A Step-By-Step Process to Tell Compelling Stories and Improve Conversion Rates

I've noticed that there's something that scares most marketers.

We love our data.

Most marketers find it fun to review their traffic, engagement, and subscriber numbers. It allows them to test new things and measure their effect.

Data is logical.

But when it comes to content marketing, there's a component that doesn't always seem logical: storytelling.

I'm not talking about writing a fiction novel. I am talking about having the ability to write about even the most boring topics in a fun-to-read way.

It's something that many marketers, even good ones, struggle to do.

Do you also have trouble with this part of creating content?

I see you nodding.

I'll be honest: that's a problem. If you can't write persuasively, you'll struggle to get subscribers, traffic, etc.

The good news is that it's a skill that can be improved.

And if do it well, you can create content that sparks conversations across your niche. You'll find that dozens of blogs start mentioning and linking to your content with very little effort on your part.

Although this skill might seem like something abstract and impossible to improve upon, it can be translated into a proven process that you can follow. This makes developing it a lot easier.

In this post, I'm going to show you that process, step by step.

If you implement it, your content should produce more traffic, referrals, backlinks, and subscribers. 

Step 1: Identify and describe the problem (3 parts)

A story can be really interesting to you but completely uninteresting to someone else, depending on how it's told. That's because we care about different things and enjoy things in different ways.

When you're creating content, there are two places you can start:

• The problem (that you intend to solve for your readers)


• Your readers

Either can work, but starting with your readers is the most logical place to begin.

The more you understand your audience, the more you can tailor your content to them. Ideally, you want to be able to answer questions such as:

• What are their passions?


• What are their biggest problems?


• Whom do they care about most?


• What do they do for entertainment?

You can figure out some of this by doing some basic demographic and psychographic research.

The ideal way to figure out these answers is to talk face-to-face with some of your readers.

There are three ways to do this:

1. Know some people in your target audience in your daily offline life. Offer to take them out to lunch and talk to them.


2. Ask email subscribers to answer a survey, or have a quick chat with them. Offer a small reward if they agree (even a $5 gift card could be enough).


3. Host webinars. Not only are webinars great because they convert subscribers into customers, but they are also great because they give you a chance to actually talk with your most engaged readers.

Once you're having a conversation, you can ask most of those questions above although you should try to phrase them in a way relevant to your niche.

For example, since I write about marketing, I could ask questions such as:

• Why are you learning marketing?


• What do you hope to accomplish as a marketer?


• How will marketing affect other areas of your life?

Analyze the answers from 10-20 different people, and you'll start to see patterns.

Next, identify the problem and the pain: Each piece of content should solve one specific problem. And all problems produce pain, which is where the emotion behind storytelling factors in.

If you understand the pain, you can explain the problem better than most readers can themselves. If a reader sees that you can do that, they'll believe that you have the solution.

All content and stories should start with the pain because that's how you draw in the reader.

Before you start writing, you should be able to fill in the blanks:

The problem I solve for my reader is ______________________.

And:

The reason my reader is motivated to solve this problem is because _______________(the pain).

Finally, you need to put that pain in the context of your reader.

For example, say you write about fitness. You identify that many gym-goers get wrist pain while bench-pressing. The pain is a clear physical one, and your reader wants to solve this problem.

But think of the difference in the pain for:

• A casual gym-goer


• A high level athlete

For the casual gym-goer, the pain is annoying because it makes it harder to get into shape.

However, for a high level athlete, the pain isn't just physical-it's preventing them from improving and achieving important goals in their life.

You can't write a story to appeal to both audiences at the same time. That's why the first part of this section was so important.

With all this identified, you can move onto the next step, which is where you can actually start the story.

Step 2: Drive the pain home

Now you're beginning your content.

While you might want to remind your readers of the pain throughout your story, the intro is where you need to drive it home.

You want to use everything you've learned from step 1 and describe the pain your reader is facing in great detail.

Copywriters often call this “amplifying” the pain.

Let's look at an example. Here's the intro from an article on Smart Blogger.

I've highlighted a few different things here:

1. A common fear the readers of that blog have.


2. Illustrating the pain and frustration his readers feel (describing why).


3. Amplifying the pain by connecting this specific pain (little traffic from each piece of content) to a bigger pain (failing to get traffic and subscribers on the overall blog).

So, how do you do this for your own content?

There's no set formula, but to start, make a list of:

• The problem


• The pains specific to that problem


• The bigger pains related to the problem

Remember earlier, our example problem was that our athlete was getting wrist pain in the gym.

