For the first time ever, businesses and organisations have power and technology at their fingertips to tell their own story without spending millions – on your website and YouTube Channel, pictures on Pinterest, the blogs and updates you plaster all over your social media sites. So now that you can tell your story, it’s about what you say and how you say it. Authenticity has never been more valuable.

These days people want information. Where do their products come from? Who made them? Is is fair trade. Great opportunities for great stories.

Enthrall your clients with stories and information that will genuinely improve their lives. You cannot just use old ways of communicating, like blasting advertising messages, in the new channels. People will turn off. And tune out.

Think of communicating to prospective clients as if you are at a party. People are looking for authenticity. If you are a treasure trove of great stories, anecdotes, jokes and information, people are going to trust you, and want to hang out with you. If you stood in the middle of the room  and shouted out advertisements for your company, the room would scatter in a nanosecond.

Modern marketing is all about marketing journalism, or content marketing as some people call it.  You pitch yourself as the trusted fountain of all knowledge and expertise on a subject that people can believe in. It is about giving away free information. You are the expert. Then later, maybe much later, when it comes to buying something who will folks buy from? You.

“By giving away as much information as you can to prospects and customers in your target audience, you engender a debt of gratitude that is powerful. If you educate, inform and collaborate you will have made people’s lives better’, explains David Allison, Author of Branding Better Buildings. His little hand book is a must read for anyone who wants an overview of how to market to the tribe in today’s era. It’s the basis for this blog. His book is geared to building developers but the principles apply to everyone. And free from his website www.braunallison.com

The most important take home from Allison’s book other than you need to turn yourselves into marketing journalists, is that in order to build an effective marketing communications campaign you need the basics now more than ever.

Have a great product that really will improve lives. It needs to be different to everyone else, then it’s easier to grab attention.

Know your target market. Know everything about them. Then you can gear your product to their specific needs, you’ll know exactly how to pitch stories to the benefits they want to hear, and you’ll know what media channels they read, listen to and watch, so you can really target your marketing and ad spend.

Spread stories about something bigger to believe in than the product you are selling. You are not selling bikes, you are selling a day out with the family.

Dive into the topics that matter. If you chose the pannier for the back of the bike carefully because it’s eco friendly and clips on and off in two seconds, which reduces the risk of theft, tell ’em.

There are four categories of stories according to Allison and it’s a good definition. Mental, Physical, Emotional and Spiritual Truth.

Mental – the facts, can I afford it, what data do I need to know to decide to buy?

Physical -how will buying this product affect my home life and physical surroundings.

Emotional – how am I going to feel if I buy this product.

Spiritual – Will I and the world be a better place if I buy this product.

Once the stories are written, videod and photographed, you need to promote them. That’s the topic of next week’s blog, how to spread the word.