 So, visit our sponsors, sign up for everything and enjoy our talk from Nevena. Thank you. I'm just going to record this. Sorry about that guys, I just promised I would screen record everything for the audio guys. Is that okay? Okay, we're good. Alright, so thank you very much for having me. And I would like to start my talk by telling you a little story. So, when I was a little girl, my dad used to tell me bedtime stories every single night. I would get really excited. I would run and put on my polka dot pajamas. I would grab my cat who are named Hermione after my favourite Harry Potter character. And I would quickly go to bed and I would snuggle under all my sheets and I would wait for the phone to ring. And it would ring every single now without a doubt. My dad would ring up and he'd be on the other end waiting to tell me a story. Now, the best part of these stories is that I could actually co-create them. I could be a part of them. So, my dad would say to me, pick anything you want, any object and let's do a story. So, I would pick things like a toothbrush, a sink and some soap and my dad would create this huge story how the toothbrush was jealous of the soap because it was closer to the sink and I got to know these characters. But what's really important is that I actually learn how to understand and how to empathise with toothbrushes, which obviously later on helped me understand people. And that's actually one of the most important skills that I use in my job today. I mean, I ended up studying a bunch of languages but the thing that I learnt when I was five years old is something that really helps me every single day to be better at my job and to understand people and connect with them. So, I want to share that with you. And I'm going to show you how you can actually get more clients, so increase your client acquisition and client retention by just adding a tiny bit of empathy in your marketing. So, before we do all of that, I want to talk about what is empathy. So, there are a lot of definitions but I've broken it down into three things that I think are understandable and digestible. So, it's a sense of self-awareness, being able to distinguish your own feelings. A lot of us are not so comfortable with that. So, it's really important that you get to tell yourself and understand what you are feeling. It's taking another person's perspective. So, being able to sort of put yourself in someone else's shoes and look at the world from their point of view. And, thirdly, it's being able to regulate one's own emotional response. So, I'm going to play a little game with you and I hope you guys, I know you've just eaten but I hope that you're going to be willing to participate. So, I want to show you how you can actually learn how to empathize because it's important to know that it's a skill that all of us have so every single person in this room can do it. It's like yoga, you just have to practice it. So, I'm going to ask you to practice it with me. One of the ways that you can do that is by imitating someone else's emotion. So, for five seconds, I am going to smile at you and I'm going to ask you all to smile really wide, smiles back at me. Is that, can we do that? Yes. Okay, right. You guys ready? Is everyone ready? All right. Ready? Smile. Can you see them? Amazing. Excellent. So, you did a really good job. How's everyone feeling? Do we feel a bit more positive? Yeah? Yeah? A little bit? Okay. So, this actually, first of all, suggested by an American literary critic, Edgar Poe, in 1845 and it was later on proven by two neuroscientists. One of them is French and his name is John Decity and Philip L. Jackson and they basically say that by imitating someone else's emotions, we can boost our empathy skills, right? So, we can connect to people. And this goes all the way back to the real explanation that empathy is something that we all need to survive. So, we all have it. It's hardwired in us and we just have to practice it. Now, we as people are generally social animals. What does that mean? That means that everything that we do, all of our thoughts and desires, we produce in response to someone else's reactions or we direct them towards someone else. So, that ties in perfectly. But, you can't go around smiling at people to get them to buy your product, right? I mean, that would be a little bit creepy if you sort of just smile at them and say, oh, buy this or sign up to manage WP and smile, right? So, how do you take empathy and how do you put that in marketing? How do you connect to people without, you know, scaring them away? So, we're going to look at two ways. One of them is how do you add it to your copy so make it high converting copy. And the other way is how you do it through storytelling. Okay. So, let's have a look at high converting copy. Have a look at this part. Is it familiar? So, roses are red, violets are blue, donate to a teacher with the same name as you. This is a campaign that donors org, donors choose the org did for their Valentine's Day campaign and it was a really exciting and novel way to solicit more money to get teachers to have more money for their projects. And the way that it worked is that they were able to connect people with their names. I'm just going to show you what the response was. Jason Frank said, just received a dino's choose email to bring Mr. Frank's class well played, done and done. So, people literally just saw their name and thought, I have to do something about this. I have to give them money and because they're talking to me, they're not just talking to anyone out there, but they're actually, they're talking to me. They're saying, hey, you, you, I need you to give me money because we have something. We share a name. And I know that it sounds a little bit, you know, funny or silly even to just think that somebody calling you out on your name, you're