Traffic Conversion Secrets Lesson 9 - Mesmerize with Story

If you've ever heard the story of 1,001 Arabian Nights you
know the power of stories to enchant the listener. That's
because people are hard-wired to myth for ancient times.
They want to hear things spoken in story form and their
subconscious has a way of remembering what they hear in
story form better than visual cues. If you use stories in
your marketing, you will not only capture people's
attention, but you will also help them to remember you long
after they've left your website.

The other aspect of stories that enchants people is the
capacity to create empathy and communion with the story
teller. How many of us remember asking our parents to read
a bed time story? Wasn't it a special time of bonding for
us? The same can be true of stories that you tell when you
are trying to establish a rapport with people coming to
your website.

The Technique

The strategy is to try to capture a person's attention by
initiating a story that fascinates them into a longer
relationship with you. Obviously, they will not leave until
they've heard the punch line or found out how the story
ended. The story should have some human elements in it, so
that your reader can relate to it on a personal level. If
it is just a story of a product, without some human
element, it will sound like hype. So, be careful to include
your product or service in the story, but don't make it a
story solely about that product. 

The story should try to stir the reader's curiosity from
the get go. It is this sense of what's going to happen
that will lead the reader, deeper and deeper into your
story. It can be a story about some people's experience
with your product. It can be a story about the development
or discovery of your product. It can even be a humorous
story about your product. It really doesn't matter, as long
as you are engaging the reader in a deeper relationship and
connection with your product or service. The way you know
if the strategy is working is if you can get the reader to
read the entire story to the very end, where the sales
pitch is. Once they have become so involved in the story
line, they will empathize with the actors in the story,
identify with the product and their own predicaments, and
be very likely to consider buying the product right then
and there. That's the power of a good story. It breaks down
the resistance to buying; much like a set of benefits does
too. But, in this case, it works more subconsciously than
consciously, which makes it a far more powerful strategy in
the long run. They may leave your website and three hours
later still remember that story and thus, they will also
remember your product better. The deeper the impact of a
story, the more likely the reader will remember your
products when they have a need or are looking for a
solution like your story relates.

The Secret

Story telling involves telling jokes as well as long,
drawn-out stories with a beginning, middle, and end. They
work to lessen the awkwardness of a social encounter,
especially between people who have never met before. If you
can get a person to laugh at your joke or identify with
your story, you become more familiar to them and less of a
stranger. The impact of a story is only as good as how well
it causes the reader to bond with the storyteller and be
drawn into the final conclusion of the story. 

Jokes are very easy to reel off at the beginning of a sales
encounter, but they are much more difficult to enact well.
It takes a certain flare to be able to tell a joke well so
that it comes out humorous and not lame. However, jokes are
brilliant ways to tell a tiny story in a very small amount
of time and have people bond with you through the mechanism
of humor and laughter. It builds a warm camaraderie and can
help you establish mutual trust from the onset.

However, if you're not good at telling jokes, telling a
personal account or story can be another great way to bond
with your website visitors. It brings the human element to
the forefront of your website and humanizes the
technological aspect of being online. It appeals to the
subconscious triggers within a person and can be a subtle
way to manipulate the unconscious desires or fears they may
be experiencing to help them make the decision to buy.

How to Make it Work

Online stories can involve all sorts of media from written
copy, to cartoons, or video blogs. If you have a good short
story that can be made into a video, you can add that to
YouTube to try to make it go viral. It can be a story that
relates your product as the solution to an embarrassing
event with the title, Don't let this happen to you! At
the end, you put a link to your website to draw that
traffic to your sales page. That's the way to use a video
and the power of the Internet to create a sales page story
line. It can be very powerful if plenty of people relate to
it or find it humorous, as it can be spread across the
Internet very quickly if it has mass appeal.

Another way to use a story is through written copy on your
website. Maybe the story has a lesson to teach about why
your product is the solution to a particular dilemma. Maybe
you want to relate a humorous story about your product that
is entertaining for the reader. Maybe you want to give the
reader the opportunity to experience an ah-ha moment that
some other customer had when they used your product or
service. It really doesn't matter what you write, as long
as it stirs the readers curiosity, draws the reader in, and
creates a lasting impression. Then, by the time you make
your sales pitch at the end, the story has been embedded in
their sub consciousness and will have triggered various
impulses to buy.

