Marketing Advice in Opening Lines
As a marketer, you know how valuable it is to be sensitive to marketing inspiration no matter what you’re reading or studying. Finding ways to make your everyday life applicable to your marketing sensitivities will keep your ideas fresh and your mind humming, even when you aren’t in the office. For instance, many of us really enjoy diving into a great book and getting lost for a few hours, learning about the lives and experiences of others, getting exposure to different points of view and applying our newly-acquired knowledge to our work as marketers.
If you’re a lover of great literature, finding content marketing advice in the books you pick isn’t as hard as you think. In fact, a lot of times, there’s great marketing advice hiding right in the opening lines of some of the greatest literature of all time. Here’s a list of opening lines from famous literature that can double as fantastic content marketing advice.
1. “Right here and now, as an old friend used to say, we are in the fluid present, where clear-sightedness never guarantees perfect vision.”
-From Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub
When you think about the sterling perspective required to make strides in the marketing world, it’s easy to see how this quote relates. As the opening line says, “clear sightedness never guarantees perfect vision,” it is pertinent to remember that circumspection is one of the most important parts of effective marketing and making decisions in the business world.
2.“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”
-From David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
When thinking about the ideas or philosophies which are most useful to your clients as they forge their own brands in the industry, personality and individuality are key. As David Copperfield opens his own story, he muses on the line between personal glory and agency and ceding such power to someone else. In the world of marketing, encouraging your clients to occupy their own space is always good advice.
3. “A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.”
-From The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
The arbitration of choice of which Greene speaks in the opening lines of this 1951 novel can relate to marketing in a variety of ways. When it comes to keeping your perspective fresh and not letting uncomfortable anticipation or past failures affect the enthusiasm and faith with which you approach a problem, your success as a marketer might rest solely upon your ownership of your experiences and applying them knowledgeably to problems in the future.
4. “Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm, as the Tarleton twins were.”
-From Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
When it comes to owning your abilities, the Scarlett O’Hara model is worthy of a nod. Margaret Mitchell points out immediately in her landmark novel that although O’Hara wasn’t beautiful, a quality which was presumably a requirement to hold the attentions of both suitors and the readers of her story, she possesses such a magnificent charm that her looks don’t altogether matter so much. When communicating with your clients about their own strengths, don’t focus on the most traditional qualities. Instead, find what makes them special and irresistible to their customers and expand upon those qualities.
5. “No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be a heroine.”
-From Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Remembering the hidden potential that exists in several aspects of your marketing life is an important part of continued success. Like Catherine Morlund, whose potentials were built as she grew up and acquired knowledge, so your marketing career will transform and acquire facets as you go along, working hard, making strides and creating new opportunities for your clients.
Keeping your perspectives on marketing fresh and informed is not nearly as complicated as it might sound. Finding marketing inspiration in your everyday life is as simple as taking a closer reading at your leisure reading and letting the characters offer their own advice on marketing, no matter the time period from which they speak.
Image Credit: freedigitalphotos.net/janoon028