Stories are incredibly powerful. They engage, entertain, and show the listener how your products and services can make a positive change in their life. Storyselling involves using your storytelling skills to sell. Here are 5 highly effective story types you can use for storyselling that will convert.
Your Brand Story
Your brand story is the story of how your business and its unique offerings makes the world a better place. It focuses on the problems your intended audience faces and the solution: your product or service.
The goal of this type of story is to create an image in the reader’s mind of your brand. It helps to drive home what you do differently than others and how you offer value.
Preaching Your Values
A great type of story is one that conveys your values. It might describe how you came to develop your values and what you discovered along the way as you ran your business. These stories describe what you stand for.
Every company website has a page that describes their mission. Often, they use fluffy words that don’t seem to mean anything. Your story here will show in concrete terms what your business stands for and what change you aspire to make in the world.
Your Backstory
Another story you can tell is your backstory. This kind of story talks about the origin of your business. It explains why you started it and what inspired you. It might focus on a problem you faced and how you invented a solution. You can talk about the emotions you experienced when you first saw customers solving a problem using your product or service.
Before and After
Before and after stories are great for demonstrating the improvements your offering can make in someone’s life. It starts off with someone in a bad situation or facing a big problem. Then, it contrasts their life afterward, after they’ve used your product and solved their problem.
Customer Testimonials
Customer testimonials are great stories you can use for your marketing because they feature someone else explaining how your products or services helped them. This is easy for your audience to relate to. They see themselves in the customer.
Your customer testimonials should be authentic to have the greatest impact. Ask your best customers to provide a testimonial — if their life has truly been changed for the better by your offering, they’ll be happy to do it. If someone writes a positive review for you online, ask if you can use it as a testimonial. This is “social proof” content that demonstrates the results you’ve succeeded in getting for others.
Put Your Customer in the Main Role
No matter what kind of stories you tell, they should all feature the customer as the main character. Know your audience well and make them the hero of your story. This will make it more relatable and paint a picture of what will happen for them if they use your product.
Remember that the goal of storyselling is to sell, not just tell. Keep this goal in mind as you craft your stories.
Are you ready to start telling stories that lead to sales? Check out my full program, where I teach you the A-Z of storyselling so you hit your sales targets and help more people. Check it out here – [INSERT LINK]
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