← Strategy Hour | Online Marketing for Business Growth
Strategy Hour | Online Marketing for Business Growth
947: Creator Story Toolkit: Part 2 - The Stories That Sell Your Offers + Expand Your Impact
00:30:10
We’re focusing on stories that help you sell your offers and expand your impact.
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You get to wear your values out loud. You don't have to hide them, you don't have to keep them to yourself. Your values matter and the people who want to buy from you will resonate with your values.
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Welcome to the Strategy Hour podcast brought to you by Boss Project. I'm your host Abigail Pumphrey and I'm dedicated to supporting online businesses. I don't believe in one right way to build a business. I'm here to help you build business your way, one that supports not only the life you have, but the life you want. I'm on a personal mission to help you become financially free. I'm taking all the lessons learned as I turned a layoff into a seven figure online business. I'm here to help you prioritize your life every step of the way. Whether you're creating your first digital product, growing an email list, or scaling an already profitable business. Settle in. It's time to talk strategy.
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A
Welcome back to the Creator Story Toolkit series where we're talking about the kinds of stories that allow you to connect with your audience, build trust and help you grow. Now, if you missed part one, I definitely encourage you to go back and listen. You don't necessarily have to listen to these in order, but in part one we specifically talked about the stories that help you build your brand and make you memorable. They're really essential and foundational stories, so I definitely don't want you to miss that. But in today's episode, we're going to be talking about the stories that sell your offers, which I know you're all about, and expand your impact. These stories are conversion drivers, the ones that help you overcome objections, create, buy in and grow your community by making your offers and message resonate on a deeper level. This is how you tell stories that don't just connect, they convert. In section one, we're going to be talking about stories that move people to buy. Story number one being an objection handling story. This is a story that directly addresses a common hesitation or belief that your audience has. Think of this as storytelling meets sales copy. It's not enough to tell people what you offer, you need to walk them through their own doubt and show them what's truly possible. You're going to start out with something like I used to think or I had a client who was worried about and show how that fear shifted these stories. Close sales clothes quietly. Now how you start to decide to handle this story is going to be a little bit different based on how you plan to use it. But I want to talk about how you handle a specific objection. First of all, you have to figure out what that is. What are the objections you're facing? Why are the people saying no? What are the things you're hearing from them that is preventing them from moving forward or even making them leave? Like, say you have a membership and you're seeing churn be too high. Why are they backing out? Now? Some of that may meet. You need to adjust the actual content or the deliverables to ensure people get the kind of results that they're looking for. But a lot of objections are based in fear. Probably one of the most common objections I get is I don't have enough time. Time is fleeting. Time is finite. They only have so much, and I get that. And so one of the ways I dress time, specifically as I talk about the work that I'm putting in front of them, the courses that I provide, These aren't fluff. These aren't extras or nice to haves. These are the kinds of things they need to be doing in their business anyway. This is the work. They don't need to be stacking it on top of what they're already doing. This will help them get the results they're looking for. Now, I think that's a fairly simple and straightforward story, but there's definitely ways to include illustrations of it that make it more believable. So if time was an objection, you could pull your clients and like, ask them how much time they were investing and then potentially also how much time they were getting back. And then you could utilize that in a story form to talk about, you know, I get it. A lot of my clients used to feel the same way. They'd come in saying, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. And now this is what I'm hearing from them. You could use exact quotes from that survey. I think there's a ton of different ways to do it. Overall, this is going to land on sales pages, webinar scripts, launch emails. You might be thinking moments, even responses to direct messages. Now, that being said, this is not something you copy and paste. This is going to be nuanced based on the situation. Now, in the last episode, we talked about your origin story that is specific to the business. You also have product or offer creation stories where this product or service came from. You're letting people in on the behind the scenes. You're telling them not only what you're solving, but why you're passionate about solving it. To help them do what? To help your client accomplish