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The Red Thread: Seducing Sales Prospects With a Good Story

by: jones199a on Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2010 Time: 2:54 AM

How good is your sales story? Is it a real 'page turner' story of seduction? Or is it a bland point by point description that fails even the most basic requirements of seduction? With all the hype of new communication channels it's easy to forget the importance of a good story. For your business to succeed, you need to perfect the art of copywriting for a good story to seduce sales prospects.

1) Believable Characters

Those lessons you learnt back in English class still apply. A good story relies on good characters. In this case the central character is your ideal customer. For your story to grab the right readers' attention you need to be able to describe your central character, and show you understand them. That's not copywriting black magic, that's just good story telling.

2) Credible Plot

Having elicited a flicker of recognition from your audience, does your sales story continue the seduction? Do you often lose prospects at this stage? To continue the seduction your story needs a good plot. A believable plot. What is the pain that your central character is wrestling with? Will your readers recognize that challenge? Forget about copywriting jargon, just put yourself in your audience's shoes and ask yourself "Do I believe this?".

3) Empathy

If your reader is still reading by this stage you're on a roll, but don't get impatient. Leaping to talk about your features has never been a good seduction technique. It doesn't work when dating and it doesn't work when copywriting. Show some empathy. Why is the problem important to your central character? What does the challenge 'feel' like? Frustration, stress, worry? People recognize feelings. People relate to feelings. And they just might invest a few more minutes to read on.

4) Story telling

Copywriting for a one page sales letter, a print advertisement, a brochure, an entire website or white paper? The story telling challenges are the same. Does your story weave a compelling red thread that entices your prospect from your opening sentence through to your closing call to action? Story telling matters.

You can do this. You can seduce sales prospects with a good story. You just need to go back to the basics of your school English class or the airport newsstand page turner that you read on your last flight. Believable characters, credible plot, empathy and story telling. It's that simple. If at this point you are thinking maybe this sort of seduction is not your strength, perhaps you need a little help from a professional copywriter.

About the Author

Allan Spencer-Stewart is the Founder and Director of international copywriting and marketing communications agency, Marcom Write. Marcom Write copywriters and marketing consultants work with small, medium and large companies worldwide to define their message and seduce customers with copywriting that sells.

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