Rule 3:
Tell a great story

Think about some of the last purchases you made.

For me it was a tray of rocky road for lunch (don’t judge!), a Jack Skellington watch, and £1,200 worth of dental treatment. 

Now think about WHY you bought them – and be honest.

For me, the rocky road was part of a self-pity party because I was having a bad day, the watch was because anything related to Nightmare Before Christmas makes me insanely happy, and the dentist was because I want the best for my son – even if that means driving 1.5 hours, spending twice as much as I need to, and injuring myself running back to my car (hence the self-pity party and rocky road).

You may think your customers are rational beings, performing extensive research and comparing different offerings to help them make an informed decision. In reality, emotion informs decision making. We only seek facts to help justify the choices we make.

Remember: it’s subconscious. You don’t even register you’re doing it. It’s the same reason you feel compelled to buy French bread when you smell the ovens in Sainsbury’s; the same reason you only see food adverts when you’re walking down the street at lunchtime; the same reason you secretly buy yourself LEGO on payday. These brands are using techniques that tap into your subconscious.

Once you know this, you too can start taking advantage of the brain’s natural biases to engage your audience. And one of the most powerful techniques of all is storytelling.

Do you remember your bedtime stories?

• The boy who cried wolf.
• Oh, the places you’ll go!
• Giraffes can’t dance

Each story contains a life lesson. Simply tell a child, “Don’t tell lies,” “Persevere,” or “You’re special,” and they’ll quickly forget what you said. But capture their imagination with a story (particularly one that ends with a big bad wolf enjoying dinner!) and you’ve got them hooked – and then re-telling the story over, and over, and over…and over. Storytelling works because it evokes an emotional connection with your customer – it makes people feel, and when they feel they act.

Want to speed up the process?

Make them feel a ‘high-arousal’ emotion – something that invokes a physical reaction in the body, like surprise, excitement, anticipation – because people are 2x more likely to share strong emotional content.

Better still, play into those negative emotions – particularly when you’re talking about customer challenges. Make those pain points feel more painful. Again, our brains are hard-wired for a ‘glass half empty’ attitude – it’s why negative headlines performed 30% better than positive ones.

How to apply storytelling to your content?

It’s really simple: the HERO (your customer) faces a VILLAIN (their challenge) and the GUIDE (that’s you!) helps them defeat that challenge, so they live happily ever after. 

The best story to tell…

Is your story. When you have an engaging brand story, it draws people in and makes them believe. In a world where customers are bombarded with marketing messages, a relatable and authentic story can cut through, because it makes an emotional connection.

Through your brand story, you can express the essence of what your brand stands for, how it came to be, and why it exists. It’s a clever way to humanise your brand. Customers move beyond transactional relationships to an emotional one, because they feel you care about their company as much as they do.

Your brand story is going to help you build trust and credibility, and foster a sense of community among customers. When you openly share your journey – including both triumphs and challenges – you invite your audience in to see your authentic self. This openness resonates with customers, because they appreciate the honesty. It also taps into another phenomenon, the Pratfall Effect, where people are more inclined to trust you once you’ve admitted a flaw about yourself. 

Of course, to give customers a reason to choose you over others, your story needs to tap into the things they really care about. Afterall, there’s no point trying to sell a juicy steak to a vegan.