How to use great story-telling to engage prospective buyers

One of the essential components of post-click marketing is conversion optimization. And one of the essential components of web pages that are optimized for conversions is their high level of visitor engagement. In order to get visitors to engage with your page and your content, it must be remarkable. Here Jeff Ogden provides pointers for creating remarkable content.

Seth Godin, author of best-selling books on marketing like “Purple Cow”, “Meatball Sundae,” “Permission Marketing” and his latest book,  ”Linchpin” talks about the need to develop remarkable content.

What is remarkable content? Seth says it is “Content the reader finds so interesting, people remark to each other about it.”

How can marketers create content so interesting to the reader that people start talking to each other?

That seems, to most B2B marketers, a bar set too high. They certainly grasp the concept, but they struggle to put it into action. The goal of this article is to give you specific ideas of how to put Seth’s concepts into action.

How can our content deeply engage readers and earn their permission for continued communications?

In order to answer that question, we need to move to an area where most of us have little experience – publishing. Specifically, we’re looking at great story-telling – that engages readers on an emotional level.

Don Hewitt, the late creator of 60 Minutes, described the continued success of that show as being due to their ability to tell great stories.

Look at the young girl in the picture above – she’s obviously engrossed in a book she finds of great interest. She’s emotionally engaged. But how might you do the same thing in your B2B company? I think the best way to examine this challenge is to look at what makes – and does not make – a great story.

What does NOT not make a great story?

• Information about your company, your products or how great you are.
• Technical and obtuse terms – your speeds and feeds
• Company history and awards

What does make a great story?

• An engrossing plot with surprises, twists and turns. In the B2B world, it may be as simple as a yarn of how companies can move from a business problem to stellar results. But it’s got to be a great story.
• Short chapters with images that support the story. Pleasing graphic treatments that engage the mind.
• Each chapter ends with a “hook” – a tease of what is to come in the next chapter. That keeps the reader flipping pages and looking forward to the next installment.
• The ability for the reader to direct the story. Let her move back and forth – look at an earlier chapter, for instance. Readers want to be empowered.

Once you have a great story, pleasing graphics, “hooks” at the end of  every chapter and you’re ready to go, you need to take another page from the publishing industry and promote your story. Ask influential bloggers to read it and comment. Get your Twitter followers to tweet about it. Write about it on your blog.

Perhaps you are thinking “Hey, Jeff. This is a great idea. But I’m not a writer.” As Brian Halligan, HubSpot CEO and Co-founder pointed out in a recent webcast – there are plenty of journalists and writers looking for work. All you have to do is go out and look for them.

Jeff Ogden

Jeff Ogden is President of Find New Customers “Lead Generation Made Simple” http://www.findnewcustomers.com Check out the online show every Friday at 11am ET, “Laugh and Learn with the Fearless Competitor.” Find New Customers is one of few B2B lead generation companies in New York. Find New Customers helps companies like yours (with 150 to 5,000 employees and complex products) implement lead generation programs to improve the way you find and acquire high quality sales leads using best practices in online lead generation. Quality leads matter. In fact, a recent study found that sales teams with fewer, high quality sales leads closed more than sales teams with more leads of dubious quality.

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