what? What was your light Bulb moment. This story adds emotional weight to your offer. You want to share the gap you saw, or the pain point you kept running into yourself, or the pain point you saw in your clients and offer this up to become the answer to their problem. Make it feel inevitable that this is going to get them to where they want to go. So this isn't just about the why you made the product, that's part of it. But what was the problem you saw and how did you develop the product specifically to solve their problem? So this is illustrating that it will work for them. So Instagram Profit Playbook just as an example, I created that because I had been really frustrated with my growth on social. I had grown a ton very early on in business, back in the like flat lays days of Instagram. I honestly feel like a dinosaur online a lot. And my growth, at least on the social side, had slowed down pretty significantly. And I knew I hadn't been keeping up on what worked or how the algorithm had shifted. Instead, I was spending a heck a lot of the time explaining how Instagram was dying and it was dying a slow death and it wasn't going to be as effective for small business owners. But that was a lie I was telling myself. So I finally got out of my own way and really paid attention to what was working. I studied a bunch of up and coming creators, I looked at the patterns of what was being successful and I tested it myself first and the results I got were insane. Like in the first seven days of implementing these new strategies, my engagement went up a thousand percent. 10x. That's crazy. So I knew I wanted to give people access to this information. I wanted to make it easy for someone to implement, especially if they've been doing this a long time, if they've been in business and they've played the social game before, maybe they even feel like they used to have it all figured out and suddenly they don't feel like they have it all figured out anymore. I wanted to give them the formula of what was working right now, which is why I put together Instagram Profit Playbook. Right now it is my most popular offer, which is honestly surprising to me for so many reasons. But I wanted to make it super accessible so you can get it for as little as 47 bucks, which is nuts. So if you want to find out more, you can go to bossproject.com playbook. You can use a product or offer creation story, in sales emails, on social posts during the launch. You can even bring back up old products by talking about their origin Story again, you can use it as an intro to a webinar or a live video. You can use it in product descriptions. You obviously can even talk about it on a podcast. In section two, we're going to talk about stories that build community and loyalty. Story number three is community or shared values. Story. This is a moment that connects you to your people. This story says I get you without actually saying it. It's often a smaller, everyday moment that reinforces your brand values and builds emotional resonance in terms of how to frame it. You're going to reflect on a moment where you saw yourself in your community or when you saw themselves in you. This can be a belief, a struggle, or a defining value you stand for. There's a lot of values that I have and like wear on my sleeve when it comes to this business, but definitely the one that I've seen the most people resonate with. And the most people come to me saying, it is so refreshing to watch you not only say, this is something you value, but to live it. And so that is really all about how this business is not the most important thing in my life. It'd be really easy to say that this is always my priority, but I never wanted it to be. I wanted my business to secure my finances. I wanted it to provide for my family, but I wanted it to provide for my family so that I'd have choices, so I could prioritize my people above all else, no matter what. I've dropped everything on multiple occasions and my business kept running. Last fall, my dad had a stroke and it was a terrible experience. He was in the hospital for many months before we ultimately put him in long term care. Now normally in a situation like this, you would think, oh well, his spouse would be the one handling all of this. But my parents are divorced and so him being sick suddenly became my responsibility and I was navigating a broken health care system. A father who could not advocate for himself because he was slipping away so fast in a business that had to keep running. But it did. I was gone a lot. I was at the hospital nearly every day. And my business kept going because of how I set it up, because I always intended for it to be a means to an end. I do want it to help people. I do want it to make an impact. I do want to see it grow and scale and be this reliable piece of my life. That's all true. But I always want my family to be first and that's how I'm going to run my business.
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You're smart, you're talented. You've got the vision. So why does running your business still feel so hard? Success isn't about working harder, it's about working smarter. And that's exactly why I created the Co op. Inside, you'll get instant access to 12 plus courses, hundreds of templates and real strategies that actually drive sales without all.
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The trial and error.
