Marketing Content - Can We Fall In Love All Over Again?

Why business and marketing communications need to take a lesson or two from fiction writing.

Do you remember your favourite book as a child? Go on, travel back in time to that moment … Visualise yourself all tucked up in bed, excited because someone you love is about to read that story to you. Or perhaps you can see yourself back under the covers with a torchlight, well after bedtime, devouring your favourite book or comic. This is not just any but your most-treasured story. Take yourself back to that moment and experience that anticipation, that thrill and excitement again …

Now that is the kind of feeling that your marketing and business content should evoke. Seriously.

Business and marketing writing do not have to be as dry as toast or scream louder than a fishwife at the markets to be noticed. In fact, while the latter might work here and there, it doesn’t build trust, lasting relationships or raving fans that keep coming back or recommend you: it mostly attracts a dribble of opportunists.

Just Tell a Bloody Good Story

In an environment where we are surrounded by hollow click-bait, misleading pretentious headlines and cookie-cutter writing, telling a damn fine story is your way of leaving your competition behind at the starting post while you are roaring ahead in the race for a finite pool of clients.

Telling stories rather than mere facts connects people – your potential and existing customers, as well as your staff and suppliers – with you and your brand on an emotional level rather than simply intellectually. It gives them an opportunity to deeply relate and engage with you. Besides, slack, bored writing is an insult to your reader. And life’s too damn short to spend it reading rubbish.

With Content, Authenticity is King

One major key to delivering compelling content is being authentic. We need to strip away some of our ‘professional’ layers and let go of the fear of being different to do so. I often hear new clients say they want us to create a certain piece of marketing collateral because “all of my competitors are doing it”. While the fear of standing out and being left behind is human, it’s completely misguided here.

If all or most of your competitors have already done that letterbox drop or type of TV advertisement, what cut-through do you think you’ll get? Exactly. Nil to bugger all, most likely.

So What To Do?

Good writing is clear, well thought-through, authentic, relevant and memorable. That makes it powerful, engaging and effective. Remember your favourite book as a kid? It did all that.  Because it did not pretend to be anything else than it is.

And that’s what will make your marketing and business writing equally great: strip away any pretence, the need to follow the crowd and simply be … you.  Let out your personality, show us what you’re made of, be real – warts and all.

Make Yourself Vulnerable

So here’s the catch to successful written content or any communication: you need to be prepared to make yourself vulnerable. Get rid of the mask of your business persona (aka being the same as anyone else) and show your readers the real you. Be original, be unique. It might be confronting at first, but soon you’ll find it not only liberating, but rewards will tumble in at your bottom line.

If you need a bit of a leg up to get over that hurdle, Brené Brown’s excellent TED Talk on the power of vulnerability is extremely insightful and useful. I never tire of re-watching it.

So here’s your mission 99: make your and your clients’ world a better place with well-written pieces. Fill your marketing collateral – your website copy, your capability statement, your blog; everything – with unique substance, purpose and meaning, and deliver to your readers what they were promised.

They’ll love you for it. I promise you.

About the Author: Daniela Cavalletti is an accomplished copywriter, editor and ghostwriter who heads the international tribe of wordsmiths at Cavalletti Communications ('CavaCom'). They help business owners, authors and brands find their unique voice, boldly stand out and become leaders in their marketplace. A bookworm since the tender age of three, Daniela feels lucky to have spent most of her life as a creative content and communications addict who connects people and makes words work.