Speaker 1: you really have to master the techniques of storytelling. And I'm here to give you some storytelling tips and ideas that will work in all your marketing. I am Karen Thaxton with MarketingWords.com. When you've been in business for over 20 years like I have you see the ebb and flow of what works and what doesn't. Trends come and go and they succeed for a while. But then everybody starts doing it and your audience gets bored. I remember when everything I used to put out in email and social and video and everything else was a sales message and that worked for a while until it didn't. These days I've learned that people are looking to be engaged taught even entertained and that takes a different approach. So what's one technique that has stood the test of time for about 100 years? Quizzes? Nah. Giving away free samples? Nope. Billboards? Uh uh. You probably guessed because of the name of the video that I'm talking about storytelling. If we jump into a time machine we can see that way back in 1927 this guy named John Capples wrote one of the most successful ads of all time using storytelling. The ad was called They Laughed When I Sat Down at the Piano. But When I Started to Play. And it's the tale of how John impressed and amazed his friends by one upping some other guy at a party. No one knew he'd been taking lessons through the mail. Remember when you could take lessons through the mail? Today you find storytelling in marketing everywhere. Why? Because storytelling works. It's engaging. It's entertaining. People love a good story. It boosts likeability and it converts. And while they can be your stories don't have to be very long at all. For example these six popular brands use stories in really clever ways with tremendous success. Farmers Insurance. They have some of the most hilarious TV commercials about the weirdest claims they ever paid. And they are true. New York Presbyterian Hospital's compelling and inspiring Facebook page gives the stories of patients and employees and other types of stories that they sometimes will also continue in a video on their Web site. Patagonia Clothing. They use customer generated Web site stories about adventures the customers had while wearing the brand's clothing. Subaru is constantly showing everything they can about their customers in a story format whether it's print or video or TV or something else. This is a brochure that shows and talks about the customer not having anything stand in his or her way because the Outback goes from open highway to back roads with no problem. And Nat Geo's social posts are some awesome awesome stories and they include information that's just as phenomenal as the images they're famous for. And this one talks about the ice beginning to thaw and the polar bear investigates the backbone of a whale and what everything is happening in that time frame in that spot in the world that we probably would not have known about otherwise. There are tons of other companies that have been doing this for decades. If you've ever griped because nothing you do seems to matter when it comes to your marketing then you're like almost every other business person in the world. And that includes me. I have done that from time to time myself. So let me share three marketing tips that if done right will help you gradually grow the response to any piece of marketing you put out including one tip that Harvard Georgetown and Columbia University all teach. Know your target audience. Here's the story I always tell. Did you catch that. I'm getting ready to tell you a story in this training about stories. You and I just met and my birthday is a few days away and you try to buy me a birthday card but then you're a little disappointed because I'm not absolutely blown away or emotionally moved by your gesture. Now sure you can go to the store and pick out any old card and it will probably be generic and bland because you know nothing about me and you will have accomplished your goal. But the results will be less than stellar. I'll absolutely appreciate what you did but it's not really going to make a big impact on me. So find out everything you can about your audience and your marketing will get more effective because then you go from our example our story of trying to buy somebody you don't know a birthday card to knowing lots about them. And then you can create stories that compel them and move them and get them to respond to your marketing. Number two test. I can see your expression right through the screen. Testing is one thing that most online business owners just don't like to do. As a data geek I don't really get that because all that info gives priceless details about your audience and what they do and what they don't like. So if you're tracking your e-mails and you're digging around in your Google or Facebook or YouTube analytics all that gives you plenty of options about things to test so that you get more information about how your very own audience responded to this thing or didn't respond to this other thing. And that enables you to create much more compelling and engaging marketing and tell stories. Of course this is going to be included as a tip. Studies have proven that stories light up your brain. They engage like no other type of communication can do even if it's just a paragraph or two like the one in the first tip that I was giving to you just a minute ago. Columbia University's Web site reads storytelling has always been central to human experience. It's how we explain and make sense of the world. But today as media savvy audiences begin to tune out advertising messages while searching for ever more immersive entertainment experiences the way businesses and professionals need to communicate is changing. So if you apply tips one and two to your storytelling then include some type of story language in your e-mails your social post your blog post web pages videos anything that you do you're going to come out a whole lot better than if you just try to create generic stories. Storytelling is so important that Harvard Georgetown and Columbia University all offer courses on storytelling in the digital age that costs between. Are you ready for this. One thousand to thirty one hundred dollars for that single course. So how exactly can you incorporate short stories into every area of your marketing. I want to give you three ways to add stories without having to write a novel or for that matter without having to write anything if you don't want to. Connect deeper with your audience by sharing your own brand story. Where did the idea for your brand come from. Did you have a struggle or a need that you couldn't find a solution for or was someone in your life hurting and you wanted to help. Did you find some way to tweak an existing product and that made it much better. These are all ideas for brand stories. Have you ever watched the TV show Shark Tank. The writers who create the brand stories for these entrepreneurs who are trying to get funding from the investors are absolutely phenomenal. You can search YouTube for Shark Tank episodes and you'll find a few up there that you can watch. And those will give you some really great examples