Tell a Story, Increase New Customer Acquisition

Tell a Story, Increase New Customer Acquisition

Those who have worked with me in the past probably knew this post was coming. The power of the story. Using analogy to communicate.

It’s how we as humans have communicated from the beginning. With stories. It’s how we’re wired.

This came up today when I was reading an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal, “How to Avoid a Bonfire of the Humanities” by Michael S. Malone.

He tells the story of bringing in a Silicon Valley entrepreneur to talk to his class. Not wanting the entrepreneur to convince his dwindling student base to transfer into Science/Business classes, he asked him not to “crush the kids hopes”. The response from Santosh Jayaram?

“Are you kidding? English majors are exactly the people I’m looking for.”

He went on to explain that in today’s high tech world, the shift has gone from needing engineering talent to design, build and prototype to needing the soft skills of defining niches, establishing partners, and convincing people to join you.

“And how do you do that? You tell stories.”

The telling of stories is what makes boring legal theory briefs into semi-interesting content that problem solvers are looking for. It takes a decorated t-shirt that sells for $9 in one setting and sells it for $39 in another setting. Tell a story.

Have you bumped into this site?
http://significantobjects.com/

“a literary and anthropological experiment devised by Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn, demonstrated that the effect of narrative on any given object’s subjective value can be measured objectively.”

It works. I saw a speaker illustrate this with a golf club. “I picked this up at a garage sale” gave it a particular value. “It used to belong to a professional golfer” gave it another value. “It was the club Jack Nicklaus used to hit his epic approach shot on the 17th a Merion to win the World Amateur Team Championship. The shot that began his legendary ascent into gold history” made it almost priceless.

What story is your business telling? What analogy best explains the problem your products solve? Figuring that out will increase your new customer acquisition.

Simple, but not easy.

Good stuff.