Most brands, blogs and businesses understand that spinning a narrative is a must when attempting to enthrall the reader. One of the biggest and most important aspects of content creation relates to storytelling: whether you’re attempting to invoke a particular emotion or simply keep the reader following the content from start to finish.

However, storytelling is often reserved for non-commercial purposes – or at the very least, not used for selling products and services directly. Despite this glaring oversight, there’s already a meaningful amount of storytelling that occurs (such as reviews and testimonials) unintentionally.

Today, let’s review how you can more effectively incorporate storytelling into products and services directly.

Incorporate Testimonials and Reviews

One of the easiest ways to influence a buyer’s decision and improve the content on any product page is to use testimonials and reviews. This important element can not only improve SEO outcomes by increasing the amount of indexable content on the page, but they also provide opportunities for meaningful storytelling. Whether it’s how the product improved someone’s life or what they were able to do with it, pinging users with small yet thoughtful anecdotes can have a huge impact on the number of sales you make.

Write Your Own Product Stories

For most of your products, you already likely have the basis for a great story. With a list of product benefits, features and specifications, you have guidelines on what can be turned into a great story. Whether you want to share a quick blurb about how a particular product provided benefit to a person throughout his or her day, or you want to provide a more creative tale that showcases how the product performs its tasks flawlessly, the sky is the limit.

Generally, however, you want to be sure that there are relatable characters in the story. Whether that be the product itself personified or an actual user of the product is up to you.

Use Stories to Solve Problems

Anytime you’re pinging users with stories that relate to a product, you want to be showing how the product solves an issue or problem. Research shows that buyers are swayed more by abstract descriptions of product benefits than a vague list of features or specifications. As such, incorporating problem solving elements into any product story is paramount to its success.

Combine Stories with Imagery

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words; we disagree, but imagery has its value in the storytelling process. For product pages that really want to go the extra mile, including a variety of images intermixed with the product’s story can help further drive home the point(s) you’re making with regard to its benefits and features. Rather than using generic images that show the product sitting still, find ways to incorporate candid shots and examples of the product directly in action. This will help further drive home what the story is implying and boost the number of sales you generate.

Storytelling isn’t just for blogs: it’s also for businesses. Besides boosting the content rich nature of each product page, stories can help persuade shoppers to commit to the purchase, making the effort you put into it well worth it.