“[n]ever worn.”

Why not just read the last page (or even the last few words) of a book? It would be faster. You’d skip right to the punch line without having to waste your time.

Of course it doesn’t work this way. Reading the last page of the book wouldn’t do you any good. You wouldn’t have a clue about what happened.

If you wouldn’t read like that, then why do we often talk or write like this?

We lead our marketing with the hard sell. We start with the ‘buy now’. We go straight for the final chapter.

The result is that we often get ignored, and more often than not end up confusing or annoying our audiences.

The key to great marketing is to figure out where your audience is in your story. And, then start the story at that point and bring them along with you.

Your story doesn’t need to be complicated or long. Often you have no more than a few seconds to deliver. Yet, it needs to be purposeful and most of all complete.

Ernest Hemingway once wrote a story, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”