Creativity

A new year means a new marketing plan. Maybe this is the year you finally work on that rebranding effort, launch that new service, change perceptions among a key market segment, get your collateral overhauled, figure out your social media strategy or (fill in the blank here).

For generation upon generation, the power of storytelling has been essential to how we communicate, how we pass along information, how we entertain, inform and record history.

It's also a key branding tool that many businesses overlook. In an age when everybody's got something to sell, harnessing the power of story can make all the difference in your marketing efforts. Stories aren't new to marketing. We've been telling them for years in many different ways. But today, stories spread more easily, more quickly and further than ever before.

Right now, businesses, especially professional service-based businesses, have an extraordinary opportunity.

Marketing is changing. In an environment of information overload, never-ending promotional messages and low trust, it's harder to establish a credible and attention-getting marketing presence using the old rules. Lucky for us, the new rules are about educating, consulting, guiding: the very skills and philosophies that have guided professional services-based businesses for years.

The biggest questions I get from clients these days center around one topic: "Should we be doing (fill in the blank)?" They might be talking about email marketing or social media tools like Twitter or continuing their direct mail effort. 

Over the past few weeks, I've been talking to some of those "old school" traditional media folks-- niche magazine editors. If you read the headlines, you might think these people are a dying breed, but in fact, they're alive, well and talking regularly to your customers and clients. If you're starting out with a new content marketing plan, or working content marketing principles into your existing plan, you can learn a lot from how these folks (and those who get paid to build relationships with them) operate.

<!--[if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 false false

When we write something, we want people to read it.

When my clients pay me to write something, they want people to read it. Usually, a very specifically targeted group of people.

But really, we want more. We want them to think about something, to know something they didn't know before, to change their behavior. We want them to DO something with that information. Often, we also want them to buy something we're selling.

Sometimes we spell this out for them in a call to action. Sometimes we don't. But we always have a motive.

Have you ever languished in one of those endless strategic planning meetings designed to hash out your organization's core values statement? Or the marketing pow-wows aimed at defining your key messages? You know the ones. Those meetings where you can just feel the life being sucked out of you.

Maybe it's just me? My experience is that many of these well-meaning marketing-focused efforts end up being a waste of valuable time, energy and brainpower.

Before you stop reading and click away, hear me out.

I was talking to a prospective client this week about the art and science of good writing. He shared a concern that I hear all the time: my people can't write. According to the National Commission on Writing for America's Families, Schools and Colleges, he's not alone.

The Commission estimates that deficiencies in employee writing skills costs American corporations as much as $3.1 billion a year.