Little Known Way to Bond with Your Readers & Generate Sales

In my recent posts, The Secret of the Most Popular blog Post and Do You Make These Mistakes When Writing Product Review? I mentioned using stories as a way to connect with your readers and, if you are promoting affiliate product, make a sale. The era of selling commodities is long gone. There are too many choices and too many channels. Remember the time when there’s only 2-3 toothpaste brands and varieties  to choose from? Now there are more than twenty different types (high calcium or fresh mint taste or strawberry taste or maybe different paste color?). Internet offers hundreds or even thousands of different channels, from Google ads to Twitter marketing, that are used by businesses to bombard us with their products. And through that process, we stop paying attention. Everything are just bits and bullets. Just noises. The only way to break through these noises of overload of information is to tell stories.

So Why Stories Work?

These are some of the reasons why stories work, as mentioned by Craig Wortmann in his book, What’s Your Story?

1. Stories Create Presence

Stories gets people’s attention. Good stories are based on Hollywood formula of success that play with our emotions; they entertain, inform, refresh, and connect us. Stories also create presence because it’s a much-needed break from our information-drenched day. They give us a chance to pause and catch our breath.

2. Stories Build Strong Relationships

Stories require a teller and a listener before any thoughts or ideas are exchanged. And they weave together facts and feelings and as we hear stories, we literally make meaning out of them. Imagine going to a movie with a friend. After the movie, you go into a discussion with him. And you discovered things about the story that you hadn’t noticed. It is in that collaboration that the learning takes place and relationship is built.

3. Stories Show Us How and Why, as Well as What

The best example of this phenomenon is the Bible. Over the centuries, people have read, re-read, interpreted, discussed, and debated the stories in the Bible. They have added their own meaning to those stories in trying to figure out how these stories relate to their immediate lives.

4. Stories Allow For Reflection

Our business culture can be characterized “Fire. Fire. Fire” rather than “Ready. Aim. Fire.” We’re good at getting into action but we’re bad at reflection. Stories make us slow down and listen. As we discover where the story is leading, we begin to bring our own experience to bear on the story, we interpret story in ways to connect it to our prior experiences.

5. Stories Spread

Have you ever said someone say, “You won’t believe the Power Point presentation I just saw!” Probably not. Stories spread because they are often told in groups, and thus they benefit from the social aspect of groups. Malcolm Gladwell, in his book The Tipping Point, mentioned that once we’re part of a group, we’re susceptible to peer pressure and social norms and any number of other kinds of influence that can play a critical role in sweeping us up in the beginnings of an epidemic. That’s why blog is one of the best place online to tell your story and sell your product.

How Do You Use Story as Internet Marketers?

Now that you know the importance of stories, it is time for us to dive into the practical stuff by creating a story that sell our products. Isn’t that the only thing we care about as internet marketers? ^-^. There are a lot of story structures, but I’ll just use the most popular one in internet marketing community, the hero’s journey story. The Hero’s journey is about a character achieving his dream against all odds. The main character is created based on the prospect’s demographic. Meaning that you need to wear your prospects’ shoes and tell your journey from their perspectives.

To determine your prospect’s demographic, go to Quantcast.com and check the top 4-5 sites in your niche for the average age, income level, education level, and other crucial information of your customers.

The hero’s journey story needs to have a beginning, failures climax, and an ending. In the beginning, your character with his traits is trying achieve his goals(dreams). A problem soon arrived. He tries to solve it. But, he fails. He tries again, still no luck. He is giving up when suddenly he discovers the cure, the secret, the recipe that allows him to finally reach his goals.

For example,

I’m a woman in my late thirties, doing programming. I know it’s not a typical occupation for a woman, but I love what I do. (character introduction) My wedding is next month and I want to look my best in it. But due to years of sitting in front of computer without exercising, I come to a realization that I’m obese. (problem) So, I tried to lose weight by going to gym and by eating low calorie food, but they are not working. (failures) I’m still fat. I’m ready to give up with losing weight when my friend recommend me ‘THE THING’. At first I don’t believe it, but in 2 weeks, I’ve lost more than 20 pounds. (climax) In my wedding day, everyone praised me for my slim and hot body. (ending)

This is just one of the example of using story-selling that would work well, whether you’re selling through email or through blog. Feel free to comments or tweet it if you like it.

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