They’re all busy people. They are preoccupied with their own problems. Their attention is the most valuable thing they have to give you… So…
How can you hold that attention and make it worth their while?
And
How can you increase the value of what you’re selling by as much as 6395%?
Mr average business owner will be shouting look at me. Buy my product/service. It’s great, like a barrow boy in a street market…
That’s the old direct way of marketing but, in an ever more sophisticated online world, it doesn’t work any more. People are bombarded with advertising messages every day. They become white noise.
So how can you cut through it?
How can you make your audience care?
In 2006, New York Times Magazine journalist Rob Walker set out to determine if storytelling was the most powerful tool of all.
He bought 200 low value items (average cost $1.25).
There was nothing special about any of them.
A plastic banana here
An old wooden mallet there
Even a plastic motel room key.
You get the idea
They had no intrinsic value whatsoever.
Next, he invited 200 authors to each write a story about one of the objects before auctioning the items on eBay with the stories added to the descriptions.
Can you guess what happened?
One of the items was a small plastic bust of a horse’s head. Rob had paid just $0.99 for it. What did it sell for now that it had a great story attached to it?
$62.95.
Was this a one off?
Not really.
In total, he spent $197 dollars on the items and he ended up selling them for almost $8000.
That’s a markup of more than 6300%!
And all thanks to the stories which had transformed nothing-special objects into things of value.
How is it so easy for us to fall for stories?
How could someone part with more than $60 for a second-hand plastic horse’s head that had been bought for less than a dollar?
The simple answer is that stories play on our emotions.
By telling stories, we can address difficult topics in an amusing way. We can cut through the noise, attract new people into our sphere of influence and develop a deeper connection with them.
This gives us the opportunity to have conversations
Storytelling communicates values, transforms understanding and builds authority
Storytellers are teachers
Everyone loves a storyteller
Are you a marketer or a storyteller?
👇👇👇
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