How to Grow Your Laundry Business Through the Art of Storytelling
“Great stories happen to those who can tell them.” – Ira Glass, American radio personality
There are many strategies that you can use to attract new customers. But have you ever thought of allowing stories to do the sales work for you? I think most laundry owners would truthfully answer “no”to that question.
Today’s marketplace, largely due to the influence of the internet, is the most complex and competitive in history, with every seller overtly clamoring for every buyer’s attention – which is exactly why most buyers find it hard to actually pay attention. Clearly, we live in an age of information overload.
Robert McKee – a brilliant screenwriter and professor who has mentored more than 60 Academy Award winners – once noted: “Given the choice between trivial material brilliantly told, versus profound material badly told, the audience will always choose the trivial told brilliantly.”
I think you can interpret that to mean, when applied to the world of consumer marketing, whatever your product is – glamorous or not – there is a story about it that (if properly told) can elicit a positive response from people.
Storytelling is commonly used by non-profit organizations. For example, we have all seen such attention-getting television spots as those from Save the Children, featuring videos of children from around the world whose signature message is: “Save the Children believes every child deserves a future. In the U.S. and around the world, we give children a healthy start in life, the opportunity to learn and protection from harm.”
As you can see, story and emotion have a common link. We pay attention to stories that have a happy ending. Donating to Save the Children makes people feel good because it is a worthy and admirable cause with which they can emotionally identify.
Although there is certainly no comparison in terms of the seriousness of subject matter between Save the Children storytelling and storytelling within the business realm, as a laundry owner you can – and should – consider employing your own specific story in order to garner the target audience’s intellectual and emotional attention.
In fact, quite a few businesses do exactly that. If you choose, you can easily find online marketing done by such firms as Nike, Minnetonka, Burt’s Bees and others to see their well-crafted advertising stories in action.
To develop properly structured stories with which to effectively advertise your laundry, you need to be familiar with the technical components of these types of stories.
In her excellent book – “Let the Story Do the Work”- noted author Esther Choy outlines the four core components of an effective business story. I will list them for you and follow that with a sample story of my own construction, employing her defined components to illustrate how this can be used in the vended laundry industry.
Structural: A story has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Elemental: A story often has elements such as a hero, a challenge, a journey, a resolution, a change, and a call to action.
Authentic: A story reveals a genuine part of the teller, which elicits emotion in the audience.
Strategic: A logical story sparks an audience’s imagination and causes them to relate to the situation. It has been said that “logic makes people think, while emotion makes them act.”
Nike is probably the leading brand when it comes to leveraging storytelling to win over their audience. The company has been leveraging this impactful strategy since the 1990s, when NBA star Michael Jordan was its spokesperson.
However, perhaps Nike’s best use of this approach was its TV ad called “The Chance,” which followed the story of an aspiring young soccer player in New York City. The television spot was poignantly narrated by Spike Lee and gorgeously filmed – featuring all of the ingredients required to unite the intellectual with the emotional. It served as a great example of effective, creative storytelling from a marketing perspective. The ad reminded us that there is the possibility for greatness in each of us – as long as we persevere… and wear Nike, of course.
As promised, here is my version of a sample advertisement for new laundromat customers, containing the four previously mentioned core storytelling components:
Please permit me to introduce myself. My name is Stephen Bean, owner of ABC Coin Laundry, where we view our customers as members of our collective family. We rejoice with them while sharing their accomplishments and joys, and are there for them when they go through rough times or experience a loss. That’s how I choose to operate my business.
Nancy and her husband, Ray, have been loyal weekly customers at ABC Coin Laundry for about eight years. We know them and they know us. They always do their laundry together. However, on one particular day, Nancy came in without Ray. So I suspected something was wrong and asked her where Ray was.
With tears in her eyes, she informed me that Ray was in the hospital with a stroke, and she was very worried about him. They had been married for more than 50 years and lived for each other, inasmuch as they were never able to have children.
That’s all I and my attendants needed to hear. We asked what we could do for her and Ray. She indicated that he was conscious and the prognosis was good, and she thought that having his friends from the laundry visit him would be the perfect medicine.
So, we immediately put a plan together to have our entire staff and myself visit Ray that evening during visiting hours. I asked my son to operate the laundry while we were visiting at the hospital that evening, and he said he would be more than happy to do so.
I went shopping beforehand – buying flowers, along with some of Ray’s favorite snacks and magazines. Then, at 7:00 p.m., we met with Nancy in the hospital lobby. And, when we all entered Ray’s room, his face lit up and he actually sat up in bed. He was thrilled that we cared so much about him and actually became quite emotional.
Happily, Ray, in time, made close to a full recovery. And, when he finally returned to the store to do laundry with his beloved wife, he received a standing ovation.
Not a dry eye in the place.
Nothing unusual. Hey, that’s just how we do business at ABC Coin Laundry.
Of course, this story should be accompanied by a photo of the laundry, as well as one of the owner and the staff. Also, be sure to include the location, hours of operation, and all of the other descriptive data typically found in an advertisement. And how about an image of the loving couple in the store – perhaps holding hands and taken from behind to protect their identities.
Clearly, this is just one specific example. There are endless topics you can use to create stories that will accomplish the same result. When it comes to innovatively marketing your laundry, one creative approach to seriously consider is letting your story do the work.
