Messages come in many forms, but in order to be effective you must be specific and know your audience. Some of the best messages are bookended by stories. In this presentation I share why messaging is important, but how to tell your message to the right audience and create an engaging story.

1. Where Stellar
Messages Come From

2. You’re not selling a product.
You’re not selling a service.
You’re not selling a solution. An app. A pair of
shoes. A device. An upgrade.

3. Here’s the only thing you’re selling, no matter
what business you’re in and what you ship:
You’re selling your prospects a better version of themselves.

4. Your prospects are asking
some essential questions?
• Why should I choose you?
• Why should I stay on your site? Why should I
come back to your blog? Why should I trust you?
Why should I give you my email address, my
tweet or, most of all, my hard-earned money?

5. Do I really know who my target customer
is?
• Surveys
• Go Talk to People
• Social Media Inquiries

6. You’ll want to learn their
• Age
• Gender
• Martial Status
• Number of Children
• Education
• Annual income
• Disposable Income
• Favorite Web sites
• Favorite pasttimes
• Device Usage

7. Then Segment
• That is, you want to choose the segment that will
visit your site with the most frequency and be
most likely to compensate you in some way for
your service – whether that compensation is
actual money paid to you, referrals sent your
way, or new users brought into your fold.

8. 2 Sides to Crafting a
Message
• 1. Targeting pain
• 2. Reflecting motivation, including a desire to
derive value

9. Pain
• Ask yourself, what keeps my customers up at night?
• Audit your competitors’ sites to see what pain
points they hit on
• Monitor people in your ideal customer segment on
Twitter and/or in their blogs to see what pains they
mention

10. Motivation
• “Motivation” is the driving force behind the
actions we take. When a user comes to your
site, they are motivated to do so – motivated by
forces that live outside the virtual walls of your
virtual store.

11. Let’s Meet Theresa

13. Let’s Meet Kristina
And her fiancee Asa

15. Social Media is
Storytelling
“Stories are just data with a soul.” —BRENÉ BROWN,
TEDx HOUSTON 2010

16. Bryan Stevenson
“We need to talk about an injustice”

17. Gary Vaynerchuck
“How to tell stories in an A.D.D. World”

18. Questions?