I made it my mission to bring the number down of businesses going bust and helping businesses to succeed using my online marketing skills. My purpose has become to make more businesses successful especially with helping them to build a system that generates business leads and assists in converting those leads into customers, and therefore make more people successful and happy, simply because I believe that when people do what they love in life it's better for them and it's better for the people around them and better for the people around those and so on. So that is my story, my purpose, my mission.
What’s yours?
Have you chosen one and are you using it in your marketing, in your ads, in your sales funnel?
If not, start immediately and you might see an increase in business, profits and your ROI. And by the way, when you are in touch with your purpose, and actively using it, things get easier and become more fun since your best potential customers and clients will relate to your story and you will work with more customers and clients who are right for you and your business.
As for Flex Watches, by the end of the TV episode, they had gone back to their original story and branding of 10 colors, 10 charities. With a new and improved $55 watch, Flex Watches secured a partnership with global retailer Flip Flop Shops and went from success to success thereafter.
To summarize: when you are using your story, your purpose, your mission in your marketing it helps to distinguish your business your products, your services from the competition!
Your story personalizes what you do and offer and since people buy from people, you will most certainly see your profits rise and your ROI increase.
Go and watch the Flex Watch ‘The Profit’ episode on CNBC (US), or on YouTube. it's amazing to see the rebirth of Flex Watches.
And let me know how you get on.
If you have questions, just put them below or give me a call in the office, send me an email at customer.service[at]a-m-i-ltd.com, or try our chat tool on the website. When you are (re-)applying your story, your purpose, your mission to your marketing, let me know what happened.
I would love to know and it might inspire others, too …
If you want to try Russell’s marketing automation, sales funnel software free that was mentioned in the CNBC video and which we also use to build sales funnels just click here.
And if you want to get a free plan for your business how you, too, can consistently attract leads to your business and convert them into customers, click here.
When you click, you will first get to a page that explains in more detail how your business could benefit from such a free plan, then you come to a questionnaire where we ask you some simple questions to understand your business better. We then set up a free call where we develop the lead generation and conversion plan for your business, completely free.
I am looking forward to speaking with you.
All the best,
Karl
Karl zu Ortenburg
CEO A-M-I, reg. 1996
Lead Generation and Conversion Automation Systems
