Thursday, February 16, 2006

How to write a marketing story that sticks

Dave Gray, CEO of Xplane, boils it down:

Your story must be

1. Relevant: People care about things that are relevant to them and their situation. To make a story relevant you need to get inside your audience’s heads. The more you understand how they see the world and what they care about, the more relevant your story will become.

2. Unique: The benefits you describe need to be unique to you and available nowhere else. If your benefits aren’t unique, you will become commoditized, and people won’t why they should come to you. You might have a great story that gets great results for someone else!

3. Memorable: The story must not only hold people’s attention, it’s got to be easy to remember. You can’t always control the timing, so you need to be sure people can recall the essentials at a later date. You also want a story that’s interesting enough to pass on to others, and easy enough to tell that people tell it consistently.

A story that meets these criteria will get results for you more often than not.

Seems pretty simple, doesn’t it? Nevertheless, every day we are faced with marketing stories that make us think, “So what?” - if they register enough to make us think at all. Perhaps turning a fresh eye to the stories you’re telling with your marketing, armed with Gray’s advice, could reveal some surprises. (If you’re not telling any stories in your marketing, . I’d love to speak to you.)