more likely to give them money, but this proved a huge spike in their donations. In fact, it's interesting because 60% of sales are actually lost to inertia. So when you're out there thinking and writing your copy, you're not actually competing with other competitors. You're competing with the fact that people can't be bothered to do anything about it. So they will receive your emails, text messages, Twitters, and they won't take action because they will look at it and think, nah, it's not for me. Oh, this is not relevant. And that's natural because we as humans, we need to feel relevant. We seek lots of signs of relevance and this is because we want to connect with each other, which brings us back to empathy. So simple tricks like this, when you stop being vague in all of your marketing and you start getting specific, really can bring in new clients and can increase your brand awareness. I want to show you a few more examples just so we can get down concrete so you know exactly what I'm talking about. So this is an email subject line. Saying goodbye is never easy to do so we thought would give you a chance to rethink things. I mean, it's a little bit long. Who here thinks that they would open this if they saw this? Put your hands up. Okay, not that many people. Okay, interesting. So I wouldn't either but look at what they said, what they do here. They say, they talk to me by their name, by my name, sorry, so they say, so I'm thinking, okay, this is relevant to me. You haven't been opening our emails in the past few months. And the last thing we want to do is come across clingy. So if you still want to stay connected, then just press, don't let me go below. And we promise we won't let you. Otherwise, we'll take you off our list in free business days. No hard feelings. And the CTA, don't let me go. So what's interesting here that they are very specific and they are very personable. So they're saying, you know, we don't want to be clingy. That's something that we've all heard or our friends say, oh, my boyfriend is so clingy or my friend is so clingy. It's very personable. It's something that we use every single day and that's what's so interesting about it. They've taken something which we throw about in conversation from day to day and they've put it in an email asking us not to unsubscribe. With a very powerful CTA, don't let me go. So they could have put anything, unsubscribe me or keep you posted or yes or no, but they really went out there and put that other touch of emotion to get our response. Now, I have another example that actually my colleague, Heather, showed me last night and so I'm going to share it with you because it's excellent. And it's from Native Deodorant. It's an all-natural deodorant and when you order, they send you this. Heather, you rock. It was just another mundane day at the office when suddenly Jackie took a look at the computer and her eyes widened. We did it, she exclaimed. We got an order from Heather Dobson. Laura jumped out of her chair and ran to Jackie's desk. She didn't even read the entire email. She just saw Heather and started screaming in the light. Oh my God. Laura shouted, this is real. We have an order from Heather. The entire office erupted in applause, partying in the USA, bled from the speakers. Jackie's a huge Miley Cyrus fan as confetti rained down from the ceiling and champagne bottles were popped. The entire Native team is thrilled, your customer. Thank you so much for your support and for giving us a reason to cheer on another champion of health. As soon as we're done exchanging high fives, we'll send you tracking information so you can track your package. If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to us. Now, I need an honest hands up. Who has seen a better copy than this? Anyone? Yes? There's not a lot of people because I think this is one of the most fantastic copies when you order a product. Why? Because let's break it down. So Heather, it's very specific, right? It's her and she rocks so we're praising her. We're telling her she's cool because she's ordered our product. But then it goes into this huge story about what happens, how they're so excited and there's confetti and they're popping champagne and they can't wait for her to use their product. So it's very personable. Now Heather's in the audience and I'm going to ask her, Heather, do you still use Native Yodrin, right? So what does this mean? They rock. This means that it works. It really does. It's taking that extra time and thinking in your head what is going to make my customer feel so special? Well, making them feel special is just showing them how excited we are that they're part of our team and the best way to do that is by telling a story. So getting specific, so just calling someone out by their name is so important. Getting emotional really brings in the results and being to the point. So a lot of people think that emotion and empathy means that you have to write essays about how the leaves are falling and the tear dropped down someone's, that's not it. I mean that's just, that's a great novel. But this can be very emotional by just being personable and you can do all of that in your copy and be to the point it doesn't have to be a long copy. So I said at the beginning that I would show you another way that you can add empathy. So we've talked about how you can do it in your copy, how you can adjust the little things, but I'm going to show you another and I think a very powerful way that you can empathize your customers and that's by introducing storytelling. So I told you a little story at the beginning of a presentation about my dad telling me stories. Does anyone here remember what my cat's name was? What was it? How many? Right. So you guys remember my cat's name and I can promise you one thing. You will go home six months or past and you will remember