Julianna
I recently read a great post on Guy Kawasaki’s blog that I wanted to share with our readers. If you are pitching your company – to customers or investors, through PR or marketing, or even face to face, it is vital to have some key talking points about your company. While you may have heard about the importance of having an elevator pitch (a pitch concise enough to be done in an elevator ride that hits all your key points), talking points and stories are also important. You can mention your key message points over and over, but one of the best ways to switch this up, in your marketing material, is to have stories to tell, ones that offer meaning to your audience.
The post “The Nine Best Story Lines for Marketing” is a great resource:
Aspirations and beliefs. More than any other topic, people like to hear about aspirations and beliefs. (This may be why religion is the most popular word-of-mouth topic, ever.) Sun Microsystems’ Scott McNealy’s point of view about ending the digital divide is aspirational as is Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard’s views about how companies can grow by reducing pollution and creating more sustainable business strategies. Aspirations are helpful because they help us connect emotionally to the speaker, the company, and the issues. They help us see into a person or company’s soul.
In a previous job working in PR, our company had a client with an emotional product – one where customers were sharing their memories, photos, etc. Because the company was asking customers to share their personal lives, the president of the company would often tell stories about her family when she was interviewed, and even on their website. While this was a marketing message at the heart of the company, it allowed the president to share what was important about her business in a way that was meaningful to potential customers, which went a lot further than just repeating core messages.
For a small business, it can be very difficult to create story lines about your company, especially if you are closely tied to your business’ identity, but it is an excellent way to get beyond many of the clichés that pervade marketing messages. The stories can be extensive or short, personal or public, but most importantly they must be relevant to your customers.
If you haven’t thought about story lines before and you are wondering where to start, read this blog post, and take the challenge posed by the author: “Have your team read this posting and then answer the question: What story line does our marketing currently use? Then, if you’re brave enough, ask the question: What story line should our marketing use?”