Minding Your Metaphors in Creating Marketing Content

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“When CEOs use war metaphors, analysts worry,” Joao Cotter Salvado and Donal Crilly point out in this month’s issue of the Harvard Business Review, citing Oracle executive chairman’s statement about “bulldozing” competitors or First Solar’s description of an acquisition as an “offensive”. Business should never be perceived as a battleground, the authors opine.

I thought of this article when, earlier this week, in her guest post about building “killer sales pitches”, Chantal Briggs made use of some very powerful metaphors. (“A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by stating that one is the other,” Alice Underwood explains in grammarly.com.)

Chantal Briggs’ metaphors of note:

  • “You need tactics that punch above your size.” This expression comes from boxing.
  • “messaging that doesn’t just land, it sticks.” (In gymnastics, a perfect landing means maintaining balance and control without any movement of the feet after hitting the ground.)
  • “You’re not just a boutique coffee roaster; you’re the shop that sponsors open mic nights and buys beans from farmers by name.”
  • “If your sales muscles feel flabby…”

“Metaphors are commonly used in the marketing space due to their ability to communicate complex topics in relatable ways,” IntuitMailchimp points out. In fact, certain metaphors (think “hold your horses”) are used so often they lose their original meaning and become part of our language pattern, the authors note.

In marketing content, we teach at Say It For You, one technique to engage readers is using an unlikely comparison in order to explain an aspect of a business or professional practice. Given the short attention span of the typical web searcher, “startling” comparisons can turn out to be good teaching tools, and suggesting, through an “off-the wall” comparison, a totally new way of using a product or service —  well, that has the power to open up new possibilities of doing business with you.

Putting ingredients together that don’t seem to match is not only an excellent tool for creating engaging business content, but also a good teaching tool. Going from what is familiar to readers to the unfamiliar
area of your own expertise, allows your potential customers to feel smart as well as understood.

As head of a content marketing team, I took a somewhat different “thought path” down one of Chantal’s metaphors. She uses “Sometimes the best advice is a mirror” to encourage entrepreneurs to go back to business school: “When you see someone who looks like you —same hurdles, same goals—succeeding through education…”.

To me, the core message of the “mirror” metaphor is that, as content marketers, we need never stray from reflecting, in our content, the needs and preferences of our “target market”, those who may not “look like us”, but who do face common hurdles and who have similar goals. “Envisioning your likely target market is part of the process of creating and refining a product. It informs decisions about its packaging, marketing, and placement,” Margaret James writes in Investopedia.

Minding our metaphors is key in managing content marketing. After all, none of us want our messaging to merely land – we want to stick the landing!

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How to Build Killer Sales Pitches, Marketing Moves, and Brand Stories as a Small Business Team

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You’ve got a product or service, a team that believes in it, and a market that needs it—now what? Selling it, of course, but not with a shrug and a hope. Sales, marketing, and storytelling are where businesses win or spiral, and if you’re working with a lean crew, the stakes and the focus sharpen. You need tactics that punch above your size and messaging that doesn’t just land, it sticks. The good news? Creativity is cheaper than a bloated ad budget, and resourcefulness often outpaces experience. Let’s get into how to shape your pitch, tighten your strategy, and make your story sing.

Start with a pitch that makes people stay

Sales pitches shouldn’t feel like someone reading bullet points off a brochure. You want rhythm, voice, tension, and resolution. The goal isn’t to sell a product, it’s to sell a shift in thinking, a new convenience, or a fix they didn’t know they needed. So how do you do it? Strip it back to the problem and build the pitch around the solution, using language that invites, not pressures. A perfect sales pitch weaves customer pain points into an effortless narrative with a clear next step. If you sound like every other team with a script and a smile, you’ll disappear with them too.

Market with movement, not noise

Marketing only works when it’s aimed, not sprayed. Start by figuring out where your audience already spends their time—scrolling Instagram reels, opening local newsletters, searching YouTube tutorials—and meet them there. From there, consistency beats virality every time. A steady drip of content that informs, entertains, or sparks curiosity builds more brand recall than a one-off blitz. This is especially true for budget-conscious teams who need bang for every buck and second. For inspiration, these small business marketing ideas show how scrappy campaigns can still dominate attention spans.