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These are the exact resources I've used to build a seven figure business. So stop spinning your wheels and join me inside. Head to creativetemplateshop.com membership and make running your business easier today. That's creativetemplateshop.com membership. Does working with your accounting software make your head hurt? That's why I'm here to talk to you about FreshBooks, the cloud accounting software designed to make the hard part easy. Lose the complicated process and switch to FreshBooks. Run your billing books and payroll on the same platform. They've made it easy to send invoices, get paid fast, save time on data entry and keep your finances organized. No accounting class is required. With FreshBooks, you'll save time and get peace of mind. Imagine having all of your expenses neatly organized and a clear picture of your business health all in just a few clicks. FreshBooks automates your workflow year round. Snap photos of your expenses on the go, send professional invoices in seconds and track payments seamlessly. Feel more confident about your numbers? Switch to FreshBooks today. Visit freshbooks.com to get FreshBooks 70% off for four months. That's freshbooks.com get started today and thank yourself tomorrow.
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And so I didn't hesitate to tell clients, hey, I might be a little slower to respond because my dad's in the hospital. I didn't hesitate to share where I was going to be spending my time or how I was going to be spending my time. You get to wear your values out loud. You don't have to hide them. You don't have to keep them to yourself. Your values matter and the people who want to buy from you will resonate with your values. You can talk about your community or how you show up or how you build this business on social in long form emails on Instagram lives when you're sharing the why this matters moments and launches. This is what gives people reassurance that they're making the right choice. The next up is a vision or future story where you're going and how you want your audience to be a part of it. People want to join a movement. This story casts a vision, plants a flag, or gives your audience something to align Themselves with. You want to describe the future you're building? What changes when your offer becomes the norm? How will your audience's life or industry evolve? Invite them in to help you shape it. So my vision is pretty simple. I want to see education be free. Now, I can't change legislation. I can't get private colleges to stop charging tuition. But I can impact the future of what my business looks like. And so at some point I would like to make every product I offer free. Now the only way that becomes possible is when I have more brand partners and sponsors that believe in the work that I'm doing, that want to see small business owners thrive. Now, as I've gotten more sponsors over the years, you'll notice most of my prices are less. My highest price offer used to be as much as 45,000. My highest price like offer that you would probably see on my website, 10,000. The highest price thing I have right now, $500. I want to make education accessible. And so how do you help me get there? Well one, in the meantime, you can support the work I'm doing by being a member, by being a part of the co op that helps support this business growth and operations. But beyond that, it really comes down to sharing. The bigger this community becomes, the more visible boss project becomes. The more people that download and share the strategy hour, the faster I'm able to make that vision come to life. And ultimately the more small businesses I get to help. I try to make as much information free already as I can, but the products I have that are paid, many of them are subsidized by brands, people I trust, businesses I've used for a decade. So help me build that vision. I would love your help with that. You can share this vision and brand videos, team or community onboarding, launch openers, investor decks, podcast episodes, all sorts of places. Section 3 is all about stories that deepen confidence and authority. Story number five is haters gonna hate. This is all about boundaries and growth and self trust. This isn't about drama. You're not trying to start something. It's about showing your backbone. You're going to use this story when you face criticism, copied content or people who didn't get you and how you stayed true to your mission. You're going to share what was said or done, how it made you feel and what you did anyway. You're going to focus on resilience and self trust, not pettiness. Now a hater's going to hate story. Man, I've had my stuff copied more times than I can count. And I'm sure there are copies of my content and my programs out in the world right now that I don't even know about. But one of the things I like doing anytime I find this content is instead of trashing whoever did the thing, I use it to educate people on how to handle this if it comes up for them. So one of the more recent examples that I can think of is this, like, resale site. The entire site, the entire website is literally just stolen courses from other creators, not just mine, a bunch of creators. It is highly illegal, it is a scam, and it obviously compromises the intellectual property. That means a lot to my business. So anytime something like this happens, I always attempt to contact the business owner directly, let them know what's not okay, send them a cease and desist. But they don't always respond and they don't always respond favorably. But you have more options than that. And one of the options a lot of people don't even know exist is something called a DMCA takedown notice. Now what this is is a legal document that essentially you submit to the website host. So it's fairly easy to find out who is