what my cat was called. And you know that's why stories are so great because they are memorable because you will remember them. You no longer think of me like this. You think of me as a chubby little girl with a cat in bed waiting for the phone to ring and because you can visualize what I used to do and how I felt. And there is a little bit of a science of storytelling because I want you to really believe it so I want to get into why it's so important because when we hear stories two things happen. Our brain releases two important hormones. One of them is cortisol and what this does it grabs our attention so it alerts us. We suddenly start paying attention because it's a story, it's something that we're interested in. But the other one that I really want to focus on is oxytocin. So yes there is such a thing as a hormone which actually increases your empathy and makes you emotional. And I'm not sure if any of you have heard of Paul Zach. He is a neuroscientist and he did a fantastic talk about oxytocin but he talks about different ways of releasing it and what the effect of it is on people. So he says that oxytocin is actually a trust molecule. What does this mean? So we get a surge of oxytocin and we feel more connected to people. We want to help them. We're more inclined to do good things. He in fact calls it the moral hormone which is really interesting because when you listen to a story you feel like you get to know the person and you then decide if you like them or you don't. So if you like someone you're more likely to help them and this is exactly why it's so important. Now Paul Zach also talks about different ways of releasing oxytocin. He says he's got a great nickname it's Doctor Love and he says that essentially you can hug people and by hugging someone 8 times a day they become a happier person so if you haven't hugged anyone today please do. But again it's very odd because you can't just smile at people and then go try to hug them and get them to buy a product. That would be very scary if you just sort of went up to people trying to hug them. So you've got to find a different way of getting that oxytocin flowing in someone's body and it's by storytelling. So I'm going to play you a little video which will show you exactly what it's like to tell a great story. At least in my opinion. It's a good example of a story so if you don't identify with it just listen to the storytelling. Where do you want to go? She never even got to finish that son. But her voice that question where do you want to go? Soul carrier is a manifestation of that. Everything that I designed is created to serve as a daily reminder to ignite people and do what they're meant to do. I don't know where to leave when someone asks you that question where do you want to go or if you will have to ask it of yourself. But when that day comes I hope that Soul Carrier can be a reminder to tune out the noise and to choose the path you were meant for. All right so what did you guys think? Did you think it was a good story? No? It was okay? It was okay? Did anyone identify with it? Yeah? Does anyone know where she was selling? Do we know? Handbags. Was it obvious? Was it clear straight away that she was selling handbags? No. But did she ever say what the handbags were made out of or how much they cost? Okay. Any women in the room would you buy that handbag? No? You would consider it? Okay. So this was a release video. So what does this mean? This was a video that talks about the origin of the story and they worked on the copy and it actually showed that after telling the actual story the conversion rate was increased by 36% which is really interesting. Why? Because she focuses on the feeling of the bag. She doesn't actually sell you the bag. She doesn't show it to you from all angles on very attractive models or how you can wear and what it goes with but she tells you why it's important to her. It's important to her because she's following her dream so she wants you to take the handbag and every time you have it and you look at it you say to yourself I'm not going to follow my dreams and I bought this handbag. So she's asking you to cancel out and take away all of the white noise and focus on what matters and what's really effective about it here is that she sells the handbag through her own story. Now it's important to remember it's not about the magnitude of the story so yes she has a tragic story but you don't need that for a story to be effective you need to be able to tell it to have the skills to tell the story. So it could be anything, it could be toothbrush and sink and a pair of soap it could be anything. I'm going to show you where you can find your story, whatever product you're selling, whatever thing that you want to sell including WordPress management which is what we do. So finding a story, one example is the one that we've just seen is the birth of the idea so the origin story what was it that propelled you to do it so for her it was this tragic event but it could be anything it could be the fact that you felt like it was the right thing to do that you wanted to and any type of birth story is very powerful if told well. Transformations so what is this it's before then comes your product then it's the after so it's a case study you know talk to your clients, find out how their lives are different how you've improved their lives and that's a fantastic story. Objections so this is a slightly difficult one because it's all the right all the reasons that people have said to you know we don't want to use your product you know go and talk to people they say to you know what we don't want to use your product because we don't like your customer service find that, change it and tell that story say why you've changed it how have you changed that no to a yes and it can be very effective and finally what makes you different