Stories Archives

KOGGER_Why we love the power of question

Why we love the power of questions!

May 15, 2019/in Knowledge, Stories /by Oscar Hovland

What can help us to listen more, talk less, create better customer journeys and relationships, engage our audience and make sure our knowledge is shared and finds it’s way to new owners and new ideas?

Questions.

The art of communication

We all know the feeling….

We are prepared and know the customer well.

We’ve got this.

We did our homework and have our message mapped out.

Goal in sight.

But when the meeting ends, disappointment hits us.

The knowledge we so intensely wanted to share with them – stayed with us and didn’t seem to have any effect, even though we had been talking and talking.

What went wrong?

With all that practice, communicating should be easy, right?

Yes – and no.

Talking is easy but creating a dialog where we talk, listen, give relevant responses and share knowledge that is interesting and useful, now that is a challenge – but not impossible.

Learning and perfecting the art of communication is important to all of us. Click To Tweet

Increase customers talk time

By talking less and listening more.

Our goal is for our customers to feel understood and talk to us about what they need, based on their trust in our products, services and solutions.

Do people in general really talk too much? In an article from Nov 22, 2016 written by Chris Orlob at Gong, he refers to a survey that shows the talk/listen ratio of an average sales person. Using AI, they “analyzed recordings of 25.537 business-to-business sales conversations, averaging at 43 minutes per call.

Here are some of the results: the average B2B sales rep spends between 65-75% of a call talking, leaving only 25-35% of the call for listening. In fact, increasing the prospect’s talk time from 22% to 33% significantly boosts win-rates.”

How can we increase a customer’s talk time?

By using questions and giving them time to answer.

Prepared, insightful questions help us define our customers’ needs or challenges, build relationships with them and give us valuable knowledge. By asking instead of telling, we help our customers to reason and own the knowledge we share.

Verbal “gold miners”

We might tend to think: “the way I talk – is the way I talk, and my results are pretty good” and we might be right. But “pretty good”?

Our goal should be: Great!

Using questions is verbal “gold mining”. Click To Tweet

We might have to ask a lot of questions and “dig” before we find “gold” – the answers we’re looking for. By giving others a chance to share their thoughts, there is a greater chance they will remember our conversation, act on it and based on the knowledge they acquire – trust us as a reliable supplier.

Verbally “gold mining” may take longer than just doing most of the talking ourselves but when we hit “gold,” it’s worth it!

Preparation is key

The key to asking more questions and better questions, is preparation.

Who will we be talking to?
What kind of help do they need?
How are they using the tools they have today?
How can they achieve more with what they have?
What challenges do they have?
Which questions will engage them?
How can we use questions to address worries or objections we predict they have, even before they express these themselves? (Marcus Sheridan calls this to vanguard)

Does this mean we should just prepare a long list of questions before having a conversation with a lead or at a customer meeting and plow through them one by one?

No.

It goes without saying that asking a question that only needs a yes or a no as an answer, won’t get the customer talking more. Phrasing questions that demand a longer answer ensures that we talk less, the other person talks more so that valuable information and knowledge can be exchanged.

What do you feel makes your company stand out from others?
Can you help me understand the challenge you are having with….
In which important areas can we help your company?

The high-jacking effect

Today more than ever, customers are searching intensely for knowledge because they want to own details about what they are buying. Why they are buying it, where the best supplier is and what others are saying about what, where and when to buy. So how can we do this?

How can we explain complicated and technical subjects and be sure they are understood?

Ask questions

What is the quickest way to identify your customers pains?

Ask questions.

What is the customers vision and culture?

Ask questions.

How can we get customers to remember and «own» the knowledge we share?

Ask questions.

How can we personalize communication with each customer?

Ask questions.

How can we build trust with customers?

Ask questions.

How can we ensure that our content and services are always relevant and useful to our customers?

Ask questions.

By asking questions when communicating we show sincere interest in meeting our customers where they are. We help them and at the same time increase our chances of them choosing us as their trusted supplier. We love questions and dig for “gold”!

Need some inspiration and help to communicate better to your customers? Feel free to look at our Conductor Workshop or even better, contact us!

//KOGGER

#BTCT!

