Browsing in a bookstore not long ago I happened upon a familiar cover which triggered a flood of childhood memories. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, with its collage illustrations and engaging story, was a favorite of mine and my mother’s when I was still small enough to sit on her lap.
The plot is linear- it is the beginning of the week and a caterpillar emerges from an egg and begins looking for food. On Monday he eats one apple, on Tuesday two green pears, and so on and so forth until Sunday, when he becomes a beautiful butterfly. The story is simple and memorable and its enthusiastic readers quickly learn it by heart, thus learning the days of the week as well.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar was the one of the first of a series of stories read, heard, or watched which left an indelible mark on my life.
Watching Field of Dreams dozens of times as an adolescent and cheering Kevin Costner on as he stayed tough against everybody who thought he was crazy convinced me that “if you build it, they will come” (something which is not always true as far as internet marketing goes).
Later on, listening to a college mathematics professor weave an elegant tale relating differential equations to the tiny hairs in our ears which allow us to hear made abstract Fourier series much more intuitive.
It’s really no secret that stories are powerful ways of delivering messages- be they direct or subliminal. From bedtime as tots to evenings spent on the couch as adults, we like to read, hear and watch stories. Although at a certain point of our lives we may cease to repeat the childish refrain “tell me a story”, we are no less eager to be enthralled by a good tale.
Considering that the role of marketing for your small business is to inform and educate about the products and services which you offer, the importance of storytelling becomes self-evident. Dry lists of facts have their utility, but if you really want to leave a mark, stories should have a prominent place in your arsenal. There are a number of different types of stories that you can tell:
- Because they draw from your own experiences, personal stories are easy to write. You can talk about your life experiences or give a “behind the scenes” look at your business. Personal stories can make your business personable, likeable, and approachable.
- Testimonial stories are told by those who have used your products and services. They help to show the utility of what you offer and give you validity. While using true stories is always better, if you want to invent a scenario which shows the potential of your products, make sure you state outright that it is fiction.
- Historical stories can stray from addressing your business and products specifically and may talk about your industry in general, older generations of the products you offer, and the changing economic and social conditions which make your business a player with a purpose in the modern world. These types of stories place your business in a broader context, establish you as an expert in your field, and, like testimonials, show the value of products which you feel are undervalued by the greater public.
Finally, the impact of the stories that you tell in your marketing campaigns can be increased by giving them virtual life. A story shouldn’t start and finish within the confines of a single blog entry or video advertisement but be linked to your tweets, posts and shares to create an open-ended tale which allows user participation.
Eric Carle, the author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, had the ingenious idea of putting holes in the pages of the book to show where the caterpillar ate his way through the various foods, holes which no toddler can resist the temptation of poking at. While we all love to hear a good story, we are even happier when we can participate in it.
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