Storytelling is a powerful tool to persuade, influence, and sell your business without being pushy and aggressive. Tyson Zahner, a multi-6-figure earner attributes storytelling as the key skill that propelled him to be one of the most successful marketers out there.
This dedicated father and husband had his fair share of struggles before he managed to make over $20,000 per month using free residual traffic strategies. Prior to this, he was struggling for more than 15 years – working in at least 3 companies and being a public school teacher. But through affiliate and attraction marketing, Zahner has achieved success and financial freedom.
Now he attributes his success to storytelling. This skill is simple and cost-effective in persuading and influencing people. Aside from that, he encourages marketers to spend time attending events and meeting like-minded people because this is where the magic really happens.
It is where you get to immerse and surround yourself with people who have the same goals as you. You get to learn their stories that in the future, will also be beneficial to your business. Below are the 5 reasons why the art of storytelling is essential to marketing success:
Zahner believed that people are conditioned to love stories – to be engaged by them, to learn from them, and to remember them. So why not use them in businesses, right? Stories are not solely for kids but for adults too. It is the oldest form of entertainment, and people have been telling stories since time immemorial.
It is the job of a marketer to let the prospect realize their deepest desires. Storytelling is one subtle way to inject those desires and establish rapport and credibility at the same time. Creating the desire and establishing a relationship opens up a chance for the marketer to later deliver the solution or services he has to offer.
There are different types of stories. One is direct business stories where one client tells their pains, frustrations and experience with a certain product and relays it to the audience who might see themselves in the same situation (like a testimonial). These types of stories are the obvious ones, but it’s also powerful because it uses real human experiences.
But there are other types of stories that you can use. Zahner believes that there will always be a way to tie any lesson to business and create business stories that will engage the audience rather than using marketer tactics that merely show off cash and cars. It is a matter of looking into life lessons and finding ways to relate it to your business.
This is the number one rule. There are great stories out there, but sometimes they are more of self-indulgent stories. These stories do not necessarily invoke emotions from your audience thus, it is a skill to understand what the audience wants to hear and formulate stories based on this understanding. There is no other way to keep a listener on the edge of their seats than telling them a story woven from their interests.
Underdog Story – This always works well because people love and root for the underdog. This includes success stories, of course. Hearing about people who survived and reached success despite the odds is a very relatable theme.
Horrible Experience Story – This is a story about a horrible experience that would have been avoided if only you knew better. Zahner relates a time when he was duped into buying high quality leads from a lead generation company when it was not really high-quality leads.
This story invokes fear and indignation. The purpose of the story is to tell your audience that there is a fat chance of being taken advantage of. But that could be avoided if they constantly learn and think ahead of everyone else. This is again from human experience and creates interest and desire from your listeners.
Case Study Story – Basically, these are success stories and are actually quite common. For example, the story of a busy mom who lost a hundred pounds after trying the weight loss hack that finally worked. You can tell her story to build a desire from your audience because it shares her pains and frustrations that your listeners might be able to relate to.
Not all sorts of stories will leave an impact on your listeners. So from the groundwork, it is best to remember that your story should inspire and move people to action. Create stories that promise some benefits and will encourage your listener to take further action.
Stories are everywhere in our lives, but it takes a little bit of digging to effectively articulate those stories that capture and engage every listener. Most importantly, these stories should be related to your business.
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