At the beginning of Pan’s Labyrinth , Ofelia meets a faun in an overgrown ancient labyrinth.
The faun assigns Ofelia three tasks. She must complete the tasks before the next full moon if she is to prove herself to be Princess Moranna and return to her father’s kingdom.
As a publisher of information for your buyers, you also have three tasks. It is only if you accomplish these tasks that your buyers will read, understand, and act upon what you have to say.
Not to worry, these tasks are not hard or mysterious or life-threatening like the ones Ofelia faced. They are straightforward principles that you will recognize from material that you have read in the past, material that has moved you and caused you to act.
Create value for the buyer.
The reader of your marketing material asks only one question: Is there something useful here for me?
Your readers are holding ongoing conversations at their companies about their goals and challenges, about resources and priorities. They want to solve the problems they face. If your readers see that your information can help them, they will welcome you to their conversation.
How do you know what creates value for the buyer? Study the buyer’s journey from being unaware of the problem to becoming aware and making decisions to solve it. What questions are they trying to answer at each stage of their journey? Information that addresses each of these problems creates value.
Make it sticky.
Even the most valuable material will go unread unless it engages the reader. Some material is naturally engaging like ghost stories and gossip. Most of it is not, including business and technical ideas.
Find the core of your idea and express it as simply as you can. Explain it using concrete information and examples. Surprise your readers with something unexpected to get their attention. Enhance your credibility by letting your readers test your ideas for themselves or by invoking the credibility of others. Engage their emotions by helping them to feel something about a particular person or group. Tell a story that lets them mentally imagine the world you want to create for them.
Make it persuasive.
Marketing and sales is a process whose aim is to find, win and keep customers. Your ideas must not only create value and engage the buyer, they must persuade the buyer that they have the kinds of problems that you know how to solve, that their interests and your abilities are aligned.
Ideas that create value for your buyers.
Ideas that are engaging and will stick with your buyers.
Ideas that persuade buyers to act.
With these principles you can take aim once and for all at material that is too much about your product and not enough about buyer problems, that’s dull and flat instead of engaging and memorable, that asks for action but fails to persuade.
With these principles you can complete the three tasks.
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