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Make Your Message Relatable

Let's talk about types of stories because there's all different ways that you can approach how stories are leverage, the first kind of story is a personal story, and by that I mean your personal story, so a lot of us have created transformation for ourselves. Alright, I've built a six figure business, I've doubled my revenue year after year. Jessica has probably become a better parent. Bridget has learned to cook better. Tiffany has been rejected a hundred times, so we didn't have we haven't talked about what your product is what your next big thing is yet, but so we've created these transformations for ourselves. Karen's unlocked the door from depression to loving life to inf feeling good about herself in the world through yoga, there is a personal story there, and so you can actually leverage your personal story to make a connection with where your customers air at through, how you're going to lead them from before to after toe what those results are going to be in all the circumstan...

ces in between, your personal story is agree great way to draw on all of those details and all of those feelings that you share with your client or customer personal story the next one is client story not all of us are making have made that personal transformation. Um so because some of us are operating sort of as experts outside of a field that's really relevant to us because we've maybe spent our whole lives learning about these things and so we didn't need to make a big transformation. No problem look two former clients or customers case studies, clients, stories, testimonials are a fantastic way to tell the story that you want to tell you that moves people from before toe after two key insight toe hypothesis. Okay, so you can tell someone else's story again looking for all of those juicy little details looking for the circumstances that make it feel real and of course, looking for the feelings that show you how to shape that story and shape the experience and then the last one if the first two just don't work for you. Ah, hypothetical story is a great way to go, and even if the first two could work for you, ah, hypothetical story might be the best way to go. You can name some you can come up with the character and tell a hypothetical story think about, you know, a client that you would just love to have give her a name, give her a set of circumstances, make it feel really riel make it obvious that it's a hypothetical you're not trying to, you know, pull one over on anybody make it obvious that it's a hypothetical story but tell the story in a way that really gives you an opportunity teo um you know, flesh out all of those details that are really going to attract the right people, put them in the right place to buy and then and make the most open to your pitch so personal stories, clients, stories and hypothetical stories the other story with this is well, is that it doesn't always have to be a then she did this and then he did that and she said this and he said that kind of story just like what we did with jessica's lead early on it could be sort of a story that you're telling at a higher level you can tell it from the big picture or you can narrow down in and tell that kind of he said she said then she did this then he did that kind of story they're both extremely powerful, so please play with it we're going to do that in just a bit, okay? You can really play with that. So what are some different ways to tell your story? First, you could tell a written story and as I mentioned, this is one of the things that we've been doing most here because it's easiest to display to you so a written story would be something that shows up on a sales page on a product description for a physical product or like an old old fashioned marketing like brochures remember those things so so written could be sales pages, product descriptions or things like brochures visual is another way you can tell your story so that could be in things like catalogs look, books we're adds, think about the anthropologie catalog if you get that or the restoration hardware a catalogue that everybody hates because it's like fifty pounds those catalogues all tell a story merchandising is a way that marketers have told stories forever, right? You arranged goods you arrange a room, you're range a person in a way that tells a story and so we see this happening on pinterest are on instagram all the time, you know, with instagram, for instance, one way I tell a story that's separate from my business business is that I post on instagram about all sorts of things I don't use instagram strategically, but what I do do is make sure that the story that I'm telling on instagram ads color to my brand it helps people feel like they have a deeper relationship with me now. Other brands khun use it much more directly and even totally tell the same kind of story through something like your instagram account or your pinterest account or you can do it through a more traditional sales medium like a look book, a catalog or an ad um and the last one is video uh shouldn't even say last but the last one we're going to talk about today there's probably just a infinite number of ways that you can tell these stories but let's talk about video so commercials marketing videos like what we created the the pre launch videos that we created for this workshop or promotional tie ins so video is a huge way to market online now you can tell videos in something that looks more like uh kind of like a film I know where I was going with promotional tie ins the lego movie the lego movie is ate an hour and a half long commercial and it's awesome okay and we watched it twice in one day this summer first with my kid and then with my kid and my boyfriend and then of course the next day what did we d'oh we bought legos everybody giant bucket of legos okay? Lego knew what they were doing they knew absolutely knew what they were doing but they told us a fantastic story and I really don't want to ruin it for anyone so I'm not going to go any further into it but he was such a good story and wolf farrell's in it and I didn't know that my first of so anyhow so video commercials, promotional tides, marketing videos all different ways to tell your stories what questions do we have to this point tiffany so can you give an example of how like further written I can understand the long form sales page but in terms of for me so I have some products that I saw my website and I try so hard to like not use too many words to sell so can you give an example of like a product description that's can it tells a story about without being five paragraphs long? Oh yeah definitely the backs of book jackets are really good example of this nonfiction book jackets eso when they're well written essentially what they're doing is telling a story again it's not going to be a he said she said this than that kind of story but the story is going to be implied and so that's one of the ways to cut down on words is to make sure that each sentence you use brings up a mental story for the person that you are writing to. So we remember by kickstart lab sales page and that line about your friends and family have heard one too many stories about