How to write a marketing story that sticks

Are you trying to get a message through, to an audience that's hard to reach?

Maybe they are distributed around the world; maybe they don't see your mission as a priority; and maybe they are just busy, but whatever the reason you are finding it hard to break through.

It could be the story that you are telling. There are three main elements to crafting a story that will get traction in difficult communication environments:

Your story must be

1. Relevant: People care about things that are relevant to them and their situation. To make a story relevant you need to get inside your audience's heads. The more you understand how they see the world and what they care about, the more relevant your story will become.

2. Unique: The benefits you describe need to be unique to you and available nowhere else. If your benefits aren't unique, you will become commoditized, and people won't why they should come to you. You might have a great story that gets great results for someone else!

3. Memorable: The story must not only hold people's attention, it's got to be easy to remember. You can't always control the timing, so you need to be sure people can recall the essentials at a later date. You also want a story that's interesting enough to pass on to others, and easy enough to tell that people tell it consistently.

A story that meets these criteria will get results for you more often than not.