5 Ways to Improve Your Website

March 12, 2019/in Knowledge, Stories /by Oscar Hovland

For years many marketers thought traditional advertising was the right way to reach customers. Telling them how fantastic a product or service was and how they were the best ones to buy from. Showing them this again and again, in magazines, flyers, commercials and on billboards. The idea was that if they did that, they could

Create a need they didn’t know they had
Force them into remembering who they are because we flooded their space with advertising
Convince them by repetition that this product was the best and there was no need to look further
Make them curious enough that they would contact them to ask for pricing (since they up until that point hid it from them)

Customers could get the impression marketers were thinking:

Customers don’t know what they need
Customers have short memories
Customers don’t care about what other customers think about a product or a service – all they need is a company’s word for it and their convincing
Customers don’t care about pricing – so they don’t mind that it’s hidden from them

No wonder Mark Schaeffer talks about customer rebellions!

A lot has changed – but not everything

Years ago, long before TripAdvisor, our family arrived at a hotel in Spain after booking a 2 week stay at a «5 star» hotel, and to our surprise found a whole family of cock roaches that had booked the same room…and loved it here. We finally got another room, after half of our vacation was ruined – and had no way of warning others not to book here and risk meeting the same cockroach family.

Today that scene has changed. Even though some companies feel tempted to hang on to “the way we have always done it,” our customers are now in charge and want to feel great about every single buying decision. As organizations we have a unique possibility to add to this feeling by using technology to connect, help, build trust, long-lasting great relationships with our customers and amazing customer journeys.

With new technology the buying process has drastically changed, and we are investing in changing with it. But is there anything that hasn’t changed? Yes!

Feelings!

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, said in an interview that his “success lies in basing his company on what isn’t going to change in the next 10 years. Because when you have something that you know is true over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it.”

Our company culture should be based on what we know our customers will still want in 10-15 or even in 20 years.

Low prices, quick delivery, excellent service and a vast variety to choose from (Jeff Bezos)
Doing business with companies that have customer empathy, are transparent, helpful and trustworthy, have extensive knowledge and a smooth, useful customer journey.

These are criteria’s and feelings we can relate and respond to during the whole buying process – even during the first 70% when it’s usually just the customer and search engines.

Search engines don’t have feelings – but they can lead them to websites that do.

How websites can show feelings

Chat function: Shows we are available and easy to get a hold of – a feeling of “Welcome! We are here to help”

Published prices: By publishing prices we show customers that we know and respect that they are looking for prices – We don’t hide anything because we want to gain their trust in us and give them the opportunity to compare our prices to others.

FAQs: Shows we know them well because they can easily find answers to most of their questions or worries and this gives them a feeling of being in control of their own customer journey.

References: Positive references or ratings from our other customers give them reassurance that our company is trustworthy – it always feels better to see someone else that bought and was happy with their decision!

Video: Shows them who we are and gives them a personal connection to us. Seeing a person makes our company more human and personal and our customers get a stronger feeling about who we are.

We want to increase our customers emotional engagement and investment in our company. To achieve that, every kind of technical tool or social media we use to communicate with them, should be used in a way that will improve and strengthen our customer relationships. When they then get to the point where they contact us – they will already know who we are, how we can help them, what others think about us, what our prices are and have most of their questions already answered.

The more transparent we are and the more information we make easily available – the more trust we can build with customers that are unknown to us but that are taking a customer journey at our website. Being transparent and useful is the move from Marketing to Marketfeeling.

Jay Baer, Marketing Keynote Speaker, sums it up beautifully:

“Instead of being amazing – be useful!”

KOGGER has the knowledge, experience and workshops to help you structure and publish content and we want to help you to reach your customers hearts!

//KOGGER

#BTCT

A Little Acronyme Goes A Long Way

January 14, 2019/in Knowledge, Stories /by Tamarah Hovland

Most of us are familiar with acronyms. Using few letters, they can be powerful little messages, easy to understand, remember and meaningful. But how can they be effective in highlighting our company?

When our customers need a product/service or help in solving a problem, we want them to choose our company. To make that happen – we often need to differentiate ourselves. There are numerous ways of doing this, and communication is one of them.

