The subtitle of this book (“Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing”) gives a hint about its purpose: how to appeal to your prospective customers. While the book can be enjoyed by any small business owner, the information is a bit more sophisticated than the usual “here’s some simple ways to improve your business’ marketing”.

The authors have developed Persuasion Architecture™ which attempts to overcome the traditional obstacles to connecting with your customers:

1. Uncovery : Identifying the key benefits for your customer.
2. Wireframing : The steps of the marketing “experience”.
3. Storyboarding : The mock-ups of the marketing experience.
4. Prototyping : The “final” marketing pieces.
5. Development : Ensuring that the prototype matches the wireframe experience.
6. Optimization : Measuring the results and refining the message.

Persuasion Architecture attempts to figure out all the different ways a prospective customer would need information, and provide it to them ahead of time. They’ve extended the traditional business school model of AIDA (Attention -> Interest -> Desire -> Action) to AIDAS (Attention -> Interest -> Desire -> Action -> Satisfaction), since satisfaction is what generates word-of-mouth mentions.

For me, the best parts of the book were chapter fifteen (“Personas” – which described the different filters people use to get information) and chapter 20 (“The Human Operating System” – which described the basic 4 ways people ask questions).

The key points about personas:

• Topology: How is your product used? What are the competitors? How did people solve the problem before your product came about?
• Psychographics: How do different people behave (based on lifestyle and personality profile)
• Demographics: Where are our customers and what do they look like?
• Empathy: How can you “do for others as they would like it done to them?”

The 4 ways people ask questions:

• Methodical: focus on HOW (“What are the details? What’s the fine print?”)
• Spontaneous: focus on WHY or WHEN (“How can you get me to what I need quickly? Do you offer superior service?”)
• Humanistic: focus on WHO (“How will your product or service make me feel? Who are you? Can I trust you?”)
• Competitive: focus on WHAT (“What are your competitive advantages? What are your credentials?”)

I would have liked to see some specific step-by-step examples of applying the Persuasion Architecture to existing businesses (rather than identifying some businesses that use a feature or two of the process). Nonetheless, the book can serve as a good checklist for developing (or improving) your marketing strategy.

Unscrewed: The Consumer’s Guide To Getting What You Paid For (by Ron Burley) provides some strong tactics for resolving customer service problems where you know you’re in the right. It’s a great way to learn how to market your needs to an organization, guerrilla marketing, and also how to improve your own business’s customer service.

Ron drew upon his background as a broadcast journalist to create 5 key strategy principles:

1. The Principle (“A company will do only what is in its financial self-interest”). Therefore, if you have a problem, you need to show the company that satisfying your needs is in their best interest.
2. The Purpose (“The purpose is to reclaim money, assets, or equity while minimizing time and effort”). It’s not about getting (emotionally) even, it’s simply a business transaction.
3. The Promise (“It will cost much more to ignore me than to take care of me, and I am willing to spend an unlimited amount of tie and energy to get what I’m due”). You’ll be making yourself into a nuisance for the expressed purpose of ensuring other consumers won’t become victimized.
4. The Power Tools (“Technologies that you use to leverage your position with your opponent”).
5. The Plan (“…is designed to recover what you are due; it includes an acceptable goal, adversary research, a specific strategy, and an honest assessment of the situation”). The plan matches the situation with your resources to get the result you’re after.

Each of his strategies are based on an in-your-face little-crazy approach. If you threaten a business person with a lawsuit, bodily harm, or to damage their reputation, you’ve eliminated the opportunity for a quick resolution. Instead, you call upon your Free Speech Rights to tell people about your true story. A zealot is hard to ignore.

Each strategy is detailed using a real-life story. He gives a background to the problem, his solution, the result, and an examination of the specific of why exactly the solution worked.

Stories have the power to ignite, educate, unify, lead, share values, and focus attention. We’re born to tell and listen to stories. Why are we shy to use them to help us in business?

While I’ve already written of how to tell your marketing story, Stephen Denning writes about organizational storytelling. His book is a fable showing how can you use a story to help you inside your business.

Next time you’re tempted to use a PowerPoint slide show or present information for your business, consider instead crafting a story. It will no doubt take you longer to prepare your story, but the results can be dramatic. No glazed eyes staring at handouts or screens. Instead, people will be focused on you, listening and imagining.

The book’s story focuses around a squirrel company that needs to change its business model. It has been a company that helps squirrels bury nuts. But one visionary in the company wants the company to instead help squirrels store nuts. How the visionary learns to convince their peers, their boss, and eventually the board is the fable.

The book lists the high-value forms of organizational storytelling, so you can match the right type of story to achieve a certain result. Here’s a brief synopsis:

1. To spark action
   • The story must be true and focuses on a positive outcome
   • Have people say: “Just think..” or “Just imagine…”
2. To build trust
   • Reveal some true strength/vulnerability from your past
   • Have people say: “I didn’t know that about you”
3. To transmit values
   • Describe how leadership did something before
   • You must walk the talk
   • Have people say: “That’s clearly the right way…”
4. To get people to work together
   • Tell a story that others can relate to
   • Have people say: “That reminds me…”
5. To neutralize gossip
   • Commit to tell the truth, but show the humor in the situation
   • Have people question the gossip
6. To share knowledge
   • Tell the problem, setting, solution, and explanation
   • Have people say: “We need to keep on eye on that…”
7. To lead people
   • Describe a positive outcome about the future
   • Have people say: “When do we start?”

If you don’t feel comfortable telling stories to people, join a public speaking club to exercise your story-telling muscles (or take an improvisational acting class). Remember that you’re not trying to get people to buy tickets to hear you speak (yet) – you’re just trying to learn a new tool to communicate ideas with others.