Once upon a time, there was a multi-billion dollar software company that developed and sold products that manage the IT infrastructure for large companies. This company typically sold its products to IT types using old-school marketing. In other words, its marketing touted features and functions.
One day, a VP came into the company that wanted to experiment with the new-fangled concept (to the company) of marketing and selling not product features, but solutions for vertical industries.
Now this VP of Industry Solution Sales knew that his reputation was on the line. His approach had to work or he’d be out of a job.
So when one of the VPs of Marketing hired me to write one of the company’s first industry-specific marketing pieces, for the financial services industry, the VP of Industry Solution Sales immediately jumped on the phone to call me and make sure I got it right.
Over the course of a two-hour conversation, not only did this VP of solution sales go over the messaging he wanted to convey, he told me stories to illustrate each message and why it could help customers in that industry. They weren’t long stories, but they helped me understand each point clearly. I was able to turn around and use the stories to convey the material in the piece in an easy-to-understand manner.
The piece went on to become a smashing success and others in the company used it as the model for many subsequent, successful pieces.
Why Stories?
Not only was the introduction to this blog about stories, it was itself a story. Stories can be extremely powerful tools when used in marketing materials. Marketing is all about getting people to take action—whether that action is to get more information about your product or to actually purchase it. And stories are a powerful tool for inspiring people to take action.
The book “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” by Dan Health and Chip Heath offers some fascinating observations about how stories get people to act. The book discusses how stories can provide both the knowledge people need about how to act and the motivation to do so.
Informing people how to act—By showing step-by-step how someone else dealt with a particular situation or challenge, stories give people enough information so that they can mentally test how they would’ve handled the situation.
When we hear a story, we’re not being passively entertained. We simulate it in our heads. Mental simulation works because we can’t imagine events or sequences without evoking the same modules of the brain that are evoked in real physical activity. For example, brain scans show that when people imagine a flashing light, they activate the visual area of the brain; when they imagine someone tapping on their skin, the activate tactile areas of the brain.
Mental simulation helps with problem-solving. Even in mundane planning situations, mentally simulating an event helps us think of things we might otherwise have neglected. Mental simulation is not as good as actually doing something, but it’s the next best thing. Stories are like flight simulators for the brain. A story is powerful because it provides the context missing from abstract prose. Stories put knowledge into a framework that’s more lifelike.
When you’re trying to get people to act, the way you deliver the information is important. Stories are much more effective in getting people to act than simple arguments. If you make an argument, you’re implicitly asking people to evaluate that argument, judge it, debate it, criticize it, and then argue back—at least in their minds. But with a story, you engage the audience—you’re involving people with the idea and asking them to participate with you.
Stories also help people focus on potential solutions. Telling stories with visible goals and barriers shifts the audience into a problem-solving mode. In other words, stories help people solve problems for themselves. And as anyone who has used the Socratic Method knows, people are always more likely to accept an idea if they think they’ve come up with it themselves.
Stories as motivation to act—We empathize with the characters and start cheering them on when they confront their problems. This gives us an emotional connection with the characters. When the protagonist in the story triumphs despite great odds, it inspires us to do the same.
When you think of an inspiring story, you may think that story needs to be a dramatic tale of life and death—like man versus nature (a la “Moby Dick” or even the “Biggest Loser.”) But even seemingly boring stories about solving business problems using a software application can be highly effective if your reader has the problem described. So use stories whenever possible when you want to improve the effectiveness of your marketing materials.
How has telling stories improved your marketing materials?
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