At this point, you'd have some notes on your outline, like this:

• The problem – You can't work out effectively and can't make progress in the gym.


• The specific pains – Sharp wrist pain every time you try to bench-press a decent weight.


• The bigger pains – If you can't work out, you can't achieve the level of play that you want. If you can't get rid of this pain, you'll see your teammates and opponents surpass you because they aren't limited by it.

Those three points come together really naturally from there.

After pain, offer relief: You've effectively “broken down” your reader. They're feeling the pain and worried about what happens if they can't solve the problem.

But now, you turn it around and offer an answer. You're the only one who understands their pain, and you know how to solve it. Why wouldn't they be interested in what you have to say?

Make your transition, just like in the example post from above:

There are two parts to this:

• State your solution


• Give an optimistic example

In the case above, the author's solution to traffic problems was to leverage Slideshare. Then, he gave an example of Michael Hyatt getting 70,000 views on his content on Slideshare.

In our example, the solution might be to fix our athlete's bench-pressing technique. You could give a personal example or an example of a student who was able to get past their pain and add 50 pounds to their bench press within three months of implementing the solution.

Essentially, you're saying that you understand their end goal and now want to show them how to connect the dots.

Step 3: Craft a narrative

Now we're into the meat of the story.

It's time to not only give your solution but explain why it works. The more context you can give, the better.

For example, Alex Turnbull (Groove HQ blogger) wanted to write a post about improving conversion rates through design.

But to make it more compelling, he crafted a narrative-a before and after story. He went through the steps that Groove used to increase their conversion rates by 100%.

If you can give detailed examples throughout your solution, you'll make the story much more interesting.

However, it's not always possible, so focus mainly on providing the best possible solution for your reader and then add examples if possible.

Step 4: You can only be compelled if you believe in the story

Here's a part that many marketers miss.

If you did the first few steps right, your readers will read your content with an open mind. After all, you seem to really understand their problem and pain and claim to have a solution that works.

If you want your readers to be ready to take action at the end of your content or landing page, you need to give proof.

On landing pages, this is typically done with testimonials and case studies.

For blog posts, you do this with data and research throughout your story.

The more evidence you can provide to show that your solution should work for your reader, the more likely they are to take action.

For example, I wrote a post about “How I Generated $332,640 in 3 Months From Instagram.”

In this post, I outlined the strategy I took, but I also provided proof-a screenshot of the sales I made:

When you include proof like that, your reader will believe that your solution worked for you and thus might work for them too.

Want to make your story bulletproof? The key factor above is that the data and personal examples show that your story is true and that it worked in the main scenario you're writing about.

Sometimes, that leaves some readers with the question: “But will it work for me?”

That's where you need to pile on the evidence.

In that same article about using Instagram, I shared multiple examples (case studies) of other businesses using the exact same model to achieve great results:

The point is to remove as much doubt from readers' minds as possible.

Step 5: Inspire action and bring it home

Your story (content) is essentially complete at this point.

You've done the following so far:

• Described the pain


• Offered hope of a solution


• Detailed your solution


• Backed it up with examples and data

As you know, simply reading a blog post alone is almost always useless.

The real value for the readers is in applying the information they learned from your posts.

Some readers are self-motivated and will figure out how to do that. However, many of your readers won't know what to do unless you tell them (or at least give them a hint).

You've probably noticed I end all my posts with some sort of a conclusion. In that conclusion, I include a call to action.

For example:

It's your chance to remind your readers of the main steps that they should take to apply whatever solution you showed them.

This is also an opportunity to include a call to action for anything further that might help them.

You might tell readers to try some strategy you laid out. And you can also include a call to action to sign up for a course you offer, subscribe for an email list, or download a content upgrade.

Conclusion

Truly compelling content inspires readers to act on your advice.

Making a big impact in your readers' lives will help you get more traffic and turn more of those readers into subscribers and customers.

While creative storytelling isn't the strength of most marketers, we're not trying to write a fiction masterpiece here.

Instead, you should aim to tell stories to intrigue readers so that they keep reading and then take action. If you follow the 5-step process I've shown you, you'll be able to do exactly that.

If you've read or written any great pieces of content lately, share them below so that we can all see more examples of compelling stories.

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6 Unscalable Tactics That Will Get You More Customers

The biggest problem most businesses have is getting more customers.

Business owners believe that if they could just find that one magic growth tactic, their business would be set.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of them will never find that tactic.

And while they're searching for that magic bullet, they're passing up on smaller, unscalable tactics that could be getting them a consistent stream of new traffic.

