A short conversation (Stefan Georgi and Saba) about whether storytelling is the best way to open a sales letter. Stefan and Saba agree: story leads often work—especially in long-form and competitive markets—if the story is tightly tied back to the prospect (showing what's in it for them, making promises, and looping back). They also note clear exceptions: direct-promise or curiosity-mechanism leads can outperform stories (e.g., short, low-ticket cold-traffic offers), and many writers err by telling long stories that don't connect to the reader.
Chapters
Today he asks if a story's a story lead is always the best start. And I just saw Saba's ears perk up angrily as she comes up with many examples where it's not. But no, all kidding aside, I will let Saba answer because we were talking a little bit about, you know, anytime.
Something'S like the Stefan's on the call, I don't know.
Well, I'll answer Saba and then I'll, I'll see what you think. Right? But my answer is no, it's not always the best. I think that it is often very effective to tell a story to capture people's attention. I think story leads generally, if you have a great story, we're talking about long form, I think telling that story is generally going to do the best. But even then the mistakes people make is they don't relate it back to the consumer, they don't relate it back to the prospect answering, what's in it for you? They don't do promises, they kind of just go, hey, here's a story about something shitty that happened to me. And then it's like five minutes later you're just reading about some person's laundry list of problems and you're like, why am I doing this? Right? So the story lead I like is more of like tease some big emotional story pain point thing that the prospect can relate to and then be like, you know, but fortunately it has a happy ending and you know, like, because I discovered this and that, I'll share that and it's something you can do and then basically just tease the story, go into promises, calling out the pain point, all the other stuff and then, and you kind of loop back to the story with the background story versus just here's a long ass story to start the letter. But there's also plenty of times where a story is not the best. If you have a really interesting mechanism, if you've got really interesting curiosity, maybe the leads around sort of a unique discovery of a new or novel way of doing something, maybe it's around maybe your leads load of social proof. So I think generally story leads are good, but I think, you know, having curiosity based leads, having, you know, direct promise leads are sometimes the best. I mean if you're talking about a challenge funnel, free push up in book funnel, things like that, it's like really just going with the direct promise of hey, like here's the benefits you're gonna get, you know, by looking at this copy or even sometimes by buying the product. If we're not really long form. So it really is contextual. That's my answer. But then, of course, Saba, feel free to add.
Yeah, no, I agree with that. And it is. It does depend on the offer and the niche. Like, you know, I've noticed a lot of cold traffic offers where it's low ticket, cold traffic offers don't really do well with story leads because these are very quick sales and you just need to. You basically just need to deliver the. You know, deliver the offer. So as much as you can hype that up and how exciting it is, and you want people to make a very quick decision, whereas story leads, you know, they can do well for, you know, very competitive markets like supplements, you know, can do well. Like, if you're doing a weight loss, then you definitely need something that's different than just, hey, here's a really good fat burner, or whatever it is. You know, that's where they can be very powerful. But as Stefan said, though, one of the key things, even when you're using story leads, is you have to relate it back to the reader. So even though you might have some, like, crazy, dramatic story, you have to find a way to put the reader into the story and say things like, you know. And as you know, when you have this problem, you experience this, this, this. Like, you have to bring them in. Because I do. See, I see a lot of copy like that where there's a really strong story, but there's no way that it's connecting with the average reader. Right?
Yeah, people fall too in love with the stories sometimes, and they're like, oh, the story's crazy. And I was like, yeah, it's pretty crazy. But again, somebody who's busy in the middle of their day clicks on your ad randomly. They're like, I mean, just think about your friend, the person. You're like, hey, oh, how's your day going? Not good. And then they start telling you all the things that are wrong with them, and you're like, all right, man, this is a bummer. I want to get the fuck out of here, right? Oh, yeah. Oh, man. Sorry to hear that. If they're like, well, it wasn't going good, actually. I nearly died last week, and it was crazy. But what's weird now is I'm actually doing better than ever. This is all because of one change that I made in my life. You're like, oh, what's that about? Right? Then you're curious because now it's like going back to, there's a promise or some solution or breakthrough or something exciting. But if they're just like here's all the shit that's wrong with me. Yeah, you just want to balance, right? I mean, maybe, maybe I'm just an asshole and other people don't want, they want to sit and listen to people's problems for extended periods of time. But my suspicion would be that I'm, you know, this isn't what makes me an asshole. You know, sure. Other things, maybe not. That's my take.
No, I think that's key. You have to be, you know, when you're telling stories, you can make them super dramatic, but you have to be a good storyteller and know where you're your the listener or the reader or the viewer is, is at right with you because it's easy to get really carried away with the storytelling part and then forget that somebody needs to actually now process it and then make a decision eventually.
