Ep. 049 – Christoph Trappe’s best advice: “It has to be about the customer. Just because you are innovative doesn’t mean you are going to be successful”
Christoph Trappe Show Notes Christoph Trappe (aka The Authentic Storyteller) is a career storyteller who has worked as a journalist, a nonprofit executive, and a content marketing strategist and coach. He is a global keynote speaker, frequent blogger and author. His digital initiatives have been recognized globally. From 2014-2017, he helped hospitals across the United States share their authentic stories and also did a short stint in the content marketing software vertical. In late 2017, Christoph https://authenticstorytelling.net/moving-back-into-publishing-and-onto-an-in-house-brand-team/ (joined Stamats Business Media as their )https://authenticstorytelling.net/moving-back-into-publishing-and-onto-an-in-house-brand-team/ (D)https://authenticstorytelling.net/moving-back-into-publishing-and-onto-an-in-house-brand-team/ (irector of Content, overseeing three publications, their digital transformation),https://authenticstorytelling.net/moving-back-into-publishing-and-onto-an-in-house-brand-team/ ( and integration)https://authenticstorytelling.net/moving-back-into-publishing-and-onto-an-in-house-brand-team/ (.) Most passionate about My career is in storytelling. I started as a journalist. I took it to corporate communications, and from there, to content marketing and digital strategies. Today, what I do is helping three publications make their digital and business evolution to Omni-channel content distribution. I wrote a couple of books, I have my blog, I’m an Authentic Story Teller. I share all kind of stories and tips on social media, everything I run into and think is worth sharing. People believe in stories. I’m passionate about staying relevant. We all want to make money and be successful, but the way to make money is by being relevant and staying in front of your audience. I’m excited about how to do that today. How do we figure out the new tactics and how do we tell better stores? Who are Christoph’s customers? The beautiful about Storytelling is that you can take it with you across different industries. Our customers are mainly executives of companies who are trying to change things whether we call it digital transformation or business evolution. And also marketers. Really the branding is storytelling, but when I look at my blog, the most successful posts are the ones with tips about social media, which is related to storytelling. Christoph’s best advice about approaching customers It has to be about the customer; you are innovative, it doesn’t always mean you are going to be successful. Of course you are trying something new, but if nobody wants to buy it, is it still innovation? Of course not! You always want to think about who your customers are and what problem are you solving for them. That’s the way to stay relevant. Of course you also want to think about what is your story, what is your unique differentiation. What are you providing? And who are we actually trying to reach. The reason I think it’s so hard for any entrepreneur (including myself from time to time) to put the customer first is because sometimes we think we are the customer. So we want to think about our customers, we want to keep our mind open, of course it’s really hard because the world always evolves around ourselves; we know what we know and we don’t necessarily think about that. Biggest failure with a customer Greatest failure? Sometimes, you don’t know; that’s the problem. Some of the big failures are when contracts don’t get renewed and you can’t learn from that. If you have a long term contract with a client, and all of a sudden the contract changes and goes away; you can’t even figure out why it changed. And sometimes it’s has nothing to do with you. Companies argue about that and say, “The company owns the contacts”… Companies don’t own contacts! People do. The biggest failure is when you can’t learn something. When you can’t take something from it. You must make sure you figured out the...