Cartoons or images are like mini-stories that can convey a
quick synopsis or be a good lead in for a story. If the
image captures a visitor's attention enough, they will
probably scroll down and read the story behind it. So,
don't think that this is all about copy. Use everything you
can to draw a visitor into the copy that eventually has
your sales pitch at the end and a call to action to buy
your product.

There is one other way to implement this strategy that does
not involve actually selling the product. Instead, it could
be a story that creates the right environment for your
product or educates the reader for why your products are
necessary or expedient. This is particularly effective for
items that may be so novel that people don't know why they
would buy them. There is no conditioning in place or market
buzz that has been associated with the item and so they're
left not understanding the value of the product at all.

That's when you need a story about your particular industry
and how these products were developed to fulfill a
particular need. You want to be clear that people
understand the results they will get in their lives by
paying attention to this particular issue and this sets the
environment for making a sales call at the end. Computers
are a good example. When personal computers hit the scene
and started gaining some popularity in the late 80s people
were extremely divided about them. Most people didnt
realize the capabilities of computers and the modern
microprocessor so they couldnt justify spending thousands
of dollars on one. Why would you pay that much more for
something that you don't understand or value?

It took a while before people realized that computers could
vastly improve their lives. Repetitive, menial tasks could
be assigned to a computer and save thousands of hours of
work. Computers could be connected to each other via the
internet and people could communicate with text and images
thousands of miles away. Manuscripts could be typed in full
without a single drop of ink wasted and then later edited
without hassle; the list goes on forever. Once you declare
the proper environment and frame the value of your product
or service, it becomes much more intriguing and interesting
to your potential buyer. So, what might not have been
something they saw any value in, becomes very important to
try so that they too can see the results in their life. So,
while a story is typically something that can relate the
potential buyer to a common experience that will help them
bond, there are other times when you have to set the stage
first before they get why it is a common experience. It may
be they have never ever tried anything organic in their
lives, so you had to introduce that concept to them from
some other area that is familiar to them  our polluted
environment.

Telling a story that is brief can be done at the very
beginning of a sales encounter. It can be done on the home
page, in your about me pages, or when you are introducing a
new product. Once you've established a nice bond, you can
even get into longer stories on the sales page to establish
the benefits of your product, especially if it is something
new that needs to have the stage set for it to make a
dramatic appearance.

You can even use a joke of the day type of device to help
engage your readers and have it introduce your industry, if
not your product. Sort of like the jokes that all relate to
the supposed idiosyncrasies of blonde individuals. If you
happened to be selling hair dye, this would make an
excellent way to establish rapport and humor on your site
and eventually sell the dye. Some people like stories so
much that they will email them to other people. You can
have an email this story to your friend feature that is a
great way to have people visiting your market for you. In
the same way, a YouTube video that goes viral will work
marketing magic for you and you don't have to go and post
it to too many places. Other people will start doing it for
you. Most stories will do nothing more than introduce the
product or establish rapport. Those are the ones you use on
other sites and throughout the Internet to establish a
presence online. Reserve the longer, deeper, stories for
your website where people can become involved in an area
that has calls to action to buy your products. 


To Your Success,
YOUR NAME

------------------------------------------------------------
Download FREE ClickBank Review Sites Every Month
http://www.supersalesmachine.com/?hop=CLICKBANKID

Get Instant Access to 300+ 'How To' Video Tutorials
http://www.supersalesmachine.com/c?hop=CLICKBANKID&p=nl


PUBLISHER TIP! Sign up for a ClickBank.com account and replace
CLICKBANKID in the link above with your ClickBank nickname. Your
affiliate link will send visitors to a free membership site.
Whenever they upgrade or purchase any products or services
including upsells through our email promotions or webinar events
you will receive 50%-75% commission on all offers in our
network. We currently have over 90 quality offers in place so
you can earn up to $1,500 per referral! For full details on our
lucrative affiliate program, swipe emails and custom landing
pages visit: http://www.supersalesmachine.com/jv