We communicate with our customers daily. Chat, email, sms, video, LinkedIn etc. One of the reasons for communicating on several digital platforms is to create presence, customer relationships and ensure company visibility. This in turn results in our customers getting to know us better – who we are, what we do and how we can help them.

But can just a few letters represent all of that and in addition, inspire our customers and help them to remember us when they need a product, service or help?

Acronyms and acronym mnemonics

Research shows that targeted training, like the use of acronyms or what is also called acronym mnemonics, can improve memory. So, by using a company acronym again and again whenever communicating with our customers on digital platforms we can remind them of who we are.

Here are some examples:

#TGIF – Thank Goodness It’s Friday

Just by looking at those 4 letters, we smile, get the weekend feeling and even maybe dream about sleeping in tomorrow. At the same time, these 4 letters could have another effect.We could start visualizing juicy buffalo wings and perfectly salted fries or a big chocolate milkshake with whipped cream, served by waiters with red and white striped shirts. We can thank Alan Stilman for that visualization. In 1965 he started a new restaurant in New York and gave it a name using an acronym that gave most people a great weekend feeling – TGIFridays. According to Wikipedia, « his first restaurant and all future ones are focused on “casual dining” – restaurants that serve moderately-priced food in a casual atmosphere. » He wanted his customers to have that relaxed «Friday at home » feeling, even though they were eating out. Stilman not only thought of a company acronym that would capture his company’s values, he even implemented it into the company name he created.

Smart man.

#DFTBA – Don’t Forget To Be Amazing

Chris Marr at The Content Marketing Academy uses this well-known acronym whenever communicating to his customers. His use of DFTBA was influenced by seeing a MIM or a quote image and he thought it was cool. So, in 2014 he started using it in signing off his emails and then from there it just grew. A few years ago, after using it for a while, Ann Handley told Chris something he wasn’t aware of, that DFTBA was the rallying cry of Nerd Fighters (the Green brothers). So he contacted Nerd Fighters, told them why he was using this particular acronym and wrote a blog about it where he gave them credit. Today, this acronym is stuck on everything Chris does – podcasts, tweets, workshops, articles, presentations, emails, stickers, videos and anything else he produces and shows to his customers. Chris’s philosophy is to continuously educate and encourage his customers, so they can improve and be the best they can be – To Be Amazing. We know that using a company acronym has been effective for CMA in differentiating them from other voices in their industry, because we now think of Chris, CMA and Amazing, every time we see the acronym DFTBA!

The positive effects of a company acronym

By using a well-chosen acronym when communicating we create a positive consistency in our communication, regardless of the subject. Branding can help customers quickly identify our company, products, and services – using a company acronym, either an existing or custom one, can help others to quickly identify our values, who we are and the core attitude our company is based upon.

The “acronym process”

How can we find an acronym or create one that is positive, captures our company’s values and is easy to remember? One way is to ask some questions, create a list based on the answers and try to rate them.

What is the main value we want to share with our customers? What positives do we want them to think about when seeing our acronym and our company name? When seeing our acronym which words will inspire them in their workspace? Can we capture the core mission of our company in just a few words and create an acronym from these words?

At KOGGER we asked ourselves the above questions and here are some of our answers:

#BTCT – Be Transparent Create Trust!

We encourage our customers to be transparent and we show them how at our workshops. We believe that being transparent in everything we do, creates trust. One of the ways we can show our customers the importance of transparency, is by being transparent ourselves. To us that means, showing our prices on our website, educating and helping them by writing honest useful content on our website and sharing any documentation they need. In addition, we want to be transparent as to the challenges we as a company encounter and how we choose to solve them. This transparency will help us in gaining their trust in us as an honest, reliable source of help. We also hope that our acronym will inspire them to be transparent and create trust and will remind everyone, including ourselves, that this is at the core of everything KOGGER does.

This is how we ended up with BTCT – Be Transparent Create Trust.

A company acronym gives all your customers something in common

It also feels great to give your customers something they can have in common when doing business with you. Chris at CMA was surprised when he experienced that the use of his company acronym had a gathering effect on his customers. They often refer to DFTBA and CMA when they meet at various events or communicate with each other on digital platforms.

