As a content marketer and professional blogger, I could tell you a story about how a prospect signed up for my newsletter and read my blog for two months before reaching out to me for a meeting. By the time we met, I didn’t need to convince her of the value of my services, my knowledge level, or even advise her as to the level of blogging I should do got her because she had already gleaned all that information from the blog posts she had been reading on my website. By the time she was ready to take that final step in the buyer journey, all she wanted to know was how much I charge for my services and how we could make my prices work with her budget.
Or I could list off several facts and statistics about blogging and content marketing.
Which approach do you think would be more effective?
The fact is that storytelling is incredibly important to content marketing. It’s so important that it’s included in the tagline I use for my company: Attract. Engage. Convert. You can’t convert any leads without first engaging them and the surest way to engage them is by telling them a good story. Not only does storytelling in your marketing content make it more likely your prospects will keep reading, it will also make them more likely to remember you because we are primed to remember stories.
A good story can also help you convert leads by convincing them of the value you provide because a good story demonstrates cause and effect. Take Cinderella, for example, she was good, and kind, and thoughtful, and as a result, her fairy godmother decided to help her out by loaning her some nice clothes and a coach so she could go meet the prince. We know the cause, and we know the effect (she got to marry the prince and live happily ever after).
Let’s continue with this Cinderella analogy as we talk about how to use storytelling in marketing because it’s one of the most common (and most effective) storytelling formulas, whether you’re talking about marketing content or any other kind of story.
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Bad Beginnings
When we first meet Cinderella, she’s not in a great place. Her mom is dead and her dad has just married another woman who already has two daughters of her own and is not very fond of Cinderella.
This is your pain point. This is the problem you solve for your clients, but at the very beginning of your story, you won’t talk about how you can solve this problem for them. You’ll just describe the pain point for them in detail.
You might be telling them something they already know, and that’s OK because it demonstrates you understand how they feel. If they don’t believe you really know what they’re going through, they’re not going to be inclined to work with you.
On the other hand, maybe you’re describing something that’s new to them, but nevertheless describes their situation. Maybe they hadn’t realized what they were missing out on until you showed them how their lives could be better. You will also use storytelling to show them how their lives could be better, but we’ll get to that a little later.
From Bad to Worse
Shortly after we meet Cinderella and her new family members, Cinderella’s father dies and things quickly get even worse for her. She’s basically enslaved by her stepmother and stepsisters and her only friends are mice. It’s pretty safe to say she’s hit rock bottom.
This is where you agitate the problem you’re solving for your clients. You’ve already introduced the problem they have and explained why they’re in a bad position, but now you’re going to explain what could happen if they don’t take steps to make it better. How will their situation worsen?
Maybe now the problem is a minor inconvenience, like a discolored mole, easy enough to ignore. But if they don’t take steps now to address the problem, it could become much worse and grow into something very painful, and possibly even life threatening. It’s easy for them to take the action to address the problem, but they have to be motivated to take action, and showing them how much worse their lives could get without a solution is a great start towards motivating them to take action.
Fixing the Problem
One day Cinderella’s fairy godmother appears to loan her some clothes and a coach so she can go to the prince’s ball and enjoy a night off from all her hard work. Cinderella gets to go to the palace and dance with the prince and this is pretty much the peak of her existence. It’s as good as it’s ever going to get for her.
This is where you provide tips and tricks for your prospects to solve the problem themselves. What steps can they take to get themselves to the palace? Every blog post needs to provide value by telling your audience what they can do to solve their own problems, and this is where those solutions come in – the “3 ways to” and the “5 secrets to”, etc.
But it’s not enough to just tell them what they should be doing. You also need to explain to them why they should be doing it. Paint a picture of how much better their lives are going to be once they implement a solution. Make them feel like they’re at the ball dancing with the prince.
Back to the Pain Point
Cinderella’s story doesn’t end the first time she dances with the prince. The fairy godmother’s magic is only temporary, and once the clock strikes midnight, Cinderella has to go back to her life of cooking and cleaning for stepmother and stepsisters.
The same goes for the prospects reading your blog posts. The tips and tricks you give them can only take them so far towards reaching their goals. If they want to see real results, they’re going to have to reach out to you for your products/services, so at this point in the story, you’re going to remind them that they have yet to reach their happily ever after. So you need to remind them that, until they complete those steps and/or buy your products/services, they’ll continue toiling away in their stepmother’s house, covered in cinders.
The End
This is where the formula for a good marketing story diverges from your typical fairy tale, because you’re not going to give your audience a Happily Ever After. In order to achieve their happy ending, they need to at least follow the steps provided in your content. At most, they’ll need to buy from you in order to get the happy ending of their dreams.
This is where your call to action (CTA) comes in, and remember the CTA should always match where your prospect is in the buyer journey. You can absolutely apply this storytelling formula when advertising new products/services, but if someone is reading your blog for the first time, chances are good they’re looking for resources on how to solve the problem themselves and/or they’re just looking for information on the topic and they’re not yet ready to buy. In that case, you’ll be better off asking them to sign up for your newsletter and/or follow you on social media. For example:
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