How to Make Your Idea Stick

Have you ever shared an idea with someone and seen it immediately take flight in their eyes?

Their mind is churning a thousand miles per minute, and you can tell that they grasp the consequence of what you have shared and how it could be implemented to solve their problem.

Alternatively, we have all seen the glazed look that comes over someone when what you are telling them is either common knowledge or has no impact on their daily life.

How is it that some people can share their ideas in a way that resonates so well with their audience, while others can drop a great idea that falls completely flat?

If you want to avoid your print marketing falling flat, there is an excellent communication framework that you can use that will help you relate your ideas to your audience in a way that they can actively understand – and take action!

Creating the Framework

Man with sticky notes

When you sit down to write content for your next sales flyer, business card or banner, remember these five key steps for communication that will engage and delight your listeners.

For your content to stick, be useful, and long-lasting, run it through these five questions.

Does your content make your audience:

✔ Pay attention?
✔ Understand and remember it?
✔ Agree/Believe?
✔ Care?
✔ Be able to act on it?

No One Cares About Your Ideas

Here’s the reality. Just because you care passionately and deeply about an idea – even one that hits you to your very core – that doesn’t mean that your audience will share your excitement.

confused stick figure

You have to frame your thoughts in such a way that they become personal and relatable to your listeners. This could mean unique messaging for different people in your audience, as it’s unlikely that a young adult will react in the same way to a pitch on health insurance as would someone close to retirement age.

Bringing in Emotion

Emotion is more than a simple feeling: warm, cold, tired, excited. Emotion is empathy, being able to put yourself in the place of someone else and feel their pain or desires. When you’re able to evoke those feelings in individuals, it causes a deeper level of connection and commitment to your ideas.

happy stick figure

You’ll want people to understand and remember the idea – so it’s essential to make it feel more concrete, or specific. If someone cares about your idea, then they are one step closer to buying into your overall concept, and your idea becomes more “sticky.”

Ultimately, the goal of a communications framework is to make an idea actionable, which is the final step and requires telling a story. The story could be about the benefits that you should expect to receive from pursuing the product or idea.

Stories can take a variety of shapes, from written newsletters to marketing collateral to personal conversations and even text messages that reinforce your point and continue to create a credible and emotional bond with your audience.

If you need help sharing your next great idea through print, contact us today!

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

by Chip Heath, Dan Heath

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The instant classic about why some ideas thrive, why others die, and how to improve your idea’s chances—essential reading in the “fake news” era.

Mark Twain once observed, “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.” His observation rings true: Urban legends, conspiracy theories, and bogus news stories circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people with important ideas—entrepreneurs, teachers, politicians, and journalists—struggle to make them “stick.”

In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier, such as applying the human scale principle, using the Velcro Theory of Memory, and creating curiosity gaps. Along the way, we discover that sticky messages of all kinds—from the infamous “kidney theft ring” hoax to a coach’s lessons on sportsmanship to a vision for a new product at Sony—draw their power from the same six traits.

Made to Stick will transform the way you communicate. It’s a fast-paced tour of success stories (and failures): the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who drank a glass of bacteria to prove a point about stomach ulcers; the charities who make use of the Mother Teresa Effect; the elementary-school teacher whose simulation actually prevented racial prejudice.

Provocative, eye-opening, and often surprisingly funny, Made to Stick shows us the vital principles of winning ideas—and tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own messages stick.