Tell a story that actually matters

Nobody remembers taglines, they remember feelings. That’s the whole point of a brand narrative—it’s the emotional thread that ties everything together. You’re not just a boutique coffee roaster, you’re the shop that sponsors open mic nights and buys beans from farmers by name. Stories like that are sticky, shareable, and defensible against cheaper competitors. The mistake most small businesses make? Talking about themselves too much and their customers too little. Study compelling brand narratives and you’ll see that it’s always the audience who ends up the hero.

Go back to school without pausing your business

If your marketing or sales muscles feel flabby, there’s no shame in hitting the books again. Earning a business management degree will help you gain skills in operations, marketing, and sales—yes, all three, which is what most small team leaders need. What’s even better is how flexible the programs have become. You can go here to see how online courses make it possible to stay in the trenches while sharpening your strategy. Nights, weekends, even lunch breaks can turn into workshop hours. It’s a long play, but one that stretches your ceiling for the years ahead.

Let feedback shape your messaging

Forget guesswork. You’ve got emails, DMs, comment threads, reviews, even eye rolls at the end of your pitch—data is dripping from every edge of your business. The trick is creating systems that feed that data back into your approach without clogging your workflow. Use surveys, ask blunt questions, and don’t flinch at the answers. Your customers will write your next pitch if you let them. Start integrating feedback loops into your team’s weekly rhythm and you’ll find your voice evolving to match what people actually care about.

Proof it works: entrepreneurs are doing it

Sometimes the best advice is a mirror. When you see someone who looks like you—same hurdles, same goals—succeeding through education, the theory becomes real. One entrepreneur goes back to business school and finds their voice stronger, their strategy sharper, their brand more magnetic. That’s the ripple effect of learning with intention. It’s not a retreat from the hustle, it’s a weapon you bring back to it. And you’re not chasing a degree, you’re carving out a longer runway for your business. You’ll think longer, act faster, and speak louder. 

There’s no one-size script or silver bullet when you’re pitching with heart, marketing on a shoestring, and building a brand story that feels like yours. But there are instincts you can sharpen and strategies you can test, discard, or double-down on. Be the team that keeps learning, that writes fast and edits with curiosity. Chase feedback like it’s a cofounder. Take your voice seriously, because nobody else will until you do. And if that means going back to school or rewriting your pitch for the twentieth time, well, that’s just business.

 

Chantal Briggs created Neighbors Needed to make it easier for community members everywhere to connect with their neighbors, build strong relationships, celebrate one another, and in turn, create communities where everyone can thrive. The site offers resources and advice on how to make strong neighborly connections and build safer communities.

 

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Core Content Question: Sez Who?

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Earlier this week, in her guest post on our Say It For You blog, Erin Jernigan stressed the importance of choosing one’s niche audience before creating content. “Niching, she stressed, allows refining your message and rendering it much more powerful, creating a deeper connection.”

I thought about “niching” the other day, when, at one of my online networking groups, the discussion leader posed the following question: If you were to start a podcast today, what would you name it? My answer: “Sez Who?”. That’s because those “deeper connections” to which Erin alluded run in both directions.

When online readers find your content, not only is it important for you to have understood them and their needs and preferences, they need to know “who lives here” and be helped to understand you. That means that, in marketing a business, practice, or organization, we content creators absolutely must make clear “who lives here”, using opinion to clarify not only what differentiates that entity from its peers, but also what guiding principles are “held dear’ over there.

It’s true that, at Say It For You, I’ve been fond of saying that the “what” needs to come before the “who”, meaning that the first order of business in content marketing is writing about the audience and their needs. In other words, I have often advised, only after you’ve told them what’s in it for them if they continue reading, should you be writing about what you do, what you know, and what you know how to do.

Michelle Noel calls it “brand value”, saying that it’s no longer enough to offer great products and services, To build strong relationships, you must communicate:

  • Your purpose: Why do you exist?
  • Your vision: What do you aspire to do?
  • Your values: Who are you? What do you believe in?

Those “deeper connections” of which Erin Jernigan speaks? They run both ways. That’s why, were I to start a podcast, I’d name it “Sez Who?”.

