Your free 5-word guide to marketing

“Sounds Interesting. Tell Me More.”

There you go, the 5 words that should guide every aspect of your marketing strategy.

For each blog page you write, advertisement you place, landing page you produce, all we’re trying to do is garner a simple 5 word thought response- ‘Sounds interesting, tell me more…’. Step by step you’re leading your audience down a path towards conversation and eventual purchase. You light that path with engaging written and visual content – you tell the story.

This is absolute marketing basics. We’re not talking about content marketing or search marketing strategies, we’re talking about good old fashioned marketing. People, your audience, respond when they read something that is of interest, an article that leaves them desiring more information.

Incentivising a ‘tell me more’ response

We can publish the most inspiring contextual content, but if we’re not lighting the path, offering that next step, our efforts will go unnoticed.

Picture the scene

Your breath is leaving a ring of vapour on the window. You’re leaning in to focus on the carbon fibre dashboard. You can almost smell the leather upholstery as your senses go into overdrive as you walk back and forth pondering your next move. The car salesman strides over, does he ask you ‘would you like to buy this car’?  No, his years of training and experience guide him with a logical opening line tapping into your obvious desire – ‘she’s a beauty, isn’t she?’ and so, the conversation begins. So the story begins.

You want reassurance that your brain is making the right call. Lo and behold, here’s another person to reassure us that ‘YES’ that car really is a beauty. Simple psychology that we usually fall for pretty quickly.

Each aspect of the car is discussed, we nod along… the interest is well and truly there. Does the salesman now ‘close’ you? He doesn’t need to, you want to take that test drive. You want to find out more.

Your mind is writing the story for you. Revving the engine for the very first time. Shutting that door and driving the car of the forecourt… the story of how your friends will react when they hear about and see your new set of wheels.

Admittedly, few decisions in life trigger desire as much as the purchase of a new car. Whether we’re buying software, a book or a piece of art, somewhere along the line there’s that single trigger that takes us from contemplating our next move to making our next move.

That ‘Phone a Friend’ moment. If your online audience has built trust in your service, you are that friend.

Take a look at the landing pages you produce, or the ad copy you present. Does it really evoke interest? Does it leave your audience asking to be ‘told more’? The art of business storytelling allows you to position the reader in a pre-purchase and post-purchase scenario. You develop personas that are rich with association between the main character and your reader. You tell the story of how your product can impact upon the reader’s own life. Whether it’s as short-term as the relief provided by cold relief capsules, or, as we all hope, long-term as the assurance that life insurance provides us. The smart advertisers tell a story.

That story delivers the ‘interest’, your sales logic delivers the appropriate ‘tell me more’ statement. Your audience listens, your audience believes, your audience acts.

What are you doing to ensure your own audience are asking you to ‘tell me more’?


Written By:
baf9974133182a27cc880cca71372aba?s=180&d=mm&r=g

Ian Rhodes

Twitter

First employee of an ecommerce startup back in 1998. I've been using building and growing ecommerce brands ever since (including my own). Get weekly growth lessons from my own work delivered to your inbox below.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *