05 Aug The Story Will Live On: Importance of marketing strategy and messaging

You get together with friends; laughs, food, beverage, and stories ensue. Your friend reminds you of the time they go to put on their shoes and found the extra-long tongue on their beloved Converse shoes had been cut off (*read story below in footnote). We all laugh and realize these are the stories that we’ll tell years later and bring us instantly back to a point in time.

Marketing and promotion at your business is a collection of stories. With the Internet, social media, and your competitors collecting information on you, you need to be ultra-aware of the stories you tell because they will live on.

Being mindful of your marketing and building a holistic plan is more important than ever. Since the story you tell can be found at any time, you want to think about your message while aligning with your short and long term strategy. The story you tell today needs to have longevity or the flexibility to morph and grow as your product and the market changes.

How do you do this? Start with your integrated go-to-market plan that outlines your product strategy and how you will take your product to market considering both your short and long-term plans. Add to this your messaging that talks about your product strengths and how it helps your customers. When you know where you are, where you are going, and your strengths, you can develop a story that is relevant now and can morph with you as you change and grow.

Stories will live on. Put some thought into them and you will have consistency as well as an interesting story.

* Remember the extra long tongues on the Converses shoes? My friend tells the story when he had these shoes and how hip he felt in them. He went to put them on one day and noticed that the tongue has been trimmed. He asked his family if they knew what happened. His dad had borrowed his shoes and trimmed the tongue because he thought it was defective it was so long.

About the author: Kim McMahon has performed sales and marketing for more years than she cares to count. She writes frequently on marketing, life, the world and how they sometimes all come together.