What will your company acronym be?

You might be new to the industry with just a few customers, or an “old timer” with numerous customers. Regardless of your company size, by using a positive acronym whenever you communicate with customers or vendors, you are giving them a positive boost and quickly reminding them of who you are and your company values.

So, what will your company acronym be?

We would love to hear from you about your acronym and the story behind it!

//KOGGER

#BTCT!

The Video 6 Methodology

January 7, 2019/in Knowledge, Stories, Tips'n tricks /by Tamarah Hovland

Zachary Basner the Director of Video Training & Strategy at Impact in Hartford, creates video strategies to help teams improve their sales and marketing efforts. Using this non-complicated but yet precise pattern helped us to be more organized when planning video projects.

In one of Zachary’s videos he explains The Video 6 methodology. His simple, but effective, recipe to creating great videos:

Teaser
Logo bumper
Intro
Segments
Call to action
Outro

Based on The Video 6, we made the following list where the thoughts we had about each point was specified. That way we had a clear opinion of what our target was, which content should be included and how this should be conveyed to our viewers. This was really helpful when preparing the content outline and during recording because this list kept us focused on what we were trying to achieve.

Step 1 – Teaser: Who we are, address a common challenge for our customers, concentrate on catching their attention. Atmosphere/feelings: catchy, smiling, create curiosity and a willingness to view the whole video
Step 2 – Logo Bumper: Aimed at a unique logo reveal but wanted to keep the process simple and low cost, so found a website with cool, inexpensive and adaptable, logo reveals at www.renderforest.com. We personalized the one we chose, by changing the colors so they matched the colors of our company logo
Step 3 – Intro: More in depth explanation, in this case The Packaging Workshop. Explain to the point, clear and precise. Atmosphere/feelings: energetic, smiling, create trust in us as advisers.
Step 4 – Segments: Questions/answers – why, how, who, etc. Keep in mind how we want to hold on to the viewers’ attention, by content-variation. Atmosphere/feelings: energetic, varied and interesting, create trust and convey the feeling that this workshop day can be tough but effective, beneficiary and exciting. Implement slides for some of the questions and add sound as the slide changed from video to a question
Step 5 – Call to action: Encourage viewer to contact us, Atmosphere/feelings: welcoming, smiling, eagerly waiting for their call
Step 6 – Outro: Our company logo. Atmosphere/feelings: create positivity to KOGGER by showing them our company acronym: BTCT – Be Transparent Create Trust

Finally, before recording, we changed the setting and lighting for the recording area.

The recording part was still tiring, but noticeably better than the first time. When we were satisfied with the recording, the editing could begin. Besides cutting, we added music, subtitles in English and then we could watch the final result – what a a feeling! Before publishing the new video and replacing the old one, we updated our English and Norwegian website pages.

BE PATIENT

The english poet, Samuel Johnsen, once said “Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance” and when recording videos, we need to have perseverance!

We all want to get it right and create amazing videos. But there is a saying, “Rome wasn’t built in one day”, so we need to have patience.

Take one step at a time and don’t expect perfection but aim at honest, helpful and entertaining.

We can learn a lot from others that have video recording experience, but at the same time we need to use our gut feeling, prepare well, relax and have fun while recording! Last but not least, we need to trust what we know about our customers, be faithful to what our company represents and how we can help our customers and have a more personal relationship with them, by using video as a medium.

The result may not be perfect, but it will sure enough be a whole lot better than if you never tried at all!

Want to make a video but still need some convincing? Take a look at these articles and see if it can get your video “vibes” going!

//KOGGER

#BTCT!

Keep the “Content King” on his “Throne” – Create Videos!

January 2, 2019/in Stories, Tips'n tricks /by Oscar Hovland

The Iranian-American psychologist Albert Mehrabian said, “words account for only 7% of whether a communicator is likeable and the rest is determined by tone of voice, intonation, and body language” – all of which is experienced by watching a video.

Videos convey messages in a powerful way. We know that, you know that – but we tend to think we don’t have the competence, time or the resources.

Attempting something new can be a scary process. No matter how confident we are, most of us have a certain amount of nervousness when doing something we have never done before. Recording, editing and publishing a company video is no exception. You are not only trying to create by using a medium that is totally new to you, but you are even potentially going to share the result with everyone!

