Every day we’re bombarded with an estimated 10,000 marketing messages. So how do you cut through the clutter? Simple. Forget your sales pitch. Instead, grab your prospects’ interest by showing them that you understand their problems and feel their pain. To do that, put on your fiction-writing hat and craft a story about the drama that goes on in their day-to-day professional world.
Instead of a boring application article, write juicy fiction stories that are real page turners. Evocative dramas that leave your audience hungry for the next edition. Think daytime soap operas on steroids.
Don’t believe me? Here’s a real-life client story that proves it works
Our client was a firm that provided litigation support services. Their target audience included paralegals and documentation managers working in high-pressure law firms. No matter how good these professionals were, or how hard they worked, they would never be as good as the lawyers they served.
During confidential interviews, they revealed that they felt like they were always at the bottom of the hill when the crap rolled down. They never had enough time to get their work done and definitely could not spare a minute to read promotional newsletters. That is, until we created a serial based on a frustrated paralegal struggling to keep up, while warding off the advances of her hot-shot-lawyer bosses, and dealing with backstabbing colleagues clawing their way up the ladder.
Research convinced our client to let us try something unconventional
The legal industry is not known for taking risks. For a year before we launched the juicy newsletter, we wrote dozens of case studies based on interviews with paralegals. Our client’s account managers told their marketing and sales VPs how our honest descriptions of real-world problems and the client’s solution were directly responsible for an increase in sales.
When we compiled the research data on these case studies, it wasn’t much of a stretch to convince the client that paralegals would be grateful for a little entertainment and levity in their high pressure, buttoned-up jobs. As they read the enewsletters, we knew they’d recognize someone just like themselves. Or at least someone just like someone they worked with.
ROI enabled us to publish monthly editions
We modeled our enewsletter soap operas after one of the many popular TV law shows that came and went. Our characters were multifaceted. You never knew what they were going to do next.
Every now and then we wove in a mention of how our client’s product solved a paralegal’s problems. Usually, it was nothing obvious. But sometimes we made it so blatantly obvious even we had to laugh.
In six months, the number of newsletter subscribers more than tripled, from 500 to +2,000. Open rates were always over 35% (10-15% was considered good), and we had a 15% click through rate. The cost to produce and email the newsletter was ridiculously low – under $500 an issue. (Considering that most PR writers are closet novelists, they competed to work on this project.) Plus, we leveraged the investment by producing tradeshow posters and magazine ads featuring cartoon renderings of our characters. The result was immediate, memorable recognition for the client. An increase in sales. And lots of fun for everyone involved in the project.
Curious about how Polly Paralegal fends off the advances of Larry Lawyer and convinces Amy Account Manager to extend the deadline? Or wonder how long it will take Ned the New Hire to realize that sleeping his way to the top will eventually come back to bite him? It’s all in the next exciting edition of our juicy enewsletter. Subscribe today so you don’t miss a single issue!
“Everybody Loves a Juicy Story” written by Mar Junge was awarded third place in the American Marketing Association’s Marketing Thought Leaders competition and was included in their book “Ideas that Drive Results.”
