I was on a coaching call with a client a couple days ago, and we were discussing the story-based email style I shared with you last week.
Now, our stories should NOT be limited to email. You can run story threads throughout your entire marketing campaign.
Today I wanna share a couple of examples of great story based ad campaigns you’ve probably seen. And beyond that, why they do so well.
We’re also gonna address the #1 most common mistake businesses make with their story-based marketing. (And how you can avoid it).
Let’s rock…
A couple of recent, popular story-based marketing campaigns:
1. Chick-Fil-A’s “Little Things” campaign. They’ve been running this campaign since 2018, and they describe it as having “kindness as the crux.”
These are the ads where it shows a customer and a Chick-fil-a employee sitting on a couch, telling a story. Here’s one of many examples on YouTube. (This 30-second spot literally makes me tear up, so apologies in advance for any feels that might occur.)
(BTW they come across these stories through a “Little Things” page on their website, where you can submit yours)
As you can see, the stories center around some aspect of the customer. A woman who loves the little notes of encouragement they write on her styrofoam cup. The lady whose dog was cured from cancer and the CFA folks celebrated it. A mother trying to wrangle her 3 rambunctious kids, who appreciated the extra help a CFA team member gave her.
All the spots are cute, heartwarming and endearing. All good emotions that you want people to feel about your business when you tell a story.
2. FedEx – “Tall Tales of True Deliveries”
I just saw this one the other day (not sure if it’s new or not), but this is another strong example of the story-based marketing you want to do.
The concept of the spot is that it’s an animated retelling of an actual request made by a FedEx customer (in this case, to bring the wedding rings from the delivery down to the beach). You can see it at this link (the first video on that page is the commercial).
First, the design is cool. But more importantly, this is EXACTLY what can happen with each of your patients when you’re the one helping them write the story.
So who is the story about?
With our coaching clients, we dive into how and why to adopt specific roles in the patient journey. Not just the job roles in your practice (tech, scheduler, etc) – but what role does your team play, and what role does the patient play?
In a nutshell – who is the star of the story? Is it us and our lasers and our experience and nice office? Actually no (even though all those things are awesome of course!)
The star of the story is the patient.
With the FedEx example – the relationship, the wedding, the rush to get the rings, that’s a story. It’s literally someone else’s wedding story that the FedEx driver got thrust into.
Same with the Chick-fil-A spots. They’re not about Chick-fil-A. They’re about somebody who enjoys Chick-fil-A and a relationship they have with the people who work there. And how that affects and impacts both of them in their daily lives.
You with me? Your practice / procedures / surgeon skill is the pathway to get them to the outcome they want. It’s not the destination. It’s not the story. Your Patient Journey is the Yellow Brick Road. The patient is the star, and they pick the destination, and you get them there.
The beauty of all this is that you are in the story business. You are creating patient stories and writing yourself into patient stories every day. That’s literally what you do. You are the inflection point for a patient to create a better story for themselves.
The Common Mistake – Making the Story About Ourselves
Probably obvious at this point, but the most common mistake is putting the practice in the starring role instead of the patient.
Let me stress: most practices are not doing this on purpose! For example, it’s common to go watch a surgeon’s testimonial videos and hear things like:
“This place made me so comfortable… They were so nice to me… They really made it a good experience… I love my vision now…”
Are any of those things bad? NO.
But they’re also (in and of themselves) not a story, not relatable and not infotaining.
Have you ever heard 2 different people tell the same story? Maybe you have 2 friends who were at the same event, and separately, they each give you a recap afterward.
And one friend is a GOOD storyteller, and the other isn’t that great. Big difference in how the story is communicated, right?
We want to be good storytellers and story-creators within the practice.
So what’s a story?
I’ll give you one basic example today – the Hero’s Journey that you see in countless novels, TV shows and movies. This is one of the most popular “formulas” for entertainment there is. I’ll show you how to apply it with your patients:
When patients answer the following questions in an interview, you’ve drawn out their “hero’s journey” story (which I’ve notated in parenthesis):
- What do you do? (1. Show the Hero in their Ordinary World)
- What made you decide to look into vision correction? (2. Hero is Called to Adventure)
- Why now? How did you make the decision? (3. Hero Confronts the Challenge)
- NOTE: This is when you can get into why it was a good decision – comfort, kindness, great results…
- And finally, what are you doing now with your new eyes (4. Hero Returns to life a Victorious, a Changed Person)
That is THE hero story arc. The one that made Star Wars a $65 billion franchise. Use it.
And when you share that story (which is 90% about the interesting patient and 10% about your practice), people will be INFOtained, and they can relate and identify with that person. That’s what you want.
This goes back to an element of marketing we call “signaling.” We don’t have to tell you how awesome we are if we can signal how awesome we are. If I tell you, you’re skeptical. If you see my signal, then you’re open to accepting it because it’s rooted in your own opinion.
But that’s a topic for another day. This has already gone too long (even though we’re just scratching the surface on the use of Story). If you wanna go deeper on story-based marketing, hit reply and let me know.
And if you found this helpful / fascinating / infotaining / annoying, reply and let me know that too. I appreciate your feedback, good or bad.
Enjoy your weekend!
T-Cole
PS – For 2024, we’re also shifting even more focus to story-based SELLING in our E3 Coaching Community for consult / surgery schedulers. This includes: Writing yourself into the patient’s story, understanding the story TYPES that different personality styles prefer (because it varies!), telling patient stories back to them, crafting the story arc on their behalf, etc. It’s highly effective…