If you are anything like us when you first have an idea and want to bring it to life – you want it to happen “yesterday”. You want to know all about what you should do, what you shouldn’t do and the best way of doing it – to get an amazing result.

The “you-can-buy-new-technical-gear”card was too tempting!

In my wife’s attempt to convince me that we should make a video, Leah pulled out the «you can buy new technical gear card» and it worked!

But I do feel the need to defend my reluctance. My desire to create videos was there but felt I didn’t have the time or expertise to produce videos our customers deserve. The video process needed to be two-folded. Create videos for our own website but do it in a way that could encourage our customers to create and publish videos on their own digital platforms. So we needed to do some research about which equipment was the most economical with the best result, the do’s and don’ts of producing a video, etc. Our goal was to create a great videos using as little money and time as possible – by researching and preparing well.

For our first video we wanted to see how far we could get using an iPhone 10x as our camera. We found a good deal online for a tripod, extra lighting and a microphone set. We are lovers of online shopping but in this case, we went online to Japan Photo and just created a pick up list. We were so glad we didn’t buy all of it online! Because when we went to the store to pick it up, and talked to a video expert, we realized this wasn’t what we needed, and they helped us choose better, more economical equipment. It made the whole process so much easier when we could discuss with them what we needed and physically see the products.

I then wrote a manuscript for the first video – The Packaging Workshop. We set up all the equipment and staged the area where we wanted to record. We had to change the lighting, the level of the camera and the best place to stand, several times before we felt it looked right.

Leah’s job was to just to pay attention to what I was doing while recording and give me feedback.

Feedback I found both annoying and helpful.

“Smile more Oscar» «It looks strange when you tilt your head like that” “Relax more Oscar” “Your gestures look like you are attacking the camera”.

Why could I stand and talk in front of a large audience and usually be confident and relaxed, but be so intimidated by a little camera? Being used to Skype meetings, I thought this was going to be a breeze but quickly realized that this is totally different and new , and would take a while before I could relax and get used to talking to a camera.

These were definitely not our finest hours as a couple, but video-making was new to both of us. After several hours, we were happy with the result – and still friends:)

Editing. We didn’t want to pay someone to edit this video or any future ones, so we googled to find editing possibilities we could do ourselves. We found Adobe Premiere Pro CC and there were many good reviews about this product, so we bought it. It isn’t expensive, but the learning process can be somewhat heavy. I have some technical and editing knowledge, so that came in handy. We used several hours, editing, adding music, color, subtitles, etc. and in the end, we were happy with the result and published it on our website.

The importance of Facebook groups

After publishing we posted a copy of it into the Facebook groups Impact Elite hosted by Impact Inbound in Hartford and CMA hosted by the Content Marketing Academy in Scotland , just to see if we could get some feedback. That was the smartest thing we ever did and what we should have done in the first place! We are truly grateful that so many took the time to give us so much useful feedback.

This is some of the feedback we got: Using YouTube means getting a lot of strange videos recommended at the end of the viewing, so it could be wise to think about using another platform. The English pages linked to the video needed to be finished. Some felt 3 minutes was too long. One said the lighting in the ceiling that changed colors was disturbing. Others felt that maybe the setting was a little too personal. Col Gray (Pixelsink.com) gave us the advice to have a teaser first and then a cooler logo reveal.

After all this feedback we understood we need to do more research, so we joined another group on Facebook that is hosted by IMPACT. It’s called Film School for Marketers. Zachary Basner is the administrator and we watched one of his videos on how to make a good video great. He had a list of 6 points:

Teaser
Logo reveal
Intro
Segments
Call to action
Outro

After watching this video, we were convinced we had to redo our first video and forget about all its “blood, sweat and tears”. You can read here about how we followed The Video 6 in addition to some of the feedback we got.

The advice avalanche

In looking for information about creating videos, you will probably search the internet with words like, “Video creating” or “what are the most effective company videos” or “best equipment when making and editing a video” . That is a great start, and by all means, we don’t want to discourage you from doing those searches. But you need to know… the amount of answers that pop up can be quite discouraging. The advice you find is like this huge avalanche of information and you can end up not knowing where to start – or not starting at all.

