In today’s world, it’s incredibly difficult for a business to really connect with a customer.
This seems a little backward, right? After all, with technology today, a business could create an Instagram account in 5 minutes and start posting pictures to "connect” with customers just 5 minutes after that.
In a world of instantaneous online connection like that, how could it be difficult for a business to connect with a customer?
Paradoxically, it's that very ease of online connection that's the problem. There is so much noise out there because so many companies are online, fighting for consumers' attention. In fact, a well-cited research study by Yankelovich (and additional supportive studies in 2014) have shown the average number of ad and brand exposures per person is upward of 5,000 a day!
When you're up against thousands of different brand messages each day, you need to make sure that you don't make a VERY common mistake that will cause you to lose your customer's interest... and that's over-complicated messaging.
The Solution? Clarify Your Message With Storytelling.
Instead of fighting with the rest of the world to deliver another complex, confusing, or jargon-filled message for your customers to ignore, try using storytelling to simplify your message so your customers can actually connect with it.
Storytelling in marketing is an incredibly valuable tool that can give businesses of all sizes a powerful advantage.
In this article, I will show you how to leverage the power of Storytelling to simplify your message and engage, inspire, and motivate your audience to take action.
This training is going to be packed with actionable insights and value for you so please make sure to download your free guide. It will provide you with everything you'll need to get started. Simply enter your details below to instantly get yours.
Claim Your Guide to Leveraging Storytelling in Marketing
Connect, Engage, and Motivate prospects faster with this technique.
How Storytelling Connects Your Audience to You
Telling a story is the purest form of communication. Dating back to the earliest days of mankind, humans have always shared traditions, communicated big ideas, and made ourselves understood through stories. No wonder there’s the old cliché of people sitting around a campfire telling stories — for much of human history people did exactly that!
And throughout the generations, in billions of movies, books, and even songs, you can find a universal pattern that underlies all stories...
The hero's journey.
No matter what kind of story is being told, the hero’s journey is almost always the same:
- You meet a Character
- Who has a Problem/Challenge
- He or She (or They) Meet a Guide
- The Guide Gives Them a Plan/Skill/Power
- The Character is Transformed
- The Character Then Finds Success
Think of some of the most well-known stories and popular movies: Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Spider-Man, Harry Potter, The Lion King...the list goes on and on.
They each feature characters who go on a journey to overcome their conflicts) with the help of a guide (sometimes several) who help them transform themselves, avoid failure, and find success.
Your customers are on the same exact journey -- and by tapping into their experience, you'll be able to use storytelling to connect, engage, and sell.
This customer journey is outlined perfectly by Donald Miller, founder of StoryBrand, which uses a specific story approach or framework to clarify your message. My full-service digital marketing agency, Built By Love, is StoryBrand certified. If you'd like hands-on help using this approach, then please schedule a free consult with us to learn how we can help you shine.
HOW DOES STORYTELLING HELP US SELL?
By now, you've seen how storytelling is an important way we communicate and understand each other.
Now, let’s talk about how storytelling helps businesses sell.
- Storytelling first helps us sell because it simplifies abstract concepts and/or processes. Remember, humans are bombarded by so many messages each day that it’s easy to lose track in the noise.
Stories can take something complex and present it in a way that humans both comprehend and look for. When done right, your audience has that “Oh, I get it now!” moment. - Storytelling helps us sell by connecting us to our audience. It brings people together. Humans love company, and a story that tells your audience that they aren’t alone will help them connect with a broader purpose and a bigger community — your community. It makes your audience go: “Wow, that's me!”
- Finally, storytelling helps us sell by creating inspiration, engagement, and motivation. For example, have you ever seen testimonial videos from happy customers? Success stories like these are inspirational and moving — when a prospect sees a current customer having a great experience, they are much more motivated to contact you (and hopefully have the same positive experience).
Claim Your Guide to Leveraging Storytelling in Marketing
Connect, Engage, and Motivate prospects faster with this technique.
How To Successfully Use Storytelling In Marketing
1) Make Your Customers the Hero
If you want to engage and motivate your customers with storytelling, you need to make them the hero of the story.
