Ithink you’ll agree with me that online survival is survival of the fittest brand story. After all, content is king, right?

And as we are hardwired to seek out, share and buy into great stories, it’s vital that you tell a great story.

A brand story with a killer hook.

A brand story with rich pedigree or punky bite.

A brand story that taps right down into shared values and aspirations.

An emotionally charged story that talks to you and you alone.

That reveals something new about yourself or the world around you.

But here’s the thing:

Every brand story is a cover story.

A cover story cunningly designed to mask a conversion funnel.

I know: A Conversion Funnel.

Sounds like something right out of an MBS class.

And it is.

And you know what, it works.

You see, brands don’t tell stories, they sell stories.

And you — dear reader/customer — are the often more than willing mark.

So long as you don’t break the spell of suspended disbelief and realise that you are just being sold to all along, brand stories imperceptibly entwined with sales funnels are blockbuster material.

Now, I know that right now you’re thinking:

Sure, brands tell us — or sell us — great stories, and in return we grow to like them and feel a connection with them — which in turn makes us more willing to buy into them on both an emotional and financial level.

Yes. It is a trade.

And the brands with the storytelling — sorry, storyselling magic — think Apple, Nike, Airbnb and even the lone ranger fanatical entrepreneurs like the Fit To Fat To Fit guy — make that trade so easy that we don’t question the fact that it is a trade at all.

Think of it another way before we get really going: think of all those times you’ve encountered a new brand and:

Found it impossible to understand what their brand story is.

Got part way into engaging with their brand story when you got hit by a freight train of a sales pitch so awkward that you got out of Dodge?

Blending artful storyselling with sales funnel science is a trick few pull off.

But if you get your #storyselling sales funnel straight, backed up by an irresistible offer, you have a winning — unbeatable — combo.

Customers (as readers) will flow over to you almost automatically. New business opportunities and deals will land on your lap.

Brand evangelists will share your story from the rooftops (whilst making your brand story part of their own).

For want of a better phrase, you’ll become the only story in town.

So long as you keep telling — selling! — that story, you’ll rake it in.

(Remember though: keep reinventing yourself or your business will be less Bowie and more Stone Roses, awesome though their debut was).

1. Your sales funnel has to hook the audience in first — and introduce the product/service last.
2. Your sales funnel has to help them see their problem in a new and interesting light.
3. Your sales funnel has to empower them with the all information they need to make smart decisions.

If the story — and the funnel — coalesce to solve a BIG nagging problem, to win hearts and minds as well as change beliefs along the journey, your story and your sales funnel are one.

The trick — a trick very few visionary marketeers have mastered — is to design a way to let the audience engage with their brand stories and ‘discover’ the product or service for themselves.

To let them enter a labyrinth without even knowing they have entered one.