Keep in mind that you want to create a video that reaches your listeners in your space – differentiating your company in your industry. You don’t want to do or say what everyone else is, you want to create something that humanizes your company and has your brand written on it. To do this, take some and not all of the advice . You know your customers in your space and you know what they are interested in. If not – then that is your starting point.

In our attempt to make this a little easier on you, we have created a list of the most important things to think about when you and your company start talking about creating a video. You can then decide on how much more “digging” you want to do, in means of details, to get your company started.

Choose 2-3 customers and create a customer profile based on what you know they primarily are interested in, need help with etc.
Pick a purpose, product or service and find stories that help you to focus on that
Make a reasonable video plan (start date, how many, how often, etc)
Find stories that will tell your story but will also engage and interest your audience
The video doesn’t need to look like a Hollywood movie but invest in research and preparation
Buy the equipment you need somewhere where you can talk to someone and see the equipment itself.
Depending on the subject – try to keep the video short. Ours started out at 3 minutes and we shortened it to 2 minutes. When it comes to a video on LinkedIn, the recommended length is about 1 minute.
Try to vary the setting.
Use graphics, pictures or animation to vary what the viewer is seeing, but when you start out keep it simple
Make the video, mobile user friendly
Try to use an outline instead of a manuskript, or preferrably just talk from your heart about the subject you have prepared
Use The Video 6 as a guideline
Get your video out there!

Bill Gates once said, “Content is King” and one of the ways we are going to keep that “King” on his “throne” is by producing more company videos in 2019!

// Oscar

KOGGER | #BTCT!

Our Content Journey

December 28, 2018/in Stories /by Tamarah Hovland

Contenting – our word of the day

We had been married for 3 years and just found out that I was pregnant with our first child. The following day, I went to Oslo and to my big surprise saw pregnant women EVERYWHERE! I came home and Oscar had experienced the same thing visiting Drammen. We started to wonder if the number of pregnant women had increased overnight! But it hadn’t… our focus had.

Oscar got the exact same feeling about 3 years ago while he was researching the subjects “company transparency” and “inbound marketing”, and saw the word “content” EVERYWHERE! Our workshops taught packaging and transparent pricing, but Oscar was understanding that content was equally important. It might seem logical to immediately increase and improve the content on our website, but he felt he neither had the time nor resources to plunge deeper into the world of content, even though he knew he should.

Videos, books and a handful of cool ideas

In 2015, while doing research on how to teach companies the benefits of being transparent Oscar stumbled upon the name Marcus Sheridan and showed me one of his videos – I was immediately intrigued. Since Oscar operated KOGGER alone, the least I could do was read up on marketing and content topics so we could discuss KOGGER’s website and hopefully come up with some good ideas. Being a one-man company, was a lonely job. Creating workshops – himself, performing them – himself, critiquing – himself, inspiring – himself. I figured he needed a discussion partner, to avoid talking to – himself:)

I was really attracted to the subjects inbound and content marketing. Looking at marketing from a “how can we help you” instead of a “how can we promote us” perspective, was appealing. Sources on these subjects were endless and after a lot of reading and discussions, our heads started creating cool ideas of how we could apply this to KOGGER. Only one problem…. We felt that innovating those ideas would require too much time, resources and money. Time, resources and money we didn’t have. So, we kept on talking about content, reading about content and watching videos about content.

By the spring of 2018 Oscar had done a great job on our website but it still only had a minimum of information. I knew that “better content” was always in the back of his mind. His goal was for KOGGER to be transparent, create trust and help our customers and one of the clues to achieving that, was varied, helpful content on our website. Could I find something that could inspire him and help us to evolve the content side of KOGGER, invest as little time and money as possible to avoid over-straining our company’s economy and Oscar’s work capacity?

Well, what do you do when you have a general question like that? You do what people do 40000 times every second – you GOOGLE it!

World Class Communication

I looked for inspiring events and found several so far away from Norway, that I could hear an “empty echo sound” in our bank account. So, I kept on searching and found an interesting event called World Class Communication (WCC) in Edinburgh Scotland, which is only a a two-hour flight, and the best part was that Marcus Sheridan was going to be one of the instructors!

