How can the art of storytelling increase your sales?

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The concept of storytelling dates far back in history. Even before the books and other information recording techniques were invented, information traveled through stories. Stories and fables have always found a way to persist in the society right from the medieval times.

It’s one of the ancient ways of passing on memorable facts, just like it was used in prehistoric times after the development of language, for education, information and other purposes.

There is quite some science on why storytelling has been so successful throughout the evolution of humans and even today continues to be one of the most impressive sources of doing business. The very nature of stories activates a chemical or neurotransmitter in the brain, known as dopamine. This compels the listener to attach the emotions to the story or imagine the story from their own emotional perspective.

So, while marketers have been trying to touch the very nature of human emotions through different practices, storytelling does it with ease.

Ask yourself, what is easier to remember? Suppose that you had a conversation with a sales representative of a company that you visited recently. They told you a great story about how their company started selling their products and how have they evolved over the years.

Now, in another instance, when you went to visit their competitor, they handed you a brochure listing the facts and numbers concerning their brand and products. From this situation, there is no denying the fact that you remembered the story more than the plaintiff statistics and decided to do business with the storyteller brand.

And this is the reason why more and more businesses are incorporating storytelling into their sales funnel to increase their conversions.

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Image Source: Cultural Detective

The importance of storytelling for a business can also be understood from the case of advertisements. Advertisements are one of the elementary ways for a business to get leads that will actually convert.

Going by the statistics, 92 percent of the customer wanted brands and companies to make ads that had a story in them. This means that if you’re just letting them know that you’re an XYZ brand selling an ABC product in the market, it won’t work for you!

One of the biggest examples of how storytelling can work in wonderful ways for your brand and drive sales, is the sports apparel giant Nike. In the year 1970, Nike assigned a highly fancy name to their executives and called them the ‘Corporate Storyteller’. This little move changed the entire strategy of the company and focused it towards creating stories for the customer.

The employees were told to be creative with stories at all levels of operation and narrate it to their customers in different forms.So, even the history of a shoe as converted into a fascinating story of how the creator accidentally dropped something that gave him a new idea. This was one of the greatest ways how a company leveraged stories to engage their customers and drive sales for their business.

If you are looking forward to incorporating the art of storytelling in your business, keep on reading.Here are the 3 ways by which the art of storytelling can help you increase your sales:

1. Understand Storytelling

To begin with mastering the art of storytelling to drive sales for your business, it is important to understand what storytelling really is. Just like in the stone age when people used drawings to convey their message, they build it in the form of stories because it was not just catchy but long-lasting.

So, storytelling is all about conveying your message and ideas to your customer through the help of imagery, words, and sounds. Since stories make an emotional connection with the listeners, it is remembered and comprehended far more than any other content forms.

No matter how great content you are producing, if it lacks the factor of connection with the customer, nobody is going to read it. Work on your content strategy and make your content heard by tweaking them into stories.

For example, if you are writing about how women can benefit from your products, try including success stories of how the most loyal woman associated with your business has benefited from it.

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Image Source: OneSpot

2. Use the Elements of Storytelling

Storytelling has several elements that can be used in your content strategies to make it more impressive and eye-catching. Storytelling elements such as metaphors, visuals and other forms of imagery can help your content shine out and engage your customers.

Visuals have the capability to be seen and display the maximum amount of information in minimum time. And ever since social media marketing has started ruling the marketing world, customers have been the most drawn towards videos and images.

So, ask yourself, whether the story of your content can be shown by visuals. Since visuals trigger emotional connection it can be great for driving sales for your business.

3. Use a Story People Already Know

Another one of the worked strategies to master the art of storytelling is to leverage a story that people already know and use it for your business. It is important to remember that the core of storytelling is persuasion and how well you do it to your audience.

Many successful brands have used already established fables and stories to convert them into their version of stories. If you want to influence people with your business, because that’s how you can drive sales, you need to persuade them first.

So, it doesn’t matter if you’re using someone else’s story, though you need to give them their credit, ultimately it’s you who are reaching out to your customers with your information.

Conclusion

Anthony De Mello has correctly said:

“The shortest distance between a human brain and the truth is a story”.

Stories have the power to stimulate your senses and bring about a strong emotional response from your customers.All you need to do is work on your content strategy and wrap it up in a believable story before you present it in front of the customer. Stay consistent and keep on creating fresh stories as you target customers for our product.

Always focus on emotions, as they are the best way to get your customer’s attention and drive sales for your business.