Page 105 - Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing - PDFDrive.com

and confused you with choices. And it is very hard to sell to a confused person.
Meet your market’s very first need: Give it one good reason.

Your Favorite Songs

Driving down the freeway, you switch on your favorite radio station and hear a
song for the first time. You like it but do not remember it.

The next afternoon you hear the song again. Perhaps you note the singer, and
perhaps you remember her name.

Two mornings later, you hear the song again. After making sure no other
commuters are watching, you start singing along with the hook, which you now
remember.

Two days later you buy the CD. You play it several evenings. By the third
evening, you know most of the words.

It has taken seven or eight playings for the song’s message to sink in. But
finally, it has.

What if the singer changed the song and tune every time? What would you
remember?

Almost nothing.
What does this tell you about your marketing communications?
Can you keep changing your words, your melody, your entire theme?
If you do, what will people remember? For what will they know you?
After you say one thing, repeat it again and again.

One Story Beats a Dozen Adjectives

Pick up a good magazine and glance at a few stories.
You may spot a pattern that tells you something. Today, most nonfiction

writers begin their articles with an illustrative story. It’s a device so pervasive
there is a name for it: synecdoche.

Trial lawyer Gerry Spence almost always makes a point with a story. Spence
knows that for all the enormous changes in Western culture since the Greeks,
today, almost 2,500 years after Euripides, our primary form of entertainment is
still the dramatic narrative—the story.

More marketers should discover the power of stories. Just as stories make
articles more interesting and make Spence’s arguments more persuasive, they