Plenty of writers start out their career with storytelling aspirations and then watch those dreams slowly morph into a desire to enter the realm of digital marketing. Before the series of jobs that led me to work as Marketing Director at GenSales Marketing Group, I was in a similar position. I was a young graduate, clueless about the job market, and all I had to show for six years of education were two seemingly useless liberal arts degrees. But then I had a thought: marketing and communications have always been two sides of the same coin, haven’t they? This marked my start to eventually discovering the Rule of Four, which has helped make the transition between writer and marketing specialist.
From the beginning of history, since the first moment that a group of humans sat around a campfire on a starlit night, words have been the medium through which we have convinced others of the things we know to be true. They are our most useful persuasive tool. This is why I eventually joined GenSales. Because we pride ourselves on our secret weapon: the art of the conversation. And though we focus most of our efforts on outbound calling services, this conversation can be transmitted across multiple different mediums.
But I digress. The reason I bring up my work history isn’t to bore you with personal anecdotes, but to note that, throughout my early writing career, I heard time and time again about The Rule of Three. From college workshop professors to editors to established authors I admired, everyone mentioned this rule.
However, as I made my way into the wider world of marketing and communications, I realized that this rule – touted as a “catch all” technique that would fix all storytelling issues and create well-structured, relatable narratives – was actually ill-suited as a singular rule in this industry. Even worse, its effect was particularly diminished when writing B2B content.
What is the Rule of Three?
It is not by mere chance that the number three recurs so commonly in our history as humans. It is the most common structure for great works of long-form literature, short stories, films, and yes, even sales proposals.
It boils down to this: humans process information through pattern recognition, and we all know that a pattern is not established until it has recurred more than twice. So, the best categorization technique to both keep your content short and still allow for an engaging structural flow must be a three-part one, right?
As one of my first writing professors once told our group of wide-eyed freshmen: “Once is forgettable, twice is an accident, and thrice is on purpose.” Examples of this structural pattern pop up everywhere. “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” “Blood, sweat, and tears.” “I came, I saw, I conquered.”
Though this was drilled into me early and often, as I made my way into marketing, I realized quickly that segmenting ads, social media posts, and blogs into a three-act structure was not enough to get people to listen. The problem was simple: in raw storytelling, The Rule of Three attracted audiences because they were there to be entertained. An intriguing beginning, a conflict-filled middle section, and a resolution-based ending constituted the perfect cadence to keep their attention.
But when the third act was focused on getting them to pay for a service, click on a CTA, or commit to an introductory meeting, the tactic fell apart. After the engaging story was over, they would disconnect. I would get likes, maybe some reposts, maybe a request to email some more information to the prospect whose day I had ruined with an unsolicited cold call, but nothing more.
After all, if the third step was meant to motivate the audience to take extra steps on their own time, it wasn’t really a Rule of Three, was it? Additionally, why should they trust me enough to take those additional steps? I was good at storytelling, but what could I really do to help them? I found myself at an impasse.
Engagement posts fell flat, cold calling scripts would be met with a dial tone quicker than I could get the first words out, and even simple taglines failed to encompass the mission, vision, and value of the company. My marketing work was simply not garnering the attention I needed to do my job properly. That is when, thanks to my first marketing supervisor – who quickly realized that I was drowning in the stressful dichotomy of expectations and failures – I learned about the Rule of Two.
What is the Rule of Two?
At first glance, the Rule of Two seems like some sort of marketing paradox: a reader doesn’t care who you are if they don’t know how you can help, and they don’t want your help if they don’t know who you are. However, from this apparently unsolvable concept, this seemingly endless loop, stem the most effective marketing and sales tactics.
I was told that, when creating marketing content, reaching out via a cold call, or giving a potential customer my “elevator pitch,” I should always try to explain both who my organization was and how they could help at the same time – preferably in the same sentence.
You might be left wondering about the “why.” Shouldn’t you follow up these two affirmations with a reason why a person should choose your organization over a competitor? Maybe. But more often than not, delineating the “who” and the “what” will illustrate the “why” by default.
When you say something like “GenSales is an expert in B2B marketing and outbound calling (WHO), and we help businesses by filling their calendar with pre-qualified leads (WHAT),” it becomes obvious WHY you should choose the organization: they are clearly industry leaders and they can help struggling businesses by setting up appointments for them. Why wouldn’t you choose them?
Throughout my career, I can’t stress how many times I’ve come across a competitor’s website, read their digital collateral, or even received a cold call from them and been left scratching my head. Sure, their concepts all sound pretty, but I often found myself wondering what they stand for and why I should care.
This new tactic became my bread and butter. As I made my way through the marketing and leadgen industry, it helped me stand out to audiences and show my supervisors that I knew what I was doing. But I also slowly realized that the rule was incomplete.
In addition to the two steps that guided the kind of marketing content one should adhere to, it also needed steps that delineated how to structure said marketing content. It wasn’t just about what you said, but how you said it. Without being able to avoid it, I found myself dwelling once more on the old Rule of Three I had grown so fond of during my years as a writer. Maybe there was a way to combine these rules into an all-encompassing guide for both creating and structuring marketing content – whether it was verbal, written, or visual. Thus, I came up with the Rule of Four.
What is the Rule of Four?
Thus, The Rule of Four. It’s simple and you can find the steps below:
This Rule of Four system perfectly combines the Rule of Two and the Rule of Three. Both elements of the former have been combined into the first step, while the remaining three-act cadence is kept intact in the last three steps.
The Rule of Four enables you to open your pitch by commanding authority based on your company values and simultaneously letting the prospect know immediately how you can help. Once you have their attention, the remaining steps in the Rule of Four follow a three-act structure to paint them a picture of their current predicament (an intriguing beginning), the process through which you aim to fix it (a conflict-filled middle section), and how their situation will improve once it is fixed (a resolution-based ending.)
It seems that, in terms of marketing and leadgen mathematics, two plus three equals four, not five. But this wonky math is necessary to showcase the strengths of the Rule of Four. The four steps in the Rule of Four make it clear that:
B: The three steps that make up the Rule of Three must remain in place in order to trigger the pattern recognition in our brains. That the pattern applies to the prospect’s own life and the success of their own enterprise, instead of to imaginary characters in a book or play, is the cherry on top of the sundae.
The Rule of Four system guarantees that, when you sit around the campfire with your prospect – whether it’s the virtual campfire of social media, the telecom campfire of cold calling, or an actual, literal campfire – their attention will be on you, the storyteller, and on nothing else.