How to Use Storytelling to Build a Sales Funnel

Sales funnels don’t have to be complicated, but you should take them seriously. Using storytelling to build a sales funnel can help your brand get noticed in a way that traditional, boring funnels don’t allow.

This article will show you why you should use storytelling not only in your branding but also in your sales funnels. By doing so, you can build long-term relationships with your customers.

Most business owners know why storytelling is important, but few actually put it into practice. This neglect means they’re missing out on large sums of money.

With that in mind, let’s dive into how you can set your company apart.

Why Sales Funnels Are Important

Simply put, sales funnels are like staircases. They lead your customers toward buying your product or service, one step at a time.

As you can imagine, this process can end up looking incredibly different, depending on your business, but the overall idea is the same.

Through the years of helping businesses with their copywriting, there is one common mistake I see over and over: Companies will throw their money at advertising campaigns to stimulate growth in their sales funnels.

If a site has a 2% conversion rate on average, then spending money to show that page to 10,000 more people will give you more customers.

This is also known as the “Promote Your Link” Method, which businesses use for quick sales or sign ups.

However, while that technique might generate quick sales in the short-term, storytelling is how you hook customers for the long-term.

Storytelling will get clients to come back again and again because it is through that strategy you will help them build an emotional connection with your brand.

Why You Should Choose Storytelling Instead

When you use storytelling, you give customers an emotional connection that overrides their logic.

Research has shown over and over that customers use logic to justify their emotional responses to buying.

If they are emotionally invested in a company, they will use every reasoning tactic in their brain to justify spending money on that brand over another option.

Think of your own life and the purchases you make. For example, most grooming products do generally the same thing, but how many people are loyal to one particular brand? Or how many buy a favorite brand of food because that’s what they ate as a child?

We all have emotional attachments to certain products.

How to Find Your Story

When it comes to developing the story you’re going to use for sales funnels, a lot of brands think that they only need to use their company story. Their approach would be something like, “Our brand was launched in 1997,” and so on.

While your brand’s history can be appealing (especially if it is unique), we’re going to focus on a different angle.

The best way to find a story to use is to know exactly what specific pain point your product or service solves. That way you can work backward to how your customer feels.

Here are some examples:

• A cookbook with healthy recipes that can be made in 30 minutes or less. The cookbook solves the problem of figuring out how to save time while eating healthy.
• A Facebook marketing service. The service removes the hassle of trying to figure out how Facebook ads work.

While your company might solve a lot of problems, there’s usually one overriding pain point or problem each service solves. (If you aren’t sure what that is, read through your testimonials or e-mail your customers to get a better idea.)

Once you have the core pain point in mind, you will know what stories to tell. I should note that you can build your funnel through blogs, email newsletters, social media, video, or even audio.

You can adjust the following steps for your business and marketing materials.

The Overall Formula:

1. Describe the pain in detail.
2. Describe what it would be like to be free of that pain.
3. Introduce your product/service and clearly demonstrate how it could solve the problem.

The First Post

The first post should go into detail about a person dealing with the pain your product solves.

Based on the steps above, here’s how the first post could work for each of our business examples.

Cookbook:

Your post could be a detailed story about a woman who just got her first serious position at a company. She’s struggling to balance eating well with her new demanding schedule.

Each day, she knows she should be eating healthier, but it’s just so much easier to go to the greasy fast-food restaurant just up the block from her office.

Every night she pops something quick in the microwave and swears she’ll start eating healthier when work slows down.

Facebook marketing:

Tell the story of a small business owner trying to figure out how to put ads on Facebook. He spends hours creating an image, getting it approved by Facebook, and paying to have it be seen by people.

Some ads don’t perform well, and he’s worried he’s wasting his money and time.

The trick with the first story you tell is to get your audience nodding and feeling the story emotionally. If you’re targeting the right people, they will connect with the struggle.

You want them to feel as if you’re reading their minds and understanding what they’re going through.

The Second Post

The second post is when you outline what your readers’ lives would be like if they were free of the main pain point you outlined in detail in the first post.

Cookbook:

The woman now comes home and whips up something healthy and delicious within 30 minutes.

She is getting in better shape. She has more time to spend on her hobbies instead of worrying about what she’s going to eat all the time.

Facebook marketing:

That small business owner is saving a lot of time by outsourcing his Facebook marketing. He gets a detailed report every month on how his ads are doing, and he sees that they’re all doing much better than the ones he created.

The point of the second post is to get your audience members imagining how different their lives could be. This is not when you go in for the hard pitch or even mention your product or service.

You simply get them dreaming about how great it would be to have this gnawing problem in their lives finally solved.

Leave your readers hanging at the end of this post to tease them with the solution you will offer them. End it with, “Sounds too good to be true? Well, it isn’t. We’ll show you why tomorrow.”

The Third Post

The third post is when you make the obvious connection between your customer, their struggles, and how your product or service solves their pain points.

Don’t just talk about your product or service. Show your readers exactly why your solution is the one they’ve been looking for.

This post is also the best place to put in testimonials and real-world feedback on how your product or service changed a customer’s life.

Why Storytelling to Build a Sales Funnel Works

This process works because it shows your customers that you not only understand their pain but also that you’re here to offer them relief.

You’re not just selling to them while appearing as though you don’t care or don’t know what they’re going through.

By following this simple formula, you will build an entirely different relationship with your past, present, and future customers.

If you follow this simple formula, you’ll have passionate customers who can’t wait to buy what you’re selling.

Save

Save

Save

The following two tabs change content below.

• Bio
• Latest Posts

Jackie Pearce

Jackie is a copywriter and blogger from Denver, CO. She graduated with her business writing degree from the University of Colorado. She helps businesses sell and connect with customers online.

Latest posts by Jackie Pearce (see all)

• How to Use Storytelling to Build a Sales Funnel - April 30, 2017