there are so many products and it's all there it's very hard to find a blank space so you need to find what makes you different what makes you unique so when you find your story you need to be able to craft your story so how do you do that you focus on one moment or one person so it's very easy when you look at an origin story you think oh yeah there was ten of us and then one person came over with the idea and then we all sat in a pub and then this happened then this happened so focus on one thing it's that one moment that makes all the difference or that one person don't put too many people or moments in there set the scene so make sure that you're vivid make sure you use your language use the emotions take the opportunity to really describe what's happening how can you really portray that story bring it to light okay this is an obvious one because we've been talking about emotions and empathy so make sure you include them it's so easy to allude to a story to allude to something that's happening and it's so much more difficult to really put the emotions and tell it but make sure that you do because it will be that much more effective and finally offer a directive it's a CTA basically make sure your story has a direction that people take action so she ended her video if you guys remember with the words on the video and she was telling you every time you buy your bag and every time you look at it I want you to remember follow your dreams so she's giving you a directive but she's telling you to follow your dreams so make sure you do the same thing and finally this might be very obvious but a lot of people forget to do this tell your story there are so many different ways that you can tell a story and they're so beautiful so you can do a video again we've just seen this example you can do it on your website don't just put this company was founded this and this year and this is who works here tell that story who are the people behind the company and why should customers come to you testimonials they're great talk to your clients get them to give you a quote what they think is the best thing about your company include case studies they're brilliant way of showing your product in a real life example social media blogs, emails tweets, instagram any of those and I know that a lot of you are probably thinking social media is so overwhelming and I don't want to tweet all the time but you can tell great stories and finally presentations presentations are a great way because you are right there in front of the people and you can really change someone's mind if you're passionate about what you're doing if you're passionate about your product about who you are you can stand there people take presentations for granted because there's so much material online you can watch linda courses and youtube videos but they're so powerful because you're right here people can ask you questions they can really understand you so take every opportunity you have to go and present word camps are a great way of doing that especially because you get such a great supportive community to make sure that you take advantage of that so what I do is I really want to conclude by saying that in essence it's important to make sure that you understand people and one of the companies that have done such a good job at it is Airbnb who here has ever used Airbnb can you put your hands up who here has seen Airbnb in stories alright so not a lot of people but it's a new thing that they're trying you know years time you guys are going to be all reading these Airbnb stories why? because they transform travel no longer are you just going to stay at someone's apartment or you're staying in that city you're living that story right you get to meet Michael who actually that's a great one I mean if you're going to pick one read that one he talks about his experience as a marathon runner and you get to meet all these people and it's no longer I'm just going to Berlin or I'm just flying to Florida but you're going there and you're living you're connecting you're living with someone else and experiencing what their life is in that city and so that's what's so important about it it can transform your opinion so just to summarize because I know I have given you a lot of information but I've tried to give you as many concrete examples so that you can really see the power of empathy in essence one of the most important things that we are all born with empathy and that we all need to survive we have completely forgotten in marketing right technology has come and we have all gotten onto the technology wagon and we are sending tweets and using lots of cool new stuff that's helping us be more efficient and more effective but what it has done it's cut down all of our interaction time with people and so if you bring it back a little bit so you take a step back from all of that white noise a soul carrier calls it and you focus on what it's important why you need to talk to people why you need to connect with them I promise you you can do that very simply by re-evaluating your copy and telling the story and you will see an increase in customer acquisition and customer retention and if any of you want to try it you can always think about a toothbrush and a sink and soap and how they create one happy family very much is that any questions or do I thank you so much welcome does anyone have any questions you can is this modern modern that people are starting to call post-truth era there is a kind of a risk that some of the world's second fee that can come from these sorts of things that can be seen a little bit similarly and what do you think is going to do for the future for this sort of approach well I think you've made a really good point I think it's really it can easily get very cynical especially when you call out things like just putting someone's name