hosting the website. If you can inspect their code a little bit, there's definitely tutorials out there to help you figure this out so you could know who their host is. But you end up sending this takedown notice to the host. The host then becomes liable for this illegal content if they don't do something. And so obviously this is an extreme example, but in the case of a site where this wasn't like a small business who just like copied one Instagram post, and I'm being petty about it, this was a business that was 100% a scam. Every piece of content on their site was stolen and I wasn't going to tolerate it. So I sent the takedown notice to the web host and the whole website got shut down in less than 48 hours. That felt like justice. And I could have spent a month complaining about someone who probably doesn't even care that I exist. Or I could educate other small business owners on what to do. So use that as an opportunity. I don't love haters, gonna hate stories, but they are useful from time to time. You can use this as brand positioning content, personal posts. You can also, like I said, use this to like flip the script and educate people. Thought leadership, all sorts of opportunities here. Okay, the last story I'm going to leave you with for today is story number six. This wasn't supposed to Work. This is your surprising success, your unexpected wins. This is a story that inspires action. It's proof that imperfect, messy, maybe this won't work. Efforts sometimes do work and pay off big. How to frame it? You're going to share a story when you launched without a list or spoke with no audience or made a thing just for fun and it took off. Use it to show others what's possible when they take a chance. Okay, now I have lots of these, but definitely a recent one that just like makes me feel so warm and cozy inside is what's been happening with Creator Diary. So if you're unfamiliar, I launched Creator Diary as a passion project to share not just my creator stories, but yours. I wanted to share what it's like to really run a business online. The hard stuff, the emotional stuff, the behind the scenes stuff. And on a whim I pitched to a big brand what I was planning to do. I let them know the vision and where I saw this going and all the things I thought it could turn into. And I did so passionately, but not with like some crazy pitch deck, not with some like fancy email. I just was like, you know, you said you wanted to work with us. Here's like all the normal, typical ways you could work with us. But if you want to do something really different, I really think this would be amazing. And they said yes. So FreshBooks is the official sponsor for Creator Diary. Meaning a passion project that I wanted to pursue is funded by a sponsor, me casually pitching it as a side quest. It wasn't supposed to work, but you don't know unless you ask, right? So I just want you to remember that and you can use your own this wasn't supposed to work stories as pre launch hype or I made this in a weekend and I'm just trying something. You can do it as courage building emails, early sales, page copy. There's so many opportunities. I hope you're starting to see that content can flow out of you freely. If you worry less about what am I going to say today, what am I going to post today? And you start to instead build a bank of some of these stories because you can come back to them again and again. You can tell them in different ways. You can tell a part of a bigger story, you can pick it all out or you can even think about the content that you do want to share that you already know you want to put out there and think about this as framing. So how could you make the story more interesting or more compelling or lead to a sale faster you could put it in one of these frameworks. I want to suggest that you create a story bank. This could be a doc, this could be a swipe file. This could be a Notion database. This could be in your notes app. I don't care. But we have talked about so many incredible stories and I want you to start by writing at least three. You don't have to get them all posted this week, but I really want you to start framing out what these could be and think about the next logical place to insert them into your content. I am curious which of these stories do you feel the most confident in? Which one is one that you already told before but you're like, I need to tell that story more often. These stories are already in you. You just need to give them shape. And heck, if you're looking for a place to share more of your stories, I would love to see you submit an entry to Creator Diary. Just head to creatordiary.com and you'll find more details there. Thanks for listening.
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Hey, a few quick favors before you leave. I'd love if you'd share today's episode, send it to a friend who needs to hear it and post on social. You can show us where you're listening from, your favorite takeaway, or why someone else should listen. Be sure to tag me, Abigail says and bossproject so we can share it.
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Okay.
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Second favor to get podcast updates and all the behind the scenes news from Boss Project, I'd love if you'd join my VIP list. Just head to bossproject.com signup up to make sure I have all your contact details. Really love this show. It would mean so much to me.
- [27:06]
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If you'd leave a rating and review.
- [27:08]
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It not only helps more listeners find the show, but allows us to bring on quality sponsors so we can keep bringing you this valuable content for free. Thanks so much for listening.
- [27:16]
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Until next time.