Stories that Sell: crafting a content strategy for multi-stage purchases

A funny thing happens when a purchase is important enough to require significant  agreement from the logical left and roused right brain: the decision gets stuck in committee.  Things like a house, car, education, insurance, healthcare and other big rocks in the finite bucket of life require significant clarity and trust to win and keep a customer on the rational and emotional level.  This entry will provide you with a 6-step approach to creating content based engagement with circular stories designed to progress both sides of the brain to go from committee to customer.  

Every great love starts with a great story – Nicolas Sparks, The Notebook

1.       Your Story has Meaning:

Our content strategy begins with three core questions that make up every compelling story: Want, Need, and Can.  Almost every piece of content provided is designed to answer these three questions:

§  WANT: Why is this better than other options?

•       Favorable to competitive products

•       Higher ROI vs opportunity cost for other pursuits

•       Brand affinity/ confidence

§  NEED: How does this help me reach my goals?

•       Product features

•       Product benefits

§  ABILITY: Am I capable of being successful?

•       Am I eligible

•       Do I have the ability

•       Do I have the money

•       Do I have the time

2.       Your Story has Sequence:

These big rock purchases can take weeks and months to realize, often with the prospect conducting research, filling out an application, speaking with a sales agent and in some cases submitting to eligibility rules.  As purchase processes are extended across multiple steps and requirements, our story must also expand to address latent questions and reinforce the emotional connection necessary to take action. 

Said another way, once a local mortgage company has satisfied a prospect’s ability, want, and need questions at the research stage, they need to earn them all over again at the engage, apply, accept, and purchase stages.  See below figure for an illustration. 

3.       Your Sequence is Dynamic:

As you get to understand the sequence better and manage to a limited prospect attention span, the next step is to recognize and optimize for subtle dynamics.  In other words, the level of intensity necessary to satisfy the Want, Need and Ability questions changes for each question at each stage.  It is up to the savvy marketer to adjust how the content intensity to best resolve each question in an efficient and effective manner.  

In our mortgage example, a mortgage broker might increase the intensity of the Need messaging (product features and benefits) when the customer is still filling out the application.  Once the application is complete, that broker might shift focus to amplify attention on Want, building relationships and showing favorable comparisons.  See below for how this might work.

4.       Your Story is Circular

It would be fabulous to believe that any customer who is going to buy can be convinced on the first go-round at each stage in the purchase process. 

Alas, this linear view of customer behavior is science fiction.  Instead, our consumer love story requires a more circular path, allowing prospects who are not progressing to loop back in our story until they are convinced enough to take necessary action forward to the next stage. 

The below figure shows how this might work, with some customers progressing at each stage, and the remainder cycling back until they accomplish the required message and intensity for each question enough to convince the customer and motivate them to take action.

5.       Your Story is Supple:

Einstein labeled as insane the tendency to try the same thing over again while expecting a different outcome.  It is just as crazy to expect a prospect who didn’t progress to be convinced by a second attempt with the same messaging.  Because the prospect journey is circular, we must prepare alternative messaging to capture attention and unlock the Want, Need, Ability questions for that stage.

Start by trying to understand the latent obstacles.  Use things like customer surveys, agent dialogue, and competitive assessments to hone in on unanswered questions (below figure).

In addition to a more relevant message, there are several great tactics to adjust your communications enough to capture prospect attention and action. 

·         Message and Sequence: Start by shifting the levels of intensity for each question to see if you can better answer their specific needs.  You can also change the order and format of the messaging to attempt to cut through the clutter. 

·         Channel Mix: Another great tactic is to shift up the channels where you present the messaging.  If you relied on email and web page, try paid social retargeting, SMS, or an outbound phone call to connect with the prospect on their terms. 

6.       Your Story Moves: Call them sales tactics, behavioral economics, or jedi mind tricks, a solid body of research provides a large set of tools to engage and motivate prospects towards action.  Included in this long list of Machiavellian motivators:

·         Link with Personal Goals & Aspirations: Apply persona based messaging, capture and leverage goal statements, and highlight aspirational values in common

·         Encouragement: gamification is an excellent motivator, as are old-fashioned notes of congratulations.  New services like Motimatic aim to systemize this concept through paid social media

·         Loss Aversion: Removing an option induces a sense of urgency and drives decision making.  Many use devices like limited time discounts and highlight the cost of lost opportunity

·         Choice: Put simply, too many choices are overwhelming.  Simplify the available options to drive decision. 

·         Commitment: Prospects who make a formal statement of commitment are more likely to complete purchase

·         Bargain: Also known as pricing crack, discounts, grants, offers, transfers & trade-ins still play a big role in motivation and can be very effective when used sparingly.  

In addition to the core 6 steps to crafting your story, here are some extra tips to crafting a compelling consumer story:

•       Test & Control: While it’s important to put your best foot forward in terms of an engagement strategy, you should also expect to continue to update the experience based on customer response.  As part of this improvement effort, its critical you establish a robust and ongoing test & control structure for reliable feedback on the best tactics. 

•       Up-Front assessments & data capture: One way to eliminate the guesswork and reduce the test & control cycle is to ask prospects to share information about themselves for greater personalization.  Survey’s, preferences, feedback forms, and tracking behavioral choices are all ways to learn more about the customer and apply this to improve their progression. 

•       Barrier Mapping: While there are many possible reasons for prospects to stall in the sales process, it’s important to map them across the lifecycle to see how to minimize their impact.  Convening a cross functional team to drill into specific barriers by stage can help to determine alternative solutions

While each customer is different, most share a common set of questions around need, want, and ability. Effective marketers need to craft a dynamic and supple story that accounts for the required message content and intensity at each stage.  Like a choose your own adventure story, the complex product story must provide a consistent yet flexible message that can support multiple attempts convincing action.