3 Common Mistakes That Will Kill Your Marketing Message

You’ve probably heard about the value of storytelling. With the right kind of story, you can engage your listeners and readers, create memorable content, and communicate a message that resonates emotionally.

So how can you go wrong?

(1) Telling a story with a fuzzy message.

Your story needs to support your marketing objective in some way: building your brand, giving you more credibility, demonstrating why you’re the best resource, or simply illustrating a concept that’s hard to explain. Yet many people hear, “You need a story,” so they take what they’ve got.

A famous marketing guru I’ll call “Louise” posted a story about her tough childhood on the streets, running away from home, with some graphic detail. Now, she points out, she’s made the transition to being a successful businesswoman.

Louise was a business coach. She might tell this story to show she’s human, but her audience probably was more interested in how she could help them make money. If she’d been a life coach, working with traumatized people, the story would have set her up as a role model.

Louise has coached many clients to success. She can use storytelling to illustrate how well she helps others. (Louise was no…