Narrative Storytelling: Another way to spruce up your sales copy + get more prospects clicking the ‘BUY NOW’ button

She took one last look at her reflection in the mirror. Everything seems perfect. The hair, the makeup, the unrelenting tight little black dress hugging her perfect curves without letting go, the cheery bright red lipstick. Oh, that one. It captures the essence of being the seductress, as she’s fondly called by her friends.
Chamomile chose the darkest part of the room to sit. Sitting there alone, her body language sexy and confident, occasionally casting icy glances at ‘the opportunists’ and making sure no one dares to come near. She has really mastered the art of seduction, even though deep down inside she feels that deep, hollow space – waiting to be filled.

She feels trapped. Trapped and empty inside. That’s why she’s here today, waiting for him. She allowed herself to get momentarily lost in her deep
thoughts, until she heard that deep, husky voice. “You’re even more beautiful in person”.
Startled, she raised her head up, praying silently he wouldn’t notice how rattled she was. 

“I didn’t think you were this hot either”, she replied in her charming, velvety voice.
As she sat across from him and soaked up his raw attraction and arrogance, she came to just one conclusion in her mind.
Blind dates aint the end of the world, after all

See what I did there? That statement in bold would make a really nice hook for writing a sales page in any of the love, sex, romance or relationship niches. Given
the right amount of tequila shots and a proper understanding of what product, service or offering, that lil’ story up there can be tweaked and transformed into a
money-making sales page.

In a world where buyers are being pulled in different directions, you need something drastic to make your prospects pay attention. As a sales Copywriter, it’s my job to make the best use of my clients’ life stories and Unique Selling Proposition to craft a sales page that’s not only wickedly awesome, but reels in the
cash.

Here’s the deal, conventional sales pages are ‘boring’.
OK. Let’s face the fact here, when was the last time you read a 3000-word sales page word for word? Heck, that’s approximately twelve pages in Microsoft Word!
The truth is, unless something immediately grips your ideal clients or prospects from the beginning of a sales page, they’re gone in the next 4.99 seconds.
The good news? You don’t have to be a Copywriter, an aggressive marketer or a sales strategist to have your audience at hello!
You, however, need to have a carefully crafted storyline that jumps out of the crowd with a sexy megaphone calling on your ideal clients to drop whatever they’re doing
and take a good look at you and your business.

As humans, our brains are hardwired to relate with familiar stories. We picture ourselves as the main character in the story, and we instantly feel a connection with
the storyline, especially if it’s something that happened to us in the past or something we’re currently experiencing.

To tell a great + compelling story, you need to put your narrative intelligence to the best use possible, as it’s crucial for your prospects to find your story relatable.

What is narrative intelligence?

Narrative intelligence is an important part of human cognition, especially in sense making and communicating with people. Humans draw on a lifetime of relevant
experiences to explain stories, to tell stories, and to help choose the most appropriate actions in real-life settings.

Source: Georgia Institute of Technology (College of Computing)

What does this mean?

I’m not about to go fancy on you and start dropping nerd jargons, what this simply means is – as human beings we see a story that completely gives us the permission to put ourselves in place of the main character, we instantly feel the kind of emotions the storyteller wants us to feel, and we tend to take any action he wants us to take, almost unconsciously.

As a Copywriter, I’ve seen and written my own fair share of sales pages, and what I find most captivating? The ability to put a unique spin on any marketing or
promotional copy you write, with a hook so dire that even the most non-committal prospects will turn sharply to take notice.

Why should you use narrative storytelling in your marketing/sales copy?

Because.

It brings out your ‘human’ factor

Writing a compelling story shows your prospects you’re just like them. It brings out your human side and reassures them that you’re not an alien sipping wine in Venus or Mars expecting them to drop their hard earned money and buy whatever it is you’re selling. This is especially true if you’re making use of a true life story about something really compelling that happened to you in the past and/or how you lived through and overcame a particularly trying situation.

They instantly see you as a human being with red blood flowing through your veins, and suddenly it becomes much more easier to convince them that you have the remedy to the ache they’re experiencing, because you’ve been in that exact situation before.

It shows empathy for your prospects.

Compelling stories empathize. It not only shows you know what your prospects are facing, it reflects in the tone of the story, the words you choose (and so on), that you actually feel their pain to your bones. For example, someone posted in a Facebook group that she needed help with blogging and other stuffs, so I gave her the link to a sales page I wrote, which I knew might be a good fit for her. I started that story with a little story, which I knew most people could relate with. She came back after reading the page and these were her exact words: “OMG, I had tears in my eyes when I read that page! I instantly knew that was for me, you took the words right out of my mouth and just splayed it on that page.” I’ve since left that group but to this day I regret not taking the screenshot of that statement. You know one of those moments when you’re tickled hot-pink-fancy about what you do? That was one of them for me!

Now I know not many people would have had tears in their eyes when they read that page, but the few people that had were just the right amount of people that page was meant for. Those are your people, the ones whose emotional buttons have been pressed, and the most likely to buy from you.

Your rat people.

That my friend, is the power of telling stories that empathize with your prospects.

It’s relatable.

This one is a no brainer, but in case you still don’t get it, let’s borrow some intelligence from Co-Intelligence.org. There are at least twenty definitions of narrative intelligence on this page, the main
one being: Narrative intelligence is the ability (or tendency) to perceive, know, think, feel, explain one’s experience and influence reality through the use of stories and narrative forms.

They also broke it down to bits and pieces, and I found this one really intriguing: An ability to sense or imagine the stories of people, objects, places; the ability to accurately guess where something (or someone) comes from, what has happened to it, where it is going, what it means.

That would be one of the most important elements of writing marketing materials, promotional blog posts and sales pages. When you completely understand the journey of your prospects, where they’re coming from and where they’re going, the hard work is considerably reduced.

In order words, they can relate to whatever you have in store for them, because they know you can relate to their pain.

About the author: Temmy Ola