3 Stories Your Business Should Be Telling Your Customers

by | business, marketing

In April 2011 a childhood friend of mine and I set out on a journey to create a small little story telling business. We loved stories and we found the perfect way to share them. It’s hard to believe that our simple passion has turned into a multi-million dollar idea.

The day our video hit YouTube, the phones started to ring and they have not stopped since.

I want to discuss the importance of storytelling and how you can use it to change your business.

A great story changes everything. It changes minds, emotions, and feelings. It builds credibility and can position you as the hero.

Plus, if you use stories in your business, it can cause the buyer to put down their defenses and take a really close look at what you have to offer.

Paul Smith, the author of Sell with a story said this.

“COMPARED TO OTHER forms of communication used in sales, storytelling has a number of unique abilities. It can help capture your buyer’s attention and build your mutual relationship. It connects with the decision-making areas in your buyer’s brain and makes you and your product easier to remember. It can literally increase the value of your product or highlight your main idea by moving it to another context. Stories are contagious and spread by word of mouth. They let you be more original and stand out from your competition. And unlike a presentation, your buyers actually want you to tell them stories. Last, compared to clicking through the slides of a sales pitch, telling stories is just more fun—for you and your buyer.”

We are not using stories enough!

Here are 3 stories that every business should be telling!

  • What do you do and why you do it.
  • Who are you?
  • How can you help.

Before I show you examples, I want to talk a little bit about the structure.

All great stories have a structure. The structure matters and the results come from the details. You can’t be lazy when creating your story.

Did you know that all pixar movies have a specific structure. If you want more information about the way Pixar writes their stories you can head on over to our Ydraw blog. Years ago I did an blog post on Pixars story telling secrets.

For now, I am just going to show you their structure.

Pixar summarizes their movies into a simple formula.

Once upon a time__________.Every day,____________.One Day___________Because of that,______________. Because of that, _________________. Until finally____________.

You can do the same thing if you would like. Just know that there has to be structure behind the story.

The best stories have…

1. A Hero
2. A Villain
3. A Struggle
4. A resolution.

How To Tell People What You Do And Why You Do It.

This is a great question and one that we ought to put some thought into. Take our Video Marketing Company, Marketing Hy, Instead of telling people that we do video marketing, we decided it would be best to tell it in a story.

Here is what we put on the home page of the website.

“Well, suppose you’re a business owner and you have an explainer video, but you have no idea what to do with it. Or you’re a marketing manager looking for a way to generate more leads and customers.

 

The pressure is on and you need a way to deliver your message to your audience. That is the tricky part. How do you take your video and place it directly in front of people who are looking for your product or service?

 

That is what we do! Our video marketing campaigns have a lot of moving parts, different softwares, and strategies, but let us worry about that. You just need the results and we love getting results! There is nothing better than watching business grow through our marketing efforts.”

Now isn’t that so much better than a USP (unique selling proposition) or a one liner. I am not against USPs. There is a time and a place for them, but a story is so much more effective.

Here is a simple video that goes along with our story.

How To Tell People Who You Are.

We like to work with people who we know and trust. A simple story about who you are can help bridge that gap.

Word of caution…

When telling your story, beware of being too general. You want them to get a sense of why you do what you do.

Let’s take mine.

“I have always loved business! I started my first company when I graduated college. It was a finance company and since I was always pretty good at crunching numbers I thought it would be best to use my skills in finance.

 

Dealing with people’s money was extremely stressful especially when we made mistakes. 2008 was a bad year. I personally lost millions and it forced me to take a good hard look into my career choice.

 

It was time to get out.

 

I love business and I love marketing and sales. So I put the three of them together. I spent the next year reading every book I could get my hands on; 157 to be exact.

 

I became an expert in driving traffic, leads, and sales. Which basically gave us the foundation to launch Ydraw and Marketing Hy.

 

The rest is history.

 

We’ve been able to generate millions for our companies so we know we can do the same for yours.”

Here is great video example of a two guys telling their story.

How To Tell People How You Can Help!

This is actually one of my favorite stories to tell. For the most part, people tend to jump into features about their product or service. But not you!  At least not anymore.

The best way show your prospects how you can help them is to tell them a story about how you helped another business in their similar situation.

“About a year ago Skyler discovered our business online. He watched one of our YouTube videos on Instagram video marketing and liked what he saw.

 

He was kind of in panic mode because He just was not getting enough leads. His closing rate was high, but he was not getting enough prospects to make money.

 

That is where we came in.

 

When he called us, we discovered that he had a video but did not have the skills to place the video in front of the right audience. The video was actually ghetto. I thought there was not way this video was going to work.

 

But there was not any budget or time to create a new video, so we used what we had.

 

Since Skylar was in the music industry, we thought it best to start off on Instagram. We would come back to Facebook and YouTube later, but for now Instagram was our channel of choice.

 

We ran a $15 a day campaign to hand crafted audience. We usually put a lot of time into developing the right audience.

 

After we launched the campaign I was shocked at the results.

 

That simple video that cost nothing to produce was getting leads at a cost of $4.

 

Now that cool…right?

 

Guess where Skylar is now? Vacationing.

Isn’t that a lot better way?

There is another way you can show people how you can help. Use a testimonial video where a story is being told.

Like this one

Both stories show how a customer successfully used the product and service. A simple little testimonial does not work.

Telling stories does take a little more time, but I have a quote that will help out.

“Who would rather endure 10 seconds of unhelpful, overly scripted boredom than 40 seconds of a genuine, conversational, and even entertaining story that actually answers the questions? More important, which of those two types of answers is likely to get you invited to the buyer’s office for a sales call?”

So go ahead and tell more stories. Make them a part of daily routine. Use stories in your videos, email campaigns, marketing, brochures, sales and customer service.

Make them crucial part of you business and I promise everything will perform better.

Stories are contagious, they inspire, they are shared, and they are remembered.

Isn’t that what we all want?

Thanks for reading!

3 Stories Your Business Should Be Telling Your Customers!

If you have any comments, concerns, needs, or great jokes, reach out to us. We would be happy to help.