The confusion mainly comes from misinterpretation of the concept of growth hacking:

The only real condition to growth hacking is prioritizing customer/user growth above all else.

However, too many marketers seem to believe that growth hacking must involve rapid, viral growth that makes or breaks the company.

Sometimes, maximizing your growth potential means focusing on unscalable tactics. They cost more per acquisition but deliver customers when other tactics are failing.

These are best applied early on in a business, when scalable tactics (advertising, really high quality viral video campaigns, etc.) are not realistic.

I'm going to share 6 unscalable tactics that are often very effective for young businesses looking to grow. Probably, not all of them will apply to your business, but you should be able to identify at least a few you can try. 

1. Trialists rarely leave for no reason

It makes me want to bang my head against my desk.

via GIPHY

Some marketers are so focused on getting new customers that they don't realize that what happens after a signup or purchase is the most important factor behind growth.

Growth comes from creating a product that is as close to the needs and wants of your customers as possible.

You can't create that kind of a product going on intuition, without any actual customer feedback.

No feedback is feedback: If someone signs up for a demo or a trial or purchases something from you, that tells you something.

It tells you that:

• They need a solution to a problem you're trying to solve.


• They like the sound and/or look of your product.

But if a customer stops using your product right after they start using it (particularly for software products), that's your feedback.

Their problem didn't just disappear. What happened is they concluded that your product couldn't help them sufficiently.

What's the point of getting new customers if you barely retain any of them?

On top of that, you need to absolutely thrill customers if you want them to recommend you to others.

The solution? Get feedback: As long as you collect email addressed when people sign up, you can contact them.

If a large portion of your new signups are disappearing on you, personally send them an email and find out how your product fell short.

The customer is still in “pain” because they haven't solved their problem, which makes them pretty receptive to outreach.

It's not scalable to email every single new customer you get, but this type of feedback is how you'll make your customers love your product. You could even survey a fraction of your customers and still get really valuable feedback.

You can also preemptively get feedback by sending your customers a welcome email, asking them how they found you and what they're hoping your product can do for them.

Here's how Groove did it with great success:

Try something similar, and you'll get a high response rate with great feedback.

2. Don't be afraid to sell one-on-one at first

I've started many companies at this point, and believe me, they weren't all successes at first.

It's a huge job to start a business from scratch. Getting customers is just one area, but it is indeed very difficult since you don't have your perfect product yet or any word of mouth in most cases.

Sometimes, you can throw money at advertising and get your growth off the ground.

Sometimes you can't. Whether it's because of your budget or because of your product, advertising isn't always a great option.

An option that I recommend is to have one-on-one conversations with your potential customers.

Where do you find them?

• Forums


• Sites like Reddit


• LinkedIn, Facebook, and other social media sites


• Friends in real life

Let me give you an example. Say you're selling a website builder. You could spend time on the startups and entrepreneur subreddits, forums such as Warrior Forum, and many groups on LinkedIn and Facebook.

It will take time, but you'll come across questions and conversations like this one I pulled from Reddit:

Someone was looking for a website builder with search functionality.

Then, you can send the user a message. Something like this:

Hey, I saw that you were trying to create a search based website. I actually have a lot of experience with that sort of thing and even built a website builder for that specific reason.

I'd be happy to answer any questions you have about it. Just send me your email address, and we can hop on Skype or Slack or have a quick email chat.

Regards,

Neil

Note that everything in this message is about how you can help them, and not the other way around.

It's much easier to sell to someone when you have their full attention during a chat, and especially when you're actually providing them with additional help and guidance.

3. Make customers come back with a little extra effort

Like I said above, the customer experience after they try or purchase something is what leads them to become return customers and to start talking about your product to others.

One way you could make sure they end their experience on a high note, which will encourage them to talk about your business and come back, is with a handwritten thank-you note.

Unless your customers are very young, handwritten letters are typically perceived as a caring, personal gesture.

For example, this is a simple card that a Jawbone customer received:

When the recipient of the note posted the above photo on Twitter, this one tweet resulted in over 100 shares (at the time of writing).

While a card will take you a few minutes to write and send (if you batch them), it will return much more to you if do it well.

Could this be scaled? If you have thousands of customers, it'll be hard to write a real letter to each of them.

Some businesses, such as Bond and MailLift, offer services that will write the letters for you. You just need to provide the addresses and names:

Ideally, you don't want to be writing the same thing to each customer. So, while this is an option, it's not quite as good as writing your own letters.

