Persuasive Storytelling
Whether crafting a trust story, teaching story or action story, we should invest enough effort in crafting a story that enables us to sell that story to customers, peers, leaders and our teams.
Persuasive storytelling is the art of using meaningful stories to connect with your audience, to capture attention and influence behavior. Our emotions play a major role in decision-making which makes persuasive storytelling such a powerful tool. Want to build customer loyalty or drive employee engagement?
Make people feel something.
Something. Anything.
Within reason, and depending on your audience.
Feeling drives attention. Attention means they’re listening. Listening drives trust.
LOL – That’s so funny
WTF – What the! (anger)
AWW – That’s sooo cute
WOW – That’s amazing!
OHHH – Now I get it!
FINALLY – Someone said what I’ve been feeling
YAY – That’s great news!
Tips for persuasive stories that help your audience feel:
Start with a strong hook. This could be a personal and surprising anecdote, a vivid description of a relevant situation, or a startling statistic. The goal should be to grab attention so your audience wants to learn more.
Include relatable characters. Your audience should be able to see themselves in your story. This requires in-depth research to understanding your customer, leaders, and team members, but this will help them to feel connected.
Create conflict and suspense. A good story needs conflict and suspense to keep an audience engaged. This could be an external conflict or business problem that may not get solved, an internal conflict or professional struggle.
Use vivid language and imagery. Help your audience visualize your story. Can they see the world of your story? Are they able to imagine what success would look like or the human impact of not taking action?
End with a call to action. This could be one that you make explicitly, but stories truly persuasive stories engage the audience with feeling (and deeply held beliefs) and frame the message so that an audience understands the available choices and related consequences, and are motivated to take action themselves.