I found my love of copywriting and storytelling way back when I worked in an eBay store making $6.50 per hour. It’s my view that if you can write great copy and tell a great story, you can change the world.

In that eBay store, I would help to sell things on other’s behalf. It was my job to maximize the value of the product. Rather than just pasting product descriptions and generic specs, I learned that I had to write compelling headlines & hooks, and lead people toward a click. I had to learn what drew the people to the products in the first place. I had to weave that story into the product description.

Copy is at the very heart of every eBay listing, sales pitch, great investor deck, and every story. There are people who can write copy, but cannot tell a story. I have been told that one of my greatest strengths as the ability to combine those skills and create a narrative that helps companies grow. This growth does not come in a vacuum inside the marketing department. Great narratives combine great copywriting and great storytelling, but can be told by anyone in the organization.

Across every department, from the most strategic account executive, to the bookkeeper, to the summer intern; everyone needs to be able to use the same words to describe what the company is trying to do.

This is critical for a variety of reasons. One, if we expect our customers to understand what we do, we need to be very clear about giving them the words to use. I believe the product marketing job is to give customers the words to use in order to refer people that they know in our direction. If that is the north star, it guides everything we do.

Simplicity in message, simplicity in outcomes we deliver, simplicity on creating product launches that connect to the company vision.

These are all outcomes from creating a compelling company narrative based on copy writing and storytelling.

Too many companies launch features with a big splashy day, but they fail to follow up and use their product innovation to drive expansion in new customers.

This is typically because many features are launched and are never followed up on again. That’s a customer marketing problem.

Another reason this happens is that sales reps are not given the story that connects that new feature or product back to the company story.

I love helping people tell company stories. I love helping to create, package, and launch products the connect back to that company story. I believe that every feature that the company builds should be able to be tied back to that company’s vision through the company story. This makes it easier for customers to understand what we are building, but also makes it easier for sales reps to communicate the value of any new feature launch.

(I recently posted about this in a post called “The Product Marketing Ladder”, and am expanding on the process in future posts.)

To fail to give reps this connective issue is marketing malpractice.