What Teaching Taught Me About Marketing

Before I worked in marketing, I was a high school English teacher. And if you’ve ever stood in front of thirty tired teenagers at 8:15 a.m. and tried to convince them that rhetorical appeals matter, you know that selling a product is sometimes easier than selling a lesson plan.

But that’s where it clicked for me. Teaching is marketing. Every day, I had to get my students to buy into something. An idea. A skill. A standard. I had to think not just about what I was teaching, but why anyone in the room should care. Sound familiar?

Storytelling Matters

I remember when I was prepping to teach rhetorical appeals. Most teachers introduced ethos, pathos, and logos using speeches, articles, or commercials. Nothing wrong with that, but I knew my students. They were obsessed with end-of-the-world scenarios and dystopian fiction. So I built a full-on experience.

I created The Last City, a future society clinging to survival after environmental collapse, where strict laws are enforced in a domed city. Students were assigned to government panels or debate teams, and they had to argue for or against laws like selective reproduction or mandatory occupations. Each group had to base their argument on one rhetorical appeal: ethos, pathos, or logos.

And guess what? They were into it. They prepared. They debated. They cared. Not because I told them to, but because the story pulled them in.

Ultimately, students learned what they needed to. By the end of the lesson, they not only understood what the rhetorical appeals are but how to use them.

I could’ve done the same lesson and asked students to read an article and write a short constructed response. They would’ve done it. They would’ve grabbed their Chromebooks, wrote the words, and completed the work.

But would they have been as engaged?

That’s when I realized that how you tell a story, whether it’s in a classroom or on a website, can change everything. You can’t just drop information and hope people latch on. You have to create meaning, tension, connection. That’s the same approach I took when I transitioned into marketing.

At Rockwall Christmas Company, storytelling played a big role in how we connected with our audience. We didn’t just post product photos with a caption that said “new crate available.” We told stories about family traditions, the magic of decorating with your kids, and the ease of knowing everything matches and fits together.

We created a narrative around the experience of using a Christmas Crate, not just the product itself. Whether it was a behind-the-scenes video of packing crates, a customer photo of their fully decorated tree, or a post about how our designs came together, we treated every piece of content as a way to invite people into the story.

That kind of story is what people remember.

The Power of "Why"

Another lesson from the classroom: people need to know why something matters. Students don’t want to learn sentence structure just because the TEKS says so.

They want to know why learning grammar matters, or why analyzing rhetoric helps them express themselves better.

Once they understood the purpose, they engaged more deeply.

The same rule applies in marketing. At Rockwall Christmas Company, we didn’t just describe what was in each Christmas Crate. We focused on why someone would want one in the first place. Our messaging centered around simplicity, ease, and elegance. Decorating for the holidays can feel overwhelming, and most people aren’t sure how to recreate that polished, magazine-worthy look on their own.

Our crates took all the extra work out of it. We showed customers that they didn’t need to be designers to have a beautiful tree. They just needed the right pieces, all curated to work together. When people understood the why, the product felt less like a purchase and more like a solution they needed.

I’ve come to believe that good teaching and good marketing are more similar than most people think.

Both are about people. Both are about stories.

And both are about helping someone see why something is worth believing in.