Even though this was a workshop for improving speaking abilities, I strongly felt that it would inspire in other areas too. With the experience of leading more than 150 workshops with 1200 decision makers participating, I knew Oscar would enjoy new ideas for improving his communication methods. Since it was hosted by The Content Marketing Academy (CMA) I had a strong feeling he also would be “content boosted”. I was so excited! I calculated the cost, showed it to him and was confident he would jump at the suggestion and immediately book tickets.

But no…. he surprisingly didn’t want to go. I didn’t get it.

My reasons for him to go were endless… “You enjoy watching Marcus’s videos. You know this will be a challenge but a great inspiration. You know this won’t cost our company too much.” Oscar was reluctant because it kind of freaked him out that the whole workshop would be in English when his mother tongue is Norwegian – even though he speaks great English (I should know since I’m canadian:)

He was used to being the one teaching at workshops so I think he was a little scared at the thought of being a participant and not knowing exactly what was going to happen or how he would have to participate. But, being the smart guy he is, he quickly understood that this is exactly how many of HIS customers feel when going to a KOGGER workshop. In order to understand and communicate better with them and improve the quality of help he was offering, he better be good to go! So, he said yes to going, on one condition….

If I said he had to go, then I had to go too. Didn’t need to ask me twice…

WCC take-aways

Talk about inspirational! WCC in Edinburgh, Scottland, was hosted by Chris Marr and he is the human motor behind The Content Marketing Academy (CMA). Chris and Marcus host this workshop every year and they do a great job. The workshop itself was inspirational with loads of practical advice but, in addition, we got a chance to meet others that wanted to improve their communication. During meals and breaks we enjoyed socializing with the other participants and got a lot of great advice on how to bring our content ideas to life. Even though I halfway had to force Oscar into going, he really enjoyed this workshop and we were both totally inspired!

On the plane home we talked about what we had experienced and highlights. Marcus is the author of a book we had read called “They ask you answer”, so learning more about his question techniques was amazing. Not getting the right answers? Ask more questions and better questions.

We learned about how to “vanguard” at the beginning of a presentation or on our website by addressing “the elephant in the room” and answering all the questions and concerns imaginable, that our customers might have. By doing that, we are transparent, sharing our knowledge and creating trust.

Based on this and our company philosophy we made an acronym for KOGGER. This acronym shows our customers what the core of our company is.

Our company acronym is: BTCT – Be Transparent Create Trust.

The list of positive take-aways from this workshop goes on and on, so if you get a chance to go to WCC or another one of Marcus’s workshops – go!

Inspiration leads to action

The first thing we did after the workshop was make a list of all the FAQ’s we could possibly think of that our customers could have – ones for each workshop and in general. Then “Read More” for all workshops and About Us – where Oscar tells how and why he started KOGGER. Everything was then published on our website in both Norwegian and English. In addition, some of our website layout was changed to ensure user friendliness. Within a few days it was all up and running.

Now Oscar probably thought that he could take a «content break»……but no….

Around the same time, I became a member of Impact Elite on Facebook. It is a free, closed group that Impact Inbound (where Marcus Sheridan is one of the owners) created for marketers. The members there are from all over the world and in that group, you find inspiration, tips, advice etc.

I also became a member of CMA Facebook Group which is a free, Facebook group hosted by Chris Marr. In these groups I was seeing more and more companies not only creating written content but using video to reach out to their customers and getting good results.

I mentioned to Oscar the thought of KOGGER producing a video but the look on his face said “never gonna happen”.

But, as the canadian nag I am, I kept talking to him about making a video. Still no positive response. So, I pulled out the “you can buy new technical gear” card”.

Our hope is to inspire you

We imagine there are a lot of small or even large companies that feel they don’t have the resources, time nor money to “up their game” when it comes to content marketing.

The excuses for not taking “content action” are probably endless. But if by sharing our content journey and including our frustrations, mistakes and successes, can inspire to creating more content, videos and help in seeing the importance of using several digital platforms – then that to us is what being transparent is all about.

//Leah & Oscar

KOGGER | #BTCT