Imagine you are an entrepreneur who loves to challenge the status quo. You’ve just come up with a unique product you’re excited to share with the world, but you’re also worried that people won’t understand it. What should you do?
To find out, we analyzed the performance of roughly 7,000 craft entrepreneurs who sell unusual products on Etsy, a popular online sales platform where “people come together to make, sell, buy, and collect unique items.”
The 7,000 sellers we analyzed were the quirkiest of the quirky: the 9% of the 78,000 sellers who, in our estimation, were peddling the most atypical products or combinations of products, such as hand-embroidered, custom-made, purple women’s cowboy boots or earrings that look like two tiny packs of Marlboro cigarettes.
These unconventional value propositions face an uphill battle in attracting customers but also hold remarkable potential in capturing their hearts. Our findings reveal that the key to unlocking their success lies within the art of storytelling: stories cloaked in abstract language, capable of weaving cohesive mental tapestries, and sprinkled with familiar elements can make quirk work. These three storytelling techniques are the secret weapons savvy creators employ to dispel confusion and uncertainty, paving the way for buyers to embrace their unique products. In this article, we’ll unveil the reasons behind these narrative strategies and provide you with the tools to wield their captivating appeal.
THE RISKS OF WEIRD
Even on a site as eclectic as Etsy, weird products don’t sell as well: Over five years, atypical crafters sell about 80% as much as the typical seller — 5,343 products compared to 6,545 sold by entrepreneurs who walk on the mild side.
This tilt toward the conventional makes sense: Most people are, by and large, creatures of habit. When we see something very different, we naturally hesitate to embrace it. As the French philosopher Michel Foucault famously argued, norms and conventions shape our perception of reality to the point that they limit our sense of what is possible and acceptable.
But atypicality is still a risk worth taking. While the risk that an atypical product will not sell is higher, only atypical products become best sellers. This is true in a variety of categories. For example, research shows that movies and songs that combine genres in unusual ways are more likely to become hits than those that don’t. Similarly, several studies about academic publishing have found that ideas that connect previously unrelated research streams have a harder time getting published initially but garner significantly more attention when they do.
This is even the case in the realm of art and architecture. Take the professional ascent of Bjarke Ingels, the Danish architect whose signature style involves forcing seemingly mutually exclusive concepts into something wholly original, such as the 8 House in Copenhagen, a bow-shaped, multistory mash-up of townhouses, offices, shops, and gardens in a single 61,000 square meter (600,000 square feet) complex.
ONCE UPON A PRODUCT
So how do entrepreneurs persuade people to embrace an original idea? One of the most powerful tools at their disposal is storytelling. A well-told story can engage audiences and persuade them to see a product or event from a different perspective. It can also make complex ideas relatable by providing a context in which to place them and a framework for understanding them. Ingels, for instance, tried to make 8 House more familiar by describing it as “a three-dimensional neighborhood rather than an architectural object.”
Of course, not all stories are equally effective at making the strange seem familiar. But while copywriters have intuition and rules of thumb about what works best, empirical proof has been in short supply. However, by using natural-language-processing techniques to analyze the sales narratives employed by the atypical Etsy entrepreneurs in our sample, we identified three storytelling strategies that dramatically boost the market appeal of atypical offerings:
1. Stay abstract.
Our econometric analysis suggests that when it comes to selling unusual products, atypical crafters who rely on more abstract stories to describe their creations sell 2,666 more items over five years than the average seller who uses concrete, functional language.
Concrete language can be helpful if you want to paint a vivid picture, but it can also overwhelm. By contrast, more abstract language can give readers more room to bring their own mental associations to a product. A fruit bowl, for instance, might sound more inviting than a grapefruit dish, or an artist more attractive than a wood carver.
There are a few reasons why this seems to be the case. First, abstraction helps to reduce cognitive complexity by mitigating the dissonance between seemingly contrasting elements while heightening their commonalities. This can give people stronger reasons to pay attention to unusual things that they would otherwise overlook.
Second, abstract language can help build a sense of universality by appealing to a wider range of experiences. When we focus on a story’s essential themes and strip away specific details, we are more likely to tap into something that more people can relate to, giving online shoppers a more intuitive way of perceiving an atypical offer.
For example, instead of saying, “I made a hand-carved mahogany box with brass hinges,” an atypical crafter might have better luck writing, “I created a beautiful wooden box that will hold your treasures.”
It’s also a good idea to choose words that evoke an emotional response in your audience. Instead of saying, “I wrote a book about my experiences, from my beginnings as a single mother and amateur wood crafter to my successful participation in the 1996 Tennessee State Fair carving competition,” you could say, “I shared my unique story of passion, strength, and unwavering resilience that carried me from humble rags to the realm of riches.”
2. Think cohesively.
Telling a cohesive story about the product improves the sales performance of an atypical crafter by a whopping 40% — 1,701 more items over five years than a seller with a loose plot.
A story in which characters, events, and concepts are linked together enables people to form cohesive mental images much more easily, reducing the mental effort they need to make sense of something unusual.
Writers use several strategies to strengthen narrative cohesion.
One way is causal cohesion. It is easier to appreciate unusual creations when they are embedded in stories that flow logically. For example, “I make beautiful cakes because I love baking, and I want to share my passion with others” is more cohesive than “I make beautiful cakes. Baking is my passion. I am Italian, and I love food.”
Another approach is lexical cohesion. For example, imagine we want to tell a story about a woman who loves to bake. In that case, we might repeat the same word — bread, a synonym such as loaf, and a superordinate such as baked good – several times in the text to forge a sense of continuity between the sentences and paragraphs.
Finally, and more subtly, you can use semantic cohesion: the use of synonyms or semantically related words to strengthen relationships between concepts without repeating words such as oven or yeast or flour in your story about the baker. That builds a greater sense of unity and coherence in your narrative.
3. Build bridges home.
Atypical products are difficult to sell, in part, because people find them unfamiliar. By framing products within stories that connect them to a more familiar context, atypical sellers can get their potential buyers to think of their product as something less unfamiliar than they had first imagined.
For example, a crafter selling handmade dresses that combine elements drawn from various styles could tell a story about how she learned sewing from her beloved grandmothers, who were from two different countries. This story would provide a familiar environment and characters for the audience, encouraging a more immersive and emotionally resonant understanding of the clothing that makes it easier for the purchaser to perceive the crafter’s work. Similarly, a marketer who is trying to sell a one-of-a-kind product could invoke its uniqueness while at the same time stressing the ways in which her product is like other products that the audience already uses or how it aligns with the shopper’s own values.
If you build a better mousetrap, the world may or may not beat a path to your door. However, if you are trying to sell purple cowboy boots, it pays to tell a relatable personal story: Our research finds that atypical crafters who manage to infuse familiar elements into their sales stories sell 11,464 more items than those who don’t.
PURPLE YES, BUT MADE FOR WALKING
In today’s fast-paced, innovation-driven economy, atypical ideas and solutions are important sources of growth, competitive advantage, and even societal advancement. However, new ideas often face significant barriers to adoption, as the public may find them difficult to relate to or even understand.
That’s where storytelling comes in. Our research shows that stories can be used strategically by innovators who want to champion unconventional products. We identified three narrative strategies successful sellers of atypical products use: favoring the abstract over the particular, developing cohesive stories, and building bridges to familiar contexts. By adopting these three strategies, atypical innovators can make their unique offerings more accessible and appealing to a larger audience.
Source: Harvard Business Review
