Your Business Needs Simple Stories
Your customers are busy. Your story needs to cut through their mental clutter.
Your story needs to stick in your customers’ mind.
Table of Contents
- How to Make Your Story Stick
- Who Should Tell Your Story?
- How to Ask Your Customer to Tell Your Story
- What Do You Say in the Testimonial Video?
- How to Tell Your Story
- Use Technology to Spread Your Story
- Gather more Google & video reviews with the new Promoter App
How to Make Your Story Stick
Here are Tyler Cowen’s 3 elements of stories that make them stick:
- Easily understood
- Easily told to others
- Easily remembered
Want your video story remembered?
Learn the Worlds’ Simplest Story structure to guide your customers to tell YOUR story in THEIR own words.
Who Should Tell Your Story?
“If your tell your story, it’s marketing; if someone else tells your story, it’s word of mouth.”
How do you get other people to talk about your business?
Here are 3 simple steps to create viral word of mouth about your business:
- Create a Remarkable Customer Experience
- Listen to and Prompt Your Customer to Give You a Testimonial
- Use Technology to Increase the Reach of Your Testimonial
Check out the blogpost to discover how small business owners can become online influencers using these 3 simple steps.
It goes without saying that you must ‘WOW’ the customer – price, selection, service – some remarkable aspect of their experience that they can’t get from your competition.
To better understand this ‘WOW’ factor I highly recommend the book Talk Triggers by Jay Baer and Daniel Levin for real-life, actionable examples from dentists, restaurant owners, amusement parks, airlines, banks and more.
All of these businesses have created ‘triggers’ that get people talking and referring their friends to the business.
Remember, word of mouth advertising is free.
Is Social Media free? Understand all the costs involved in a real social media campaign
You simply need to be good at what you do and help people.
If you are good at helping people, keep reading.
How to Ask Your Customer to Tell Your Story
Once your customer buys your product or consumes your service, you or your employee will need to ask them to share how they feel.
This step is simple, but not easy.
Check out ‘How to Ask for A Testimonial’ and hit the ‘Easy Button’ for this step.
Here is a 3 step process that improves your odds that your customer will say ‘Yes’ to your request for a video testimonial:
- As You Ask for a Testimonial, Offer a Compliment
- Highlight the Customer in the Testimonial
- Offer Testimonial Prompts to your Customers
This last bullet, Testimonial Prompts, can be the following:
- signs
- brochures
- email or text reminders
- scripted prompts at the point-of-service
- a mobile tablet kiosk
What Do You Say in the Testimonial Video?
This is where the storytelling comes into play.
What is every persons’ worst nightmare? Public speaking probably ranks high on this nightmare list.
It would be very unfair of us to ask a client for a video testimonial, pull out the mobile phone, open the camera app and say ‘Lights, camera, action!’
What would most people do?
Most people would freeze. Some people would soldier on with some random word salad that lasts for 7 minutes and leaves us with an unwatchable video.
About 1 in 10 people would deliver a narrative thread in 2-3 minutes that leaves the video viewer impressed and wanting more.
We’d like to improve your odds with our 1-hour Masterclass of storytelling structure, called the Worlds’ Simplest Story, that shows you how to TEACH your customer to tell YOUR business story in THEIR own words.
Want your video story remembered?
Learn the Worlds’ Simplest Story Structure to guide your customers to tell YOUR story in THEIR own words.
How to Tell Your Story
“I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” – Mark Twain
You’ll get this in the Masterclass (and much more) but I want to share the abbreviated version, here.
Every story has what Hollywood screenwriters and professors call a ‘narrative arc’ – it’s basically the rising tension and suspense that keeps us watching.
It’s easy to overthink this ‘narrative arc’ concept. So, in the Worlds’ Simplest Story masterclass we dialed it down to the essence of the story:
- Introduce your customer, on video, as you would a friend. Remember to look straight at the camera. Eye contact inspires trust.
- Ask them to describe their Prior State – what we they like BEFORE you met? What was their problem? What was their need?
- Then, Ask them to describe their Current State – how do they feel now? Do they like the product? Are they happy with their purchase?
And, that’s it! So simple!
Aristotle said “Every story has a beginning, a middle and an end.”
This 3-step process allows you to train your customer in under 1 minute how to use Aristotle’s method (whether they know it, or not) to describe YOUR business, on video.
Use Technology to Spread Your Story
The last of the 3 simple steps to create viral word of mouth about your business is using tech to go viral to as many people as possible.
You can use Facebook, you can use Twitter… you know the drill.
But, if you really like all that hosting and posting and hash-tagging then that would be your day job, wouldn’t it?
If you’d rather spend your time working, or playing or whatever then that’s where the new WOW Promoter App comes in.
The App does it all for you – check it out…
Get the free app – save time and $$
If you are an influencer who deals face-to-face with people, like a dentist or a real estate agent, you can become an online influencer using short, testimonial videos on popular social platforms.
We can show you how.
Do you like all the hosting and posting?
All the hashtags, hypertext links and tech-y stuff?
If not, just let the WOW Promoter app do it for you – for free!
