People buy products to fulfill their life stories. People buy an experience, not a product and I can prove it. Read the story below if you don’t believe me:
In 2009, a journalist by the name of Rob Walker, wanted to find out: Is storytelling really the most powerful tool of all? In order to do this, he went on his computer and bought 200 objects from eBay.
The average price of the objects was about one dollar. He then called 200 authors, and asked them, “Hey, would you like to be part of the ‘significant object study’? Which meant that I would like you to write a story about one of the objects.” And 200 authors said yes. So there he had 200 objects, he had 200 stories.
He went on eBay again with all the 200 objects. Would there be a difference? Would there be a change? Do you think there was a change?
You can find a link to the story written for the horse head in the references below.
One of the objects was this beautiful horse’s head. This beautiful horse’s head was bought for 99¢ and was sold, when the story was added, for $62.95. That is a slight increase of 6395%. So, was this a one-off situation? Not really, because he bought the 200 objects for a total of $129, selling them for $8000. Now, that’s insane. — Story by JP Phillips [1]
Now let’s learn how to write stories that make customers run towards you.
You Need To Tell The Truth To Have A Great Story.
Writing good fiction is not easy.
Fictional novelists intentionally take characters, events, quirks, etc from their own lives and add them to their novels.
No one makes up the whole story from scratch. Here’s an example of J.K Rowling.
J. K. Rowling shares her b’day with Harry Potter. The character of Harry was inspired by her childhood neighbor, Ian Potter. Ian was as mischievous as young Harry, and used to dress up like a wizard!
“I was quite taken aback when I reread that chapter (Mirror of Erised) to see how much I had directly given Harry my own feelings, because I wasn’t aware of that as I was writing. As I was writing, I’m trying to do the thing properly — that needed to happen for plot reasons — as people who’ve read the book, they will know — Harry had to find out how that mirror worked. But when I reread that chapter it became very clear to me that I’d given Harry almost entirely my own feelings about my mother’s death.” — J.K Rowling
It’s ok to make up things for flair about your product but you have to tell the truth. We have a concept called promises and payoffs as storytellers. When you promise, you must actually give the payoff.
Remember Winter is coming? Apparently, GOT fans were so disappointed as the series did not live up to the hype. For you, this will look like a customer buying your product after seeing an amazing advert, writeup, or something else only to be disappointed that it can’t do what it says it would. That’s if even you sell in the first place.
Trying to have an actual product for sale and then another one just for adverts will not work. You will be stuck with castles in the air and most people will see right through you.
You Need To Tell The Truth Well To Have A Great Story.
Now the truth is important but we all know it’s more important how well you tell the truth.
The first is don’t lie. Let the core of your message be true but you can make it pop just like a video in post-production. Let’s learn from the story below:
There was a blind man begging for alms with a sign that said, “I’m blind”. People dropped a coin here and there once in a while. Then a lady stopped by. He was interested in why she was standing there. He felt her shoes and then she left. As the woman left, everyone started giving him more and more and more money.
Then he felt someone standing in front of him for a while. He reached out and touched their shoes and it was the familiar feel of the woman’s feet. Not sure if it was her. He asked, what did you do to my sign? She said, “I changed it to say, it’s a beautiful day but I can’t see it.”
It matters how you speak.
The sections below will teach you how to tell the story about your product best.
Your Story Must Be About The Customer.
Do some research about your potential customers.
What are their dreams, stories, pains, struggles, etc? Once you know that you can craft a compelling story using a copywriting framework called PAS.
Problem or Pain. Write up a story about their pain. If you haven’t personally experienced this pain, it might be worthwhile to have someone who has experienced it write the story.
Agitate. At this point, you have to take on the uncomfortable role of putting salt in their wound and then pressing on it as hard as you can.
Solution. Then you morph yourself into their hero by providing the much-needed solution to their pain.
None of the above can be possible without first understanding the customer.
You Need to Speak to People’s Emotions to Have a Great Story.
We’ve talked about the fact that people buy for an experience. The hidden fact behind that is that emotions make up experiences. Think of an awesome buying experience. A product that made you soooo happy. Now think of that product and remove one emotion after the other: Joy, Excitement,
For me, this was buying a PSP. which is a handheld game console. I knew my typical African parents would never buy it for me as I was supposed to focus on my studies so I could become a doctor.
I saved up my lunch money(starved myself) and bought it a few months later. I remember sneaking around and playing with it. I got games like god of War and Naruto and was ecstatic. Now remove the thrill I felt at playing those games and that experience would not have been worth it.
It’s the same way a 16-year-old girl steals her mum’s make-up so she can catch a boy’s eye. It’s a crazy thing but emotions are crazy by nature.
You can induce emotions by various means.
- Tell real stories. It can be very hard to make up emotions. Use personal stories of yourself or someone else. This can be hard but vulnerability is a great tool and it works. People want someone’s struggles to which they can relate.
- Craft characters that mimic the life your customers want. Their pains, struggles, and dreams. Someone they can empathize with.
- Don’t gloss over the details. They make the story even more real.
Don’t say.
I was standing on the pier at night with bruised feet.
Say
It was 10pm. I had walked barefooted from the porch to the pier that stood over the lake. I stood there wincing in pain.
You have begun to paint a picture and that’s what gets people believing.
There’s not one individual on the planet who doesn’t want to see what that life they’d always dreamed of actually looks like. If you can paint that picture, you will win their hearts.
📧 stephen@anagkazo.tech Reach out to get a compelling narrative that’ll pull in your audience. REfer someone and get a 10% referral fee when they sign up.
References
Significant Objects | …and how they got that way
and how they got that waysignificantobjects.com
Horse Bust by Beth Lisick | Significant Objects
The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Beth Lisick, has ended. Original price: 99 cents. Final price…significantobjects.com
The Inspiration Behind the Characters of Harry Potter
Fictional characters are like children. They’re born out of the author, filled with scraps of identity and brimming…archive.bookstr.com
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