Yard Sales and Your Marketing

I enjoy a good yard sale. It's amazing how on some Saturday mornings a big yard sale, especially where a whole community is having yard sales, will get me up early. Cleaning out my garage or pulling weeds in the garden rarely motivates me to rise early on a Saturday, but a yard sale ...

I enjoy it best when I stop by a yard sale and find a particular item of interest and as I reach out to pick up or touch the item the owner will say, " You know there's a story behind that ..." Do tell me more. I love the stories behind peoples stuff because it makes the item all the more interesting.

Have you ever watched the Antiques Road Show? It's a show that let's people bring their stuff (some mighty expensive stuff at times) to a group of antique experts. These experts look over the stuff and then offer an appraisal for what they think the item is worth. If you have ever watched the show, it's interesting to note that when there is a story behind the item of interest the value of the item typically goes up.

The value of your product or service goes up when your marketing tells a great story.

To Be Effective Your Product or Service Has to Tell a Story

Great marketing tells a story. April Dunford wrote a great blog titled The Importance of Storytelling in Marketing, and in her blog she wrote:

Tell me a fact and I’ll learn.
Tell me a truth and I’ll believe.
But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.

The most common problem I see in smaller companies is the inability to describe what they do in simple language (read April's post on that here). The second biggest problem is bringing that description to life with stories.

Does your marketing tell a story? If not, here are some helpful tips from Dunsford on what makes a good product story:

Characteristics of a Good Product Story

1. Clearly illustrates the product’s unique value – A great story that illustrates the value of any product in your segment isn’t all that useful. It needs to highlight the differentiating value of your product.
2. Short, and easy to tell and memorable – You want sales folks, marketers, and customers to tell the story. They won’t be able to do that if it is difficult to understand or overly long. Keep it short and to the point and people will be more likely to remember it.
3. Relevant to your target customers – The story needs to be highly relevant to your target customers. Telling a great story about a customer outside of your segment isn’t all that valuable.
4. Illustrates measurable, concrete results – The results or the “what happened” part of the story needs to be concrete and ideally quantifiable. General statement like “improved productivity” don’t have the punch of “saved a million dollars”.
   

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