Compelling stories ≠ Effective stories
Effective storytelling is more than just telling your prospects about the "before and after" transformation or using one of many pre-made frameworks
If you want to sell more by "better telling your story", it helps to understand that effective storytelling is a lot more than mere story structure (such as Joseph Campbell's "Hero's Journey" that so many people automatically default to).
What do I mean?
Effective storytelling is more than just telling your prospects about the "before and after" transformation or using one of many pre-made frameworks.
You'll notice I said "effective" storytelling and not "compelling" storytelling.
Here's why: a well-written story that arouses emotional and/or logical reactions from your target is merely compelling - but not necessarily effective.
EFFECTIVE storytelling is a compelling story that is also:
- Delivered to the right person or persons (i.e. proper audience selection) and...
- To the online/offline venues where they spend their time and attention (e.g. Twitter, YouTube, physical mail, etc) and...
- According to a sequence appropriate for your product/market (for eg. moving them off a social media post to your email list or WhatsApp group) and...
- Where needed, individual parts of your marketing system (i.e. the bulletpoints above) and/or the story itself are updated to reflect changes in buyer behavior
So yes, your story structure (e.g. Hero's Journey framework) matters - and it matters a lot.
But just as a sustainable long-term business is more than just the product, an effective STORY is also the result of a storytelling SYSTEM that does each of the 4 things above.
Put another way, an effective business embeds the product in an overall system that includes marketing, order fulfillment and distribution, for example.
Similarly, the story (or stories) you tell need(s) to be part of an overall system that can convey, amplify and update your message as your market evolves.
In other words, great stories working in isolation are merely compelling.
You don't want to settle for just compelling - you want EFFECTIVE.
And to achieve that, you need to build all the components of your system that:
- Deliver your compelling story to the right people
- Via the right online/offline venues
- In the proper sequence
- And where all parts of this system are updated, where necessary, to reflect changing (or changed) market conditions.
Go for effective, not just compelling.
One tells a good story while the other actually pays your bills.