because that is that you code that so you can do that so that people recognize what your name is and they just put the name down so what I mentioned earlier being specific but I think that you need to look at it a little bit more behind that and that's why I encourage people so much to focus on the actual story and to focus on the emotions because everyone who's started a company or works for a company what makes them good is because they really believe in it and they believe in the product and that is actually the most powerful thing that any company has essentially it's its people it's the story behind it and then everything else comes because the people make the product they do the customer service so I think there is definitely a little bit of a chance of that happening and I really hope I'm going to do my best to make sure that that doesn't happen and that we can really take it back a little bit go back to the 16th century and really just tell those stories with a candle and reading a book so I hope that I hope that answers your question as well yeah anyone else this is kind of related to that we're kind of losing this sort of professional register of speech you know what I mean this sort of this passionate means of communicating sort of business that's kind of just slowly receding now into the past and I wonder if that's if you can endorse that Paul is a good thing because I find it exhausting the fact that I've got you know 100 emails in my inbox each one of them is trying to make me feel something I mean wrench from ah joy at this ah despair at that and ah it's just so tiring and is this something we need to use in moderation absolutely yes totally absolutely it is exhausting because the lines are now getting so blurred right like you said before it was very you know business was very professional very business like and then you know you would talk differently when you were at work and when you were at home so I get that entirely and it can get too much and people do go overboard but I still think that we get way many email way more emails that are just like sign up do this do that and just go into my spam that I don't even look at I you know I still think I would pay more attention to something which little bit sparked my interest I think the problem there is as well that a lot of us get a lot of irrelevant emails that we don't want to listen to if somebody emailed me something about planting a new flower pot I mean I'm terrible I'm terrible every single plant I have dies I only have cacti so that wouldn't interest me so that's something that I would hope that would they could sell cactuses dancing for me and how I would be a better person if I had a cactus and it just it wouldn't interest me so I think it's important to also be relevant which is one of the difficulties I guess in marketing so stay tuned I will tell you what I do with that and there is a question here Hi I was just wondering whether you have different approach for men and women because I can see how some things are women to me seem kind of a little bit more empathic men aren't so do you have any different approach or do you Yes definitely I was we were talking about this recently and it's don't so when you said my colleague is laughing because he's very touchy-feely no but that's a really good point and you're right there is definitely a different approach I think it's important to remember that you're not your user and this is something that we were talked about again recently and you need to identify who your users are I mean a lot of the users so I write for Managed WP and a lot of the users are developers who are male and I write for them so I'm not a developer I'm not a guy and so you just have to identify so what I do is I get to interview a lot of them I chat to them I go to these events and I talk to them I think okay let's see what clicks what are they interested in what's really fascinating to them and then I try that's the whole idea of being able to take someone else's perspective putting yourself in somebody else's shoes but I think that every good marketer needs to be able to do that it's a very good point thank you any other questions yeah and I just wanted to say that sometimes with the fresh eyes you tell a story really differently than a developer themselves might be able to tell it have you noticed that when you approach a story that the way that you draft it and frame it is somewhat different than how people may tell their own story yeah definitely I think it's important to take both angles so sometimes it's really good when the person himself or herself tells the story because they've got that personal touch but other times it's important to be able to tell it from someone else's perspective because there are lots of eyes right so everyone sees things differently and maybe you'll be able to relate to someone else but I think both are really important to incorporate in your marketing do you feel sometimes that when empathy is invoked coming back to the question over there that there's somewhat of a feeling of deception like oh I thought you were telling me a personal story and now I see that you're trying to sell me something is there a how do you avoid that in storytelling well I think you do have to remember that when you do do like emails and blogs they can't be for every single person specifically so I think the native deodorant did a really good job because they told this cool story and everyone gets excited in the office but then at the end it's like we are tracking so it breaks there's a paragraph which breaks and says but remember we're going to track all your progress we've high-fived and we're going to track your product and then we're going to send it to you so there has to be a break you need to take it back to reality I mean a story is a great story but then you have to remember that it