See, stories keep a reader engaged better than just about anything else. They also give us a perfect opportunity to call out our ideal customer and connect with them. 

On the very first page, we tell a story that highlights an extreme version of their situation and their feelings about it. This tells them, “hey, you’re not alone. We know the struggles you’re facing, it’s not your fault, and we’re here to help.”

This is crucial, because underneath it all, people deeply desire to be understood. And most of us also harbor the same basic fears no matter what the current struggle is: “I just might not be good enough.”

By creating this character (sort of an amalgamation of true stories) who embodied how they feel about their problem, we give them two important things: the feeling of being understood (not alone), and the hope that there’s a solution. 

Notice how this completely goes against the grain of the ‘standard funnel.’ We’re not asking for anything yet. We are just offering value and building trust… which is what a story funnel does best.

After a few more paragraphs of illustrating Lydia’s plight, the story goes on:

This is very important because it establishes the frame in which Rebecca (my wife, the artist/business owner) is connecting with her target audience.

Rebecca has inserted herself as their advocate… it’s like she said, “HEY --- the normal way of doing things --- the way you’ve been taught is all wrong…. And that’s not ok!... I’m pissed off that people are trying to take advantage of you! That people are preventing you from achieving your dreams!” 

Rebecca has put herself on their side, against those who have done them wrong. She is fighting for them. This immediately creates an “Us vs Them” framework --- with us (Rebecca and her audience) going to war against the “old way” of doing things.

Are you starting to see how powerful this is?

This framing completely changes the way the reader interacts with the rest of the funnel.

See, with a standard funnel, the reader knows that they are being sold to. This means they are initially skeptical.  

But the power of a story funnel is that by giving and connecting with your audience before you sell to them, a lot of that mistrust goes away. They are excited to go on this journey of discovery with you, instead of wary and guarded about you.

Using Jay Abraham’s strategy of preeminence, you are starting down the road of becoming their most trusted advisor.

Here’s the last element of the page:

Now in this last section we accomplished TWO very important things.

The first is that we are doing something called “price anchoring.” That basically means that we are showing our future customers that their current options (the old way, or the other guy’s way) are actually very costly, both in time and money.

Basically, we show them how expensive their other options are, so that when they get to the end of our funnel and see our price, they can breathe a sigh of relief: our offer costs so much less than the expensive “old way.”

The second and possibly most important aspect of this page (and every page in the story funnel) is the “continue” button at the bottom of the page.

By clicking this button our audience is making the active decision to move through our story funnel. 

Now, this is important, because it’s a very different strategy than what we used in the traditional funnel model. In that model, you basically trap your customer in the funnel. Once they’re in, you squeeze them through whether they are interested or not.

They might come in off a free + shipping offer, but as soon as they put in their credit card, we would force them to watch a 5-6 minute video sales letter about our upsell. There was no skip button, and no way to complete their purchase of the tripwire without watching the whole thing.

This left our customers with a great deal of uncertainty and mistrust. It also left us feeling like sleazy marketers.

With a story funnel, your reader goes through the funnel at their own pace… and each time they click on the continue button at the bottom of the page it’s like they’re saying, “Yes. I agree with you, and I want to learn more from you.”

It’s a huge psychological trigger and it’s much like my earlier story about dating where I would try to cram as many events into a single date night. Each new location was technically an opportunity for my date (or me) to say, “you know what, I’m ready to call it a night.” 

But with each “yes,” and each new location, that trust and connection grows. It creates a feeling of having been through a lot together. And it exponentially increased my odds of getting a second date!

So by the end of the first page we’ve accomplished several things:

We’ve specifically called out our target audience through a story...

We’ve given our target audience a safe space to “feel” their problem, and let them know they aren’t alone...

We’ve created an Us vs Them narrative and have inserted ourselves as their advocate by letting them know we have THEIR best interest in mind...

We’ve price anchored and associated the old way of doing things with a high cost...

AND… We’ve invited our readers to continue their journey with us.

That first page is a doozy.

With that out of the way, now we are heading into the proof section of the story funnel, where we show our customers that our solution is not only the best solution for their problems… but the ONLY viable solution.