How do you hook your readers, inspire confidence, and guide them to take action with confidence? The answer is the Hero’s Journey—a popular marketing framework that uses the power of storytelling. In this episode, Pua walks us through the eight steps that take the audience on a journey to say ‘yes’ using carefully crafted copywriting and visual best practices. You’ll want to save this episode to refer back to again and again whenever you start a new marketing project and need a refresh.

Pua also shares tips on how to sound authentic and avoid coming across as spammy, from the structure of your copy to the images you use and how you phrase your call to adventure. With clear examples to follow along with, The Hero’s Journey may soon be your favorite framework for sales copy. In this episode, you’ll also hear some exciting news about the RBL Media podcast and what to look forward to over the summer and into the Fall.

Contact Pua Pakele | RBL Media:

Transcript

Pualena 00:00

Guide your audience on how to take action people need to be told what to do. At this point, they're on your page still. So they're interested enough that they're going to take an action now, because if they weren't, they would have left.

Pualena 00:16

Hello, and welcome back to the Rebel Media podcast. I'm your host, Pua. And today I am coming to you with Pheobe’s Sticky Shoe’s voice. You get a million points if you know what that's from, and 1,500,000 points if you can name the episode. So I have a special announcement. Before we dive into today's episode, I am going to be breaking the Rebel Media podcast up into seasons. And this is episode 79. Two weeks from now, we release episode 80. And then we are taking a break for the summer. And we'll be back in September for the start of season two. So this episode, I wanted to leave you with something that is tangible, studiable, learnable, repeatable and something that is hopefully going to be useful for you. And something that you can re-listen to this episode as many times as you need to as you create assets and content and whatever else. And it is a framework that I have been utilizing lately for most of our design concepts for things like primarily, I've been using it for landing page design, and email content. But honestly, this can be used for anything from social media captions to ad copy to, you know, anything really, and it is something that we've actually discussed before on the podcast. But since then, it's been several months, I think, probably a good six months since that episode. So I've kind of adjusted the framework that I use, and have studied this a little bit from different sources. And so I'm excited to share with you a content development strategy that is based on a storytelling framework, specifically of the hero's journey. And the reason why I love this framework so much is if you watch movies, or TV there is a very repeatable and somewhat predictable formula that most directors use in story writing in script writing. And it is the framework of the hero's journey. And the reason why we create these kind of binge-worthy experiences is because this formula has been tested over, I think, at this point centuries, to retain viewers, to retain an audience to get you immediately interested and invested in a story. And then it's up to them to carry you with them.

Pualena 03:22

So you know, you've watched a movie or a TV show, or somebody maybe has given you a suggestion of something to watch. And they'll say it starts slow, but give it a chance. That means the hook is weak. But you can't say, here's a link to my sales page, give it a chance, it starts slow. You are responsible for creating a hook that is going to grab people's attention within those first couple of seconds or they're gone. And you are going to lose that sale, potentially, and that it is literally money on the table. If you aren't able to capture your audience, a lot of people feel overwhelmed by this. And to be honest, a little bit of overwhelm around this is healthy, because it really does matter that much. And I've been given examples from our clients or, you know, we talk through this framework. And they'll say, oh, but so and so does it like this. And this looks a lot easier or a lot more straightforward or a lot shorter, or, you know, in the end, they seem to be really successful. And if we look at some of those examples, you can get away with less captivating content or less conversion-friendly experiences. If you have an audience that you are primed to sell to already so you know these big podcasters or these YouTube influencers or people that have audiences and have been around for you know, 20 years. They have people who are already primed and ready to buy things from them at the drop of a dime? Hat? What is that? So it's if you have no audience or a small audience or you're new to the market or you're building, you do have to be more intentional about things that you create. And make sure that it's aligned, make sure that you have integrity around what you're promising, because that is going to build on itself.

Pualena 05:18

The other thing about this is, at this point, we've all been swindled, we've all seen an ad on Facebook or somewhere, and we're like, oh, my gosh, that thing looks so cool. And I grew up in a, there was.. what was it called? Infomercials on TV. And I remember seeing like brooms, and like cleaning materials, and, and my dad would always say, like, never buy anything on TV. And so I was always under the impression that, like, if you buy something on TV that thing is not going to be good. And I remember the first time I bought something from an ad on Facebook, I was like, oh my gosh, I'm not supposed to do this. And there was a reason for it, at least back then you had to be able to have your product at a certain level to like, afford the TV ads. And I think, you know, I believe that it was regulated somehow, but now anybody can create something. And if you have the money to run ads to it, like you can sell anything. There's this crazy graphic t-shirt trend right now in the E-commerce world where they're taking events that happen or actually something I became really aware of this in a really sad way. So last August was the wildfires in Maui. And that like, totally destroyed, Lahaina and all of the businesses all of the homes like and in the days and weeks right after that happened, there were a lot of fundraisers and people trying to get money and items and donations to the people of Lahaina to be able to help them in this like huge emergency where they lost everything. And so it was a really challenging time to be able to understand and figure out where your money was actually going to be put to use and what organizations were legitimate. And a lot of individuals like individual families were also having fundraisers. And then there were these companies or these people who came in and started running ads with like, you know, Mali strong or support behind whatever T-shirts that they were selling for their own profits. And I think this happens so so much. And it's kind of easy, because direct printing, what is it called? I forget, it's you can basically like, it's like made to order. So you can order one or you can order 100. And so they have these platforms that you can create all of these designs. And people select the design, and then they go through this e-commerce platform, they purchase it. And then the thing is printed and shipped. All without you having to do anything. And then you can run very targeted ads. So you can run an ad to a specific demographic, like an age range, a location, a region. And so it's, it's kind of scammy out there. So anyway, I say this, because take this and use it for good, not evil. But this is a very influential and coercive way to get a message across. And when used well, for good things like the services and products that you have to offer. It helps people to learn about what you do to get engaged to understand how you serve them, how you provide the results that you provide, in a way that allows them to like, stay on the page, basically, or continue reading the caption or read the whole email.

Pualena 09:02

So the premise is, we're going to invite your audience into a hero's journey story. And this starts always with your hook. So again, this is review for anybody who's binged the podcast, but on every landing page, you have a space above the fold. That is the first thing that you see either on your mobile or your desktop, the first section of your page. I love putting background video if you have B-roll if you have something or a high-quality image. I think that those work really, really well in Hero sections of home pages or sales pages. Movement is captivating. I say that lightly because too much movement can be jarring. And I see that more in like an animations perspective. So a lot of web builders you have the option to build in movement and animations with each block, and each element, and Sometimes, especially if you're new to this, and you're getting really excited and you're building your page, you can over animate, and animate every block, and every animation is different. And then it's just like an overstimulating experience that makes people feel crazy. So I love a little movement. I love a background video. It's almost like, if you are scrolling through Instagram, and you see a reel that starts with movement, that's a hook. It's a visual hook. So a lot of times there will be l...