4. Trade your product for something more valuable

I mentioned it earlier: it's tough to get customers for a new product with no customer base.

People want to see that others have had a good experience with something before buying it themselves.

Translated to marketing, this is social proof, primarily seen in the form of testimonials and case studies.

Both can provide assurance to potential customers considering buying from you and often have a large impact on conversion rates.

You have to give to get: Great testimonials or case studies are worth several times the cost of your product.

One option, early on, is to give away your product or service in return for a testimonial or case study.

The hard part is finding a way to actually get this offer in front of people.

It will depend on your product.

For some, you can simply make a forum post or Reddit thread and offer a few samples of your product (say 5-10) to any users willing to give you feedback. You can get their emails and go into more details later.

If that's not an option, you need to be more creative:

• Offer it to anyone who contacts you with questions about the product.


• Install live chat on your website, and offer products to anyone who engages.

• Actively reach out to customers if possible (say you sell a product for bloggers)

Most people are pretty receptive to trying something for free.

Once you've invested in these testimonials or case studies, you need to make sure they're effective. Luckily, I've written about it in the past:

• A Step-by-Step Guide to Generating Clients by Writing Case Studies


• How to Receive Great Testimonials


• How to Effectively Use Testimonials

5. Have a broad market? Consider stickers…

I've mentioned Reddit a few times in this post as well as many of my other posts. Reddit is now one of the largest sites in the world.

Do you want to know how Reddit got off the ground?

In 2005, the two co-founders got $12,000 from Y Combinator.

That's $12,000 for the whole business, so not a ton to go around. They were left with $500 for a marketing budget.

They promptly spent that $500 on stickers of their alien mascot:

They plastered them in public everywhere they could and handed out the rest at events or to random people on the street.

Soon after, stickers started showing up on social media and other websites, and people learned about Reddit. The picture above is of Wil Wheaton in the background of a sticker.

I love this idea because you'll always stand out. Just make sure that your site or product is identified on the sticker and that it ends up in view of the people you're trying to target.

The Reddit stickers worked out well because they were placed on bus stations and buildings on college campuses. Reddit had a pretty broad audience, even at the start, but primarily focused on young, tech-savvy users (college students).

You don't necessarily have to use stickers. You could try:

• Backpack or luggage tags


• T-shirts or hats


• Bracelets


• Glow sticks

Be creative.

6. Get out and speak

Speaking at events comes with a lot of benefits.

For one, it may lead to direct payment, which alone is highly rewarding.

But when you're first starting out, the biggest benefit is having an audience in front of you.

Most crowds consist of customers and peers (other businesses in your industry).

As a speaker, you position yourself as an expert-an expert with whom many people in the audience will want to do business.

If you have something to sell to those businesses, you'll almost always make some sales. More importantly, you can find ways to work together.

For example, a real estate agent could partner up with a home decorator. The home decorator could touch up houses for sale and leave business cards or pamphlets for people the agent shows the houses to.

The agent gets a better looking house to sell, and the decorator gets more customers. Win-win.

Where do you start if you want to speak at conferences? Unfortunately, you can't just jump in and speak at the biggest ones in your industry.

You're starting from the bottom, and you need to start with whatever experience you can get.

Focus on getting experience first so you can leverage it later to get speaking opportunities at bigger events. If you can get customers from these first few speaking gigs as well, that's just a great bonus.

To find a list of conferences actively looking for speakers, Google “(industry) conferences speaker proposal”:

Put in some decent effort into your proposals, and you'll get at least a few chances to speak.

Here are some quick tips on how to increase your chances of being invited to speak:

1. Stick to the requirements – Different conferences want to know different things about their speakers. Always read all the details they provide, and try to describe yourself according to them.


2. Don't be a generalist – Never submit a proposal and call yourself something like a “marketing expert.” Instead, pick a specific area, e.g., “influencer marketing expert.”


3. Your bio leaves a mark – You'll get a chance to submit a bio most of the time. Put emphasis on your most impressive professional accomplishments.


4. Talk specifics – Part of a proposal is a topic you could speak about and a short description. Try to think of something unique that the audience would love. That way, no other speaker could fill your spot.

Apply to several conferences at the same time because they can take a little while to get back to you.

Conclusion

Scalable growth is sexy, but it's not always possible.

If your business is still struggling for customers, don't be afraid to use unscalable marketing tactics.

I've shown you 6 in this post, so you should be able to get working on at least one right away.

If you have any experience with unscalable growth tactics, I'd love it if you shared your creative ideas in a comment below.