Here are some ways to do so:
A hero needs to be understood in order to truly be a hero. To that end, you need to figure out what matters to your hero and how to talk to them in language they understand and relate to. Your audience won’t even look at your message, let alone respond to it, if it’s not relevant to them or uses language they aren't familiar with.
The best way to do this is to have a mindset of empathy.
By intimately understanding what your audience's problems and challenges are, you are better poised to communicate how you can guide them to success (and help them avoid failure).
You can do so by creating distinct avatars of your ideal customer, including their age, goals, values, pain points, and fears.
2) SHOW HOW YOUR STORY HELPS YOUR CUSTOMER
Looking to the hero's journey when using storytelling in marketing, you can see that YOUR CUSTOMER is the hero and YOU are the guide with a plan who will help lead them to success.
You are Frodo's Gandalf, Luke's Obi-Wan Kenobi, Simba's Mufasa, and so on and so forth.
Why do you do what you do, why are you the expert, and how does it solve the problems of your customers? The answers to these questions are both your unique value proposition and your company's story.
If you can re-frame your story so that it's about your customer, i.e. how YOUR history, your trials, and your successes can add value to THEIR lives, then you will find it much easier to engage your audience to take action.
3) USE TESTIMONIALS TO DEMONSTRATE TRANSFORMATION
Now, it’s time to figure out how to bring in other individual stories to help reinforce your own message.
Success stories from existing customers who have used your product or service can become your biggest brand advocates. It’s one thing for a company to tell a story about how their product can add significant value to a customer’s life, but it’s an entirely different thing if other people (who your prospects can relate to) are saying your business adds value to their lives. It makes your story more credible and more trustworthy.
Here are a couple of success stories my agency scripted and produced to show you the power of this format:
If you want help scripting, producing, and using Success Story videos like these to convert more customers, schedule a free consult today and we can set you up for success.
4) Provide a Clear PROCESS And CTA
The final way you can truly simplify your message and make things easy for your prospects is by giving them a clear process and call-to-action (CTA).
An obvious CTA that tells them what to do will provide a way for your customers to understand exactly what they have to do to overcome their problem and find success. If you use clear language that paints a positive picture, then it’s even easier for your customers to understand.
For example, see the image below taken from one of our past client's websites, Avalon Pharmacy.
Notice the red CTA button is not only obvious, it doesn't just say some generic, "CONTACT US" copy; rather, it declares exactly what you get if you click the button. The 3 steps above break down the process clearly and succinctly, making it easy for potential customers to understand exactly how they can receive value from working with Avalon Pharmacy.
You'll also notice the headline in the image above focuses on the experience of the customer — it makes them the hero of their own journey, with Avalon Pharmacy posed as the guide who can help them achieve more convenient access to their medications based on their needs.
No matter what your business helps customers achieve, introducing storytelling into your communication will help you stand out from all of the noise and clutter that today’s customers experience.
Using storytelling will help you simplify your message by refocusing the attention on your customer as the "hero" and and clarifying how you guide them and/or solve their problems.
And don't forget to get free access to your Storytelling in Marketing Guide below (along with access to a number of other how-to resources).
Claim Your Guide to Leveraging Storytelling in Marketing
Connect, Engage, and Motivate prospects faster with this technique.
If you are a business owner who is serious about growing his or her business with cohesive marketing strategies like storytelling, then I would like to personally invite you to schedule a free strategic consult with my StoryBrand-certified agency.
We'll discuss your road map to success and how we can add value to your company by creating and implementing intelligently designed strategies, videos, graphics, and copy writing into your business. Click here to schedule your free consult.
Daniel Bussius is an award-winning Infusionsoft Certified Partner who is a highly sought after Marketing Agency CEO and Professional Consultant, Daniel and his agency, Built By Love, work with celebrities, New York Times best-selling authors, Fortune 500 companies, and over 1,000 small business owners from around the world.
Daniel is the world's only dual-certified StoryBrand Certified Agency and Infusionsoft Certified Partner. His agency holds a long list of certifications and hires top talent that has one primary goal: to make clients achieve their wildest dreams.