and some ideas about what to include. Boost likeability and loyalty with product or service stories by showing people who you are and why you do what you do. You can form a connection that makes them want to buy from you using the same approach as with brand stories. You can create product or service stories or do case studies. Create or find stories about other people that help customers relate to you in your emails website copy social posts and other places. You don't have to have any stories of your own but I bet you do. You just haven't found a way to express them yet. But you can still use other people's stories. For example your customers testimonials and reviews. Ask your clients specific questions and get them to answer. And all you'll have to do is use that detailed content and move it into a story. Very simple. Start with why they decided to buy or use a product from your company. Then move to why they chose the products or services they did. What do they like about them. How did they use them. What difference did it make after they used the products or services by allowing clients to just answer a few questions. You remove the dread and fear of them being asked to write a testimonial or review from scratch. You can also tell a story that you read or heard from someone else. Ask your audience something like have you heard the story of blank or start with. Last week I heard a very cool story I want to share with you. Maybe you heard something on the news. Maybe you read it online. It could be that somebody sent you an email that had a story in it and you want to share that with somebody else. So now let me take a minute or two to answer some questions about storytelling that I get asked on a regular basis. And the first one is what do you mean that storytelling lights up your brain. There have been numerous studies over the last 15 years that have proven that engaging stories activate sections of our brains in the same way that certain drugs do. These can be stories in a novel a movie your about us page a video or other places. And what's more at least one study from Emory University found that stories impact our brains in the same way as if we had taken part in the events or the activities. And that sensation can last for several days. Stories can also enlighten and teach and entertain. As Columbia University states on their Web site research in neuroscience and cognitive psychology has shown that stories are typically more effective at changing people's minds. So stories convince and convert. Do the stories I use in my marketing have to be really long. Are they supposed to be like a short story in a book. They don't have to be really long and they do not have to be complete or formally written stories like short stories in a book. Snippets of stories can be used or you can include a revised version of a longer story if you want to do that. I don't have any interesting stories about myself to tell. Can I still tell stories. You bet. And like I mentioned before you can tell other people's stories and get the same results. But I will say everybody has stories to tell. You just haven't discovered what they are and how to tell them yet. Do I have to tell stories using video. Nope. Not if you don't want to. Story techniques can be used for pretty much any type of media including video Web pages email social media blog posts case studies and all kinds of other things. Are you talking about using the same techniques filmmakers and authors use. Well yes and no. I do think there is a place to use some of those popular storytelling techniques that you see online. The ones that are based on famous movies or novels and it gives you something to think about. So you absolutely need to explore those in my opinion and be familiar with them. But here's the thing. You might use some of that for a basis but storytelling specifically for marketing and not creative writing should have a different approach. You likely won't have an hour or an hour and a half of a video to tell your story like you would in a movie or writing you know hundreds of pages for a novel because marketing uses less time and less space. You'll need a way to compress those stories while still keeping the emphasis. I hope you found these tips in this introduction to storytelling and marketing useful. Feel free to ask me any questions below and I'm happy to go into more detail. But if you've decided that stories are something you want to use in your marketing and you're ready to go deeper I can help you with that too. Right now I'm talking about my storytelling that sells easy ways to create and use storytelling in marketing training unlike other training that simply goes through a few storytelling techniques that are mostly used in books and films like we just talked about. I'll actually focus on how to use stories in all types of marketing environments and we'll get through it in just six short info packed modules. Those include the best stories to tell your audience where you'll learn the six main types of stories and how they entice and engage customers. Seven timeless storytelling techniques you can use. And these are the ones these are the seven most popular story formats that apply to movies and books and how you can easily use them to turn your marketing from so-so to spectacular. Which storytelling types are most effective for your audience. Not just any stories will do so. You can watch and see how to uncover which types will catch the attention and build the loyalty in your audience. How to create a story that engages your customers. You'll also see how just a few key elements make a story compelling and give you a quick pathway to follow as you create your own brand story and write stories about others. Which media to use to create stories. Well you can pretty much take your pick. Web pages blog posts social email with all the different types of media available. How do you know which will be received best by your audience. I'll show you. And then resizing. Stories to fit different media. Obviously a story the length of a blog post isn't going to fit very easily into an email or a social post. But what do you do. What do you keep. What do you ditch. How do you handle it. Well I'll give you three simple considerations that make your decision very easy. I have a link and a coupon code for you so you can scoop up this special deal now. Storytelling that sells costs ninety seven dollars. But when you use this special code tell story all one word you'll gain instant access to the video training for 40 percent off. That's only fifty eight dollars instead of ninety seven dollars. You need to go to marketing words dot com slash story marketing words dot com slash story right now and use code tell story all one word to save 40 percent on storytelling that sells easy ways to create and use storytelling and marketing. Thanks so much for your time. I hope you've gotten a lot of information out of this short training. As I said before if you have questions please scroll down and leave them for me. I'm happy to answer them for you. Go forth and conquer in your marketing and use those stories so you can entice engage and earn more.