CathyG

You’ve probably heard a zillion times about the power of stories for marketing.

But like any other marketing tool, stories can backfire. Your want your audience to get one meaning from your story and they get another. Even worse, they shake their heads and say to themselves, “She just doesn’t get it.”

In one of my favorite examples, a speaker tells a story about a dog who wouldn’t take pills. His owner wrapped them in peanut butter. The dog immediately swallowed the pills.

The point of the story, said the speaker, is that you can make something easier to swallow when you know how to present it.

But I’m not buying. My dog would lick off the peanut butter and spit out the pill. I heard that story as, “You got lucky with that dog.”

Then there’s the marketer whose story was, “I wanted to grow my list. So I installed some popups…” Their lead magnet was something like, “How I gained 10,000 subscribers in a year without Facebook ads.” It’s not about the popups, people.

And here’s a new possibility: the reverse success story:

Just the other day I heard about an intriguing new product – a series of videos about building a marketing funnel using only what’s available free on the Internet. Although I’m already set up with mostly paid services, I figured I could get some ideas for saving money, not to mention passing along the product to newbies who need it.

But something stopped me. When I went to the website, there was no sales letter. Just a video, and a pretty awful one at that. The seller hadn’t even bothered to do the most basic editing. He kept saying “Hey guys…” every other sentence (I hate that!). He didn’t edit out a cough and what seems to be a quiet burp right in the middle. He never got around to explaining the benefits. It looked like a scam and a few people even raised that possibility in the comments.

So I sent a message to the person who was promoting it as an affiliate.

“Even if it’s a small dollar amount,” I explained, “I don’t really want the hassle of dealing with a bad product.”

She assured me she’d watched every video and it was good. So I bought the product.

Bad video — but good product.

In fact, it was better than many of the products I’ve bought. I got several ideas that would be easy to implement. I could use some of the free stuff. The seller’s speaking style was much better than the sales video (although he still hadn’t edited).

He really demonstrates the possibility of setting up a whole business free. Just a few of his tips were

… How to choose your words to position certain types of products as credible and unique

… Best kind of PLR product to offer

… How to create a written product without writing

And he does a really good job of deconstructing the mysteries of OTO and DS offers in a funnel.

It’s super-cheap right now if you want to check it out on WarriorPlus. Just be warned about the video. When you buy through my link, send me the receipt and I’ll share a page (in a day or two – it’s still new) with supplemental resources and tips.

So what’s the story here?

Well, it’s not about how to make money with video. He’s got a solid premise and some incredibly loyal affiliates who were willing to answer questions and speak up for him. Sometimes that’s enough to overcome a monumentally bad marketing tactic.

And if you want to avoid using stories for bad marketing, check out the “3 Common Storytelling Mistakes And The 1 Simple Solution To Fix Them”