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Turnarounds are Content Marketing Treasure

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Rather than rethinking, one of the most annoying things people do is saying ‘That’s not what our experience has shown”, Adam Grant points out in his book Think Again. There’s joy in being wrong, Grant asserts. so he encourages business owners to “tout their doubt”. And, precisely because you’re pointing the finger at yourself, not at your clients and customers, Grant says, they are more likely to accept your business changes of direction as signs of strength and progress, not as indications of weakness. In fact, in hiring and promoting employees, he posits, agility will be more valuable than ability – we should bet on people with the flexibility to change.

It isn’t easy. “Communicating a successful turnaround requires a blend of honesty, strategic clarity and ongoing engagement with stakeholders,” Dave Platter writes in Forbes. “Any company in need of a turnaround will be under extreme scrutiny”. It will be important to “articulate a clear and compelling vision for the future.” However, “a well-communicated turnaround story can transform market perceptions and lead to a new lease on life…”.

Sharon Tanton asks, What if you want to shift the focus of what you do?. Maybe your priorities have changed, you’ve spotted a gap in the market, or just realized that you need a change of direction. Your move could make sense in a client’s mind, she says, especially if you find a way of continuing the service they’ve grown to rely on from you. Are there big linking themes that will help you make your new story feel like a natural extension of what people already know and love about you? Start telling people, Tanton advises:

  • Explain why the change is happening.
  • If there’s a back story (maybe a personal one), share it.
  • Tell how your clients stand to benefit.

Andy Mowat advises business owners to think about their work in two “buckets”: Run-the-business (TTB) and Change-the-business (CTB). Most business and practice owners spend most of their time on RTB tasks, Mowat admits, but ideally should be spending time and effort on both.

In a way, this discussion relates to a dilemma that faces us creators of marketing content. Sometimes we learn that information we’d posted months -or even years ago isn’t true, or at least isn’t true any longer:

  • Someone posted a comment that contradicted what you said, and, upon looking into the matter, you discover you’d been mistaken.
  • You’ve learned there’s some better way to solve a problem, a solution you didn’t know about then, or perhaps one that didn’t even exist at the time you wrote that content.
  • The “regs” have changed in the industry, and the old information is simply outdated.

What’s the best way to handle that situation? Some content writers make corrections by using strikethrough text on the original entry, followed with the correct version, while others use italics, bolding, or notes at the top or bottom of the original post. The method I prefer is to use new content to share what the business/owner now understands is the better solution to a problem or new knowledge that’s been acquired.

Readers will appreciate the honesty of the update. In fact, “turnarounds” can turn out to be content marketing treasure!

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How to Use Numbers Without Being a Numbers Nudnik

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With both of this week’s Say It For You blog posts representing my reaction to Ryan Law’s very provocative piece “The Four Forces of Bad Content”, today our focus is on what Law mocks as “deference to data”.  Yes, Law accedes, content marketing should be data-driven, but “the way most writers use evidence…actually undermines their argument.”  Three specific practices he mocks are a) injecting a tired-out statistic into an opening sentence  b) using questionable, outdated data points  and c) dumping quotes from experts with only a thin narrative to link them to the argument.

As a content writer and trainer, I actually believe that numbers, which can be used to “build belief” are often underutilized.  Statistics, I explain to business owners and professional practitioners, are not merely attention-grabbers, but can be used to demonstrate the extent of a problem their product or service helps address. If there’s some false impression people seem to have relating to your industry, or to a product or service you provide, I explain, you can bring in statistics to show how things really are. Using data in content marketing relates to the theory of social proof, meaning that, as humans, we are simply more willing to do something if we see that other people are doing it. I agree with Law that, when using statistics in marketing content, it’s important to include the source, providing the answer to readers’ unspoken question: “Why should I accept these statistics as proof?”

A few years ago, I remember reading an Indianapolis Business Journal article titled “In the workplace: Data is a commodity, but insight is gold”. When numbers are tossed around, people generally view it as vital information, she says, but people may not want to read raw data; they want someone to tell them what the data means. When explained effectively, her point was, it can make people think and then move to making decisions.

Pedro Cardoso of Enterprise Apps Today has some very relevant commentary about data. Typically, websites are used to provide data, he says – what products and services the company offers and in what “packages”, who the players are, in what geographical area the company operates. (I believe that, on the better sites, there is also data presented pertaining to the owners and the history of the company). The real value, though, Cardoso points out is in the information behind the data.:

Go ahead and use numbers, we recommend at Say It For You, but avoid being a numbers nudnik!

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