After just shy of five years, I’m leaving The Yardstick Agency next week.

Throughout the last half-decade, I’ve grown immensely, both personally and professionally. I’ve been given a range of opportunities to learn and expand my skillset, including the immense privilege of running the content team here.

Perhaps most of all in that time, I’ve come to understand just how important storytelling is to marketing.

Don’t worry, this blog isn’t going to be *my* story, sold engagingly to prove the power of storytelling and how it connects us.

Instead, I want to talk about the best example of storytelling that I saw in my tenure here, why it stuck with me, and how you can harness its power to market your advice business.

Digging the grave for John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Just three months after I started working here, one of our very talented copywriters, Mark, wrote a blog for the Yardstick website that embedded itself in my brain, I suspect forever.

Here is the opening line from that blog:

“November 25, 1963. It was a cold, but clear day in Washington, DC for the funeral of President John F. Kennedy – killed in Dallas three days before.”

Look at that. Short, succinct, immensely powerful. Goosebumps.

Mark then goes on to tell a well-known story from the archives of Jimmy Breslin, an Irish American journalist from New York.

I’d never heard of Breslin before but, as Mark explains, the punchy journalist was renowned for his ability to find the human side of every story.

Mark then includes this excerpt, taken from the piece Breslin wrote for the New York Herald Tribune at the time of JFK’s funeral:

“Washington – Clifton Pollard was pretty sure he was going to be working on Sunday, so when he woke up at 9 a.m., in his three-room apartment on Corcoran Street, he put on khaki overalls before going into the kitchen for breakfast.

“His wife, Hettie, made bacon and eggs for him. Pollard was in the middle of eating them when he received the phone call he had been expecting. It was from Mazo Kawalchik, who is the foreman of the gravediggers at Arlington National Cemetery, which is where Pollard works for a living.

“‘Polly, could you please be here by eleven o’clock this morning?’ Kawalchik asked. ‘I guess you know what it’s for.’ Pollard did. He hung up the phone, finished breakfast, and left his apartment so he could spend Sunday digging a grave for John Fitzgerald Kennedy.”

There are numerous reasons why these paragraphs and the rest of Breslin’s article are so moving, as Mark explains in the rest of his blog – I would heartily encourage you to go and read it.

But for me, I was – and still am – struck by two elements of it:

• It tells a story that everyone was telling, but in a completely different context.
• It’s word-perfect. Nothing unnecessary or out of place. Possibly the tightest copy I have ever read.

Stories are central to our evolution as a species. Our innate human ability to communicate is what allowed us to share ideas and coordinate our efforts so we could succeed.

And whether we know it consciously or not, pieces of writing like Breslin’s speak to something deeper within us. They connect us, make us feel, and change the way we think and act.

Stories allow you to connect with your clients

This is the simple lesson to take into your marketing strategy: the power of stories to encourage your clients and prospects to engage with you.

A blog about the value of pension tax relief or income protection is far more interesting and engaging to your audience with a unique hook or a real example at the core.

For example, the Yardstick writers often use films, TV shows, books, and poems and relate them back to financial planning topics. Or they might use a case study of a client you’ve already supported, describing the challenge they faced and how your advice helped them overcome it.

But to me, as a writer, that second point of carefully curating every word is even more important. Our writers use that same Breslin instinct to keep everything as succinct and clear as possible for maximum understanding and impact.

Then, for the times when those unnecessary words sneak through, our editor and proofreader, Tom, is a diamond for catching the fluff and stripping it back. That way, you’re left with a clear narrative that tells the story of a problem your clients might face, and what they can do about it.

Facts are useful for explaining why something is important. But they pale in comparison to the way that stories trigger our emotional responses and make us act.

Work with a team of talented storytellers

You can use these same principles to form meaningful relationships with your clients and prospects, and a newsletter is an effective, low-cost way to do so.

The content team at Yardstick is sincerely one of the most talented groups of people I have ever met, each an exceptional storyteller.

So, if you want to tell the stories that will help clients and prospects see the value of your service, we can help.

Email hi@theyardstickagency.co.uk or call 0115 8965 300.