![\"storytelling](\"https:\/\/www.marketingforsuccess.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/storytelling-marketing.jpg\" "\\"storytelling")
<\/a>membership club site.<\/p>\nI had been emailing my subscriber list of around 25,000 regularly since 2004 (a list that still steadily grows), but I had noticed the list had become increasingly unresponsive in 2007 and 2008.\u00a0 I thought at first there might be an email deliverability issue, due to spam filters, for example.<\/p>\n
The biggest issue was in how I was communicating with this audience and how they had \u201ctuned out\u201d.<\/p>\n
In short, they were simply \u201cbored\u201d – tired of the same old dry offers, advertisements, free giveaway promotions, and regular communications like newsletters \u2013 what a\u00a0friend of mine affectionately calls \u201cSOS\u201d (same old stuff).<\/p>\n
He says that unless we\u2019re really careful, most of today\u2019s communications ends up in the SOS bucket in people\u2019s mind \u2013 they quickly recognize the form factor of an email, landing page or sales page as an advertisement or a cleverly disguised promotion designed to sell them something and just filter it out.<\/p>\n
I agree with that assessment.\u00a0 The old models are just that \u2013 old, boring and largely ineffective in this new\u00a0age of personal channel communications.<\/p>\n
Today, people want content \u2013 content that\u2019s interesting and useful to them \u2013 that meets their own selfish desires as consumers.\u00a0 Yet as marketers, we have our own selfish needs \u2013 to promote our products and services.<\/p>\n
So, how can we get our message through these increasingly sophisticated \u201cfilters\u201d that our prospects and customers have erected to protect their time from being constantly invaded and to avoid being sold?<\/p>\n
Short Answer:\u00a0 Story.<\/strong><\/p>\n Stories provide an \u201cenvelope\u201d within which we can deliver our messages \u2013 an envelope that will actually get opened, its contents read, understood, remembered, and even repeated by word of mouth and acted upon.<\/p>\n Not just any stories will work.\u00a0 To succeed, stories must be interesting and relevant \u2013 and provide an appropriate context for learning about what we have to offer – but without hard or soft-selling.<\/p>\n For example, relevant stories about authentic customer successes (not some dry, boring \u201ccase study\u201d) are interesting to both business people and consumers.<\/p>\n Personal stories about what we\u2019ve been through that our readers can use to relate to us as fellow human beings are even more powerful.\u00a0 Stories of our biggest triumphs \u2013 and our biggest failures and lessons learned \u2013 are another favorite.<\/p>\n Stories make use human to our readers.\u00a0 And people will make time to listen to a good story!<\/p>\n Stories help to build trust with our readers.\u00a0 And properly-crafted stories build a relationship \u2013 one that creates enough interest and desire to cause our reader to actually want to listen to what we have to say.<\/p>\n The key is in how we carefully weave our marketing messages into these stories so they are readily consumed by our readers \u2013 while our readers are in a receptive frame of mind.<\/p>\n So, back to my story here\u2026<\/p>\n I sent an email to my subscribers, telling the story of one of our members who was frustrated and desperate for a solution.\u00a0 The story took my readers through the emotions this person experienced, creating empathy and the desire to see the situation resolved.<\/p>\n Then the story shared the solution \u2013 how this person discovered this site, which helped him overcome what had seemed like insurmountable obstacles \u2013 by joining a particular membership site, meeting like-minded people and learning to avoid the costly mistakes that he had been making, it virtually turned his life around.<\/p>\n The support this member received from other members on our site via our private forums, as well as direct personal assistance by one of the site\u2019s coaches who reached out and helped this member, was the key to his rapid turnaround.<\/p>\n At the end of this story, our member had transitioned from being a \u201cdrifter\u201d, losing thousands of dollars a month, to being a respectable \u201cmember\u201d who was paying off credit card debts and enjoying thousands of dollars in excess profits \u2013 in just 6 weeks.<\/p>\n As soon as I published a couple of these stories, a number of things happened:<\/p>\n Over that same quarter, these same stories doubled our sales.\u00a0 That\u2019s when I knew for certain that I was on to something important and valuable.<\/p>\n Now, there\u2019s an art to crafting stories so they have the desired effect, and combining the power of the storytelling with social media to produce an interactive environment that creates and fuels \u201csocial proof\u201d \u2013 one of the by-products that causes increased sales results.<\/p>\n Story-telling in marketing communications is something that companies need to do more of.\u00a0 Our listeners, prospects and customers are tired of the SOS and broadcast style communications we\u2019ve grown accustomed to using with them.<\/p>\n I have used this story-based marketing methodology long enough now to say for certain that it really does work \u2013 and it works surprisingly well, too.\u00a0 Since 2008, I have learned a lot more about the key underpinnings responsible for these methods\u2019 success \u2013 a combination of story-telling, relationship-building and authenticity.<\/p>\n Storytelling provides marketers with a way to show up in people\u2019s personal channels and fit in naturally.\u00a0 Good stories are interesting, engaging content that commands an audience\u2019s attention.\u00a0 And stories can teach people about the virtues of your product or service without selling.\u00a0 People learn by way of example by reading stories and seeing how others have applied a product or service in their business or life.<\/p>\n When your company, product or service is involved in a story, it gets noticed.\u00a0 People pay attention to it because it\u2019s an integral part of the story.\u00a0 So we can use stories to convey our marketing message in a much softer, more subtle way so that our messages actually get heard, consumed and acted upon.<\/p>\n Finally, the reason stories work so well is that it \u201cframes\u201d the decision-making processes within our prospects mind \u2013 setting up a framework for that decision-making that creates influence over how facts are interpreted and how decisions are made \u2013 \u201cimplicitly\u201d instead of explicitly.<\/p>\n Explicit decisions are what traditional advertising attempts to do \u2013 to \u201csell you\u201d into submission through repeated exposures, compelling copy, impressive claims, strong benefit statements, great offers and solid calls to action.\u00a0 While these traditional methods certainly have their place, it\u2019s increasingly difficult to use these traditional approaches as the \u201cstarting point\u201d – or we risk falling into the SOS bucket and being ignored.<\/p>\n Implicit decisions happen when we\u2019ve shared a few authentic stories with our prospect, and she decides for herself that she wants to take action.\u00a0 She makes her own decision to take action, without the need for prodding, cajoling or hard-selling tactics.\u00a0\u00a0And once she makes this kind of decision, she\u2019s much more passionate and active than if we\u2019d pushed her into taking an action *we* wanted or requested directly.<\/p>\n Incidentally, if this success story sounds interesting and like something you or your company could benefit from learning to incorporate into your marketing campaigns,\u00a0<\/a>let\u2019s discuss how to craft a story-based campaign for your business.<\/p>\n See how that works?<\/p>\n I hope you find the power of story as interesting and useful as I have in connecting with people who are tuned into their personal channels.<\/p>\n – Rick<\/em><\/p>\n\n