As the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. The people that this saying applies to probably aren’t good marketers. Good marketers are the people that can lead a horse to water and make that horse drink. Why? It’s because they know the buying process of converting potential customers into happy buyers. Competent marketers know that the know-like-trust cycle ends with the buy process. The buy process is exactly that. It’s a process, It’s not just a simple act of this person buying. If you break down the buying process, it actually has different parts. Here are the parts. Master these parts so you can reliably get your visitors to buy after you’ve used effective story telling to successfully get them through the know-like-trust-buy cycle.

The buying process is actually broken down into four parts: Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. If any of these are missing, you’re not going to get a buyer. Sure, you’ve told great stories and you have a powerful narrative on your blog, but all of that goes out of the window. All of that time, all of that effort, and all of that emotional energy. All of that is wasted. Why? It’s because you didn’t get the buying process right. You have to get this process down to a system,otherwise, you’re not going to convert people online. It’s just not going to happen. The good news is the buying happens in a relatively short period of time. Compare this with telling a story so you can get people through the know-like-trust-buy cycle. That cycle takes quite a bit of time. Also, different people need more time to convince than other people. On the other hand, the buying process is actually compressed into a short period of time. This is why it’s crucial that you are aware of the different pieces that form the buying process puzzle. If you miss one of these pieces, chances are good that you’re not going to close that sale. Here is an in-depth discussion of the different components of the buying process.

Get their attention

When it comes down to get your trusting visitors to buy from you, you need to get their attention. This seems very straight forward, but don’t be surprised as to how many online marketers fail at this. They write ad copy that is stiff, lifeless, or spamming. In other words, they write ad copy that isn’t very appealing at all. You have to get the attention of your buyers. How do you do this? You appeal to emotion. You appeal to the part of your visitors’ feelings that is innately human. By appealing to emotion, you get them to open your email, to click a link, or to scroll down. You get them to do what you need them to do, but you need to get their attention. The bad news is that it takes a while to master this technique. You’d have to experiment with different headline writing styles or with different subject line writing styles. What matters is that you are trying. Just because your past experiments failed, it doesn’t mean that you will continue to fail. As long as you’re paying attention to the headlines that you are writing and you’re monitoring the click through results, chances are good that you will come upon a formula that will work with your target audience most of the time. The reason there is no one size-fits all solution to magnetic attention-grabbing headlines is that different websites have different audiences. Different online properties have different visitors. Different audiences have different tastes. They have different backgrounds, so it’s really important that you come up with your own customized solution.

Get them interested

After somebody clicks on your links, you have to do your best using as many of those visitors as possible. This might sound shocking, or might sound ridiculous, but if you really wanted to sell, you need to filter people who read your ad. The reality is that most might click an attention-grabbing headline might not be in your target audience. This might not be people that would normally buy your product. Why waste your time on them? Effective advertising is all about effective filtering. You need filtered and targeted people to keep reading down the page of your ad or to keep reading down your email. You need to put enough information there that clearly and effectively filters people out that are not interested. They don’t waste their time, you don’t waste your time, and their trust is preserved. The last thing you would want is to lie in your ad and get people excited that shouldn’t be excited because they don’t have the need for that product. Do you see where this is headed? You have to appeal to people’s interest. Get them interested by appealing to their needs and filtering them.

Awaken desire by showing a fit

If you have drawn the interest of your target audience, the next step of the buying process is to show that whatever it is that you are promoting is the solution to their needs. In other words, you have the solution to their problems. You have to appeal to their desire. The good news is that this part of the process is actually logical. When you look at the different qualities and features that your product or service has, you can find aspects that would fit in neatly with the needs of your target audience. The next step is to frame this in emotional terms. You have to make it personal. If you are trying to sell in a robotic way and if you are trying to show that you have the solution to people’s needs, you’re going to lose those people. Why? They’re human beings. They’re not robots. You have to make your solution felt at a truly human and emotional level.

Don’t forget to call them to action

After you’ve gone through all the process of attracting attention, filtering people based on interest and awakening a desire, it would be a real shame if you screw up this part. Sadly, this is precisely what many online marketers are doing. They focus so much on their efforts in drawing attention, filtering the interest and awakening the desire that they forget to call the prospect to action. This is the trigger of the buying process. You need to get this right. Unfortunately, when you’re saying “click here” or “buy now”, it’s not going to cut it. That is too lifeless. That is too stiff. There’s no human dimension to that. Your effective calls to action should summarize all the desire of a person has for a particular product and tie it to an emotional or financial state. For example, instead of simply saying “click here to buy our roach control product”, you can say “click here to say goodbye to those annoying cockroach bites”. Did you see what I did there? There’s a lot of emotion in a properly constructed call to action. There is a connection with your target audiences’ problems and suffering with a properly constructed call to action.

By using stories in all aspects of your relationship with your audience, you can blow up your online marketing conversions. You have to remember, you are blogging and sending emails or building landing pages not because you are working as a volunteer. You’re doing all these activities because you want to make money. By telling effective stories that guide people through the know-like-trust-buy cycle as well as the buying process, you increase your chances of making your online money making dreams come true regardless of whether you own a simple landing page, a mailing list, a blog or an e-commerce site, you have to know how to use the power of stories to sell online.