people you've met through twitter that set that clause in that sentence is a whole mental story for people right or that time that you went out of your gored nutso because you've been locked in your home office too long right that's ah little mental story that plays to each clause of that sentence is a little itty bitty story so those would be the that would be a key way that I'd look to break down words the more details you use actually the less words you need to tell a longer story awesome thank you yeah absolutely whitney so I feel that I tell my story well but I always fall back on the way that I am comfortable telling my story which is through the written word I'm very comfortable with that mode of communication I sense that my audience has a preference for more visual learning and video is well because it's so prevalent now and there's a part of my audience that's younger and far more accustomed to watching things than they are to reading long paragraph steph so I'm curious to know what your perspective on how I get out of my comfort zone with my writing and into telling my story through other mediums when I don't feel that I have the expertise to do it effectively great rape great question so I have this same exact problem teo I could write all day but throw me in front of a video camera I know that super ironic but throw me in a video camera and I'm not very comfortable obviously that's kind of changed in the last year but I totally feel your pain so the first important thing here is that you've identified that your audience would actually like different media from you if you preferred to write and you were just thinking, oh, well, but everyone's doing it. So maybe I should make a video that's not a good reason to go make a video, the on ly good reason to switch media from what you are comfortable with is because your audience would engage better with something else, the on ly good reason, otherwise, everyone has complete free will to keep going with whatever makes the most happy, but I have found that getting help, that this is a place you want to bring in help in your business, so it could be with, like, an awesome partnership opportunity, like something like creative live, but having apart having a partnership, whether it's, someone you hire or something that you're kind of in a promotional partnership with, is a great way to get that stuff done, because they're going to help you be better at communicating in media, where you're less comfortable. All right, so here it, creative, live, we have have a content producer, and his name is michael, and he has a mom amazing, and he walks me through every single step of my workshop so that I can transform for content that is largely written an audio and deliver it in a video platform that is going tio not only big sense to you guys but makes sense to everybody out there to write so bringing in a partner is huge the other thing I think that's been really helpful for me because I've been this I'm right there with you if this is something I've been working on for the last year another thing that I've done is forced myself to communicate to kind of use my strengths but put them in different media so like instead of writing an e book in pages I've started writing e books in kino so automatically in keynote even though pages could do all the same things in pages I want to go like this in key note I want to play with this and that and put this thing over there and make the text of different size and bring in an icon here and so it's kind of challenging me it's giving me a context that challenges me to play with the visual medium a little bit more I've also done it with web design as well so deliberately choosing web designs or design deliberately choosing to design my website in ways that forced me to break up my written content so instead of just having a block that looks like this what you will continue to see from me and seymour from me in the next six months is web pages that yes are very still focused on the written word but incorporate a lot of extra kind of visual cues so you could just read down block by block by block if that's what works for you but if not you can kind of taken an experience of the page in sections and again that's kind of forced me out of my media by medium of choice preference and forced me tio just incorporate some other different things so practice and get help those those air that that was a long way of saying those two little things yeah, absolutely sasha well some other I've been challenging myself to make more videos because I have this sense that if people want to have a relationship with you in an intimate coaching relationship they want to have a sense of you and you know I don't have the data on that but it just seems to be logical that it would be more effective than words and even beyond story something about presents something about like just having the sense of the person's eyes even or something like that um and then I've also read that for blogged posts one of the most effective things is how I overcame a personal challenge for example like not how to do this but how I did this so then I was thinking for a sales page do you see ones that actually say at the top one a person's personal story like you know how I did this and then how will help you are yep, it can be very vulnerable. I don't think it works for every kind of marketer, every kind of brand like there are parts of my brand, for instance, where that it just wouldn't make a lot of sense. I use a lot more clients stories than personal stories of harmony is a personal story it's going to be maur I'm telling a story about my life and then tying it into a business lesson and less here's how I transform to something um now, although I say that and then that positioning inventory call that I mentioned at the top of the segment that I'm doing there's gonna be actually a lot of personal business story in that call for some reason that that's what I'm feeling out right now, yeah, that's what I'm feeling into rather in terms of that topic and why it's important to people on dh I've got a lot of results to back that up, but yes, I would I would think about that. Is this true to my brand or not? Is this true to the way other people see me, um and and what I'd be doing some sort of disservice to that not in a way that, like people are going to trust you less, but just some sometimes the way people communicate it really lends themselves to that, and sometimes it doesn't lend them selves to that, like tiffany's, gotta brand where she's very open about her personal story, her personal transformations, and how she applies that to the work that she does. But I wouldn't take the same approach, because I'm not tiffany egg sense. Yes, what I find people connect with, um, but if I don't use it for like, I don't, actually, is it out of my sails pages, but I use it more in my block post on my about paige and all of that. Yeah, I have auto responders, and people really respond to them when it's like this is how I did this it's much. I find they get a big response. It really cannot. You're a memoirist, right, it's, not right for you, right, it's, private it's, part of it. So I think, perhaps leading off with the personal story might be a really great way to go.