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Marketing A Great Story With Few Words

marketing stoiresOur culture responds to the power of story as much as humans ever have, but years of mass messaging seem to have given us a collective case of Attention Deficit Disorder. We are still very much story-driven people, but we don’t have the attention span to hear a long, drawn-out narrative. This reality creates an interesting challenge for direct mail marketing companies: How do you draw people in by telling a story using as few words as possible?

People have written whole books and developed entire courses on this subject, but perhaps the best people to look to for answers are the master storytellers of our generation—authors, artists, poets, filmmakers and others who know how to captivate our minds.

Let’s review some of their best quotes to see what we can learn.

“We’re supposed to be tellers of tales as well as purveyors of facts. When we don’t live up to that responsibility, we don’t get read.” -- William Blundell, The Art and Craft of Feature Writing

As a top feature journalist for The Wall Street Journal, Blundell understands how the power of story engages the reader. His advice applies mainly to article writing, but it holds true even with short marketing pieces. However long or short your piece is, it must have a narrative if you want people to read it.

“Narrative is a simple thing, at bottom: chronology with meaning.” –Jon Franklin, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist for the Baltimore Evening Sun 

“Chronology with meaning.” That phrase alone is worth dwelling on. Stories are simply a series of meaningful events.

Our targeted direct mail marketing works best when written in this manner.

“Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell.”  –Seth Godin, noted author and thought leader

Simply put, people aren’t interested in what our products are, but in what they do. When we gear our marketing around story—especially when we have limited space—we’ll talk not about features, but about results.

"Sometimes reality is too complex. Stories give it form."

--Jean Luc Godard, film writer/director

If we take Godard literally, we see that story-driven marketing is one of the best ways to keep it short. A story gets complex points across in a simple way.

“Humans are not ideally set up to understand logic; they are ideally set up to understand stories.” — Roger C. Schank, cognitive scientist

If you want people to understand your product’s value, tell a story about it. It’s that simple.

Mail King USA offers a wide range of tools, products, and services to get your story across to the right audience through effective direct mail marketing.

To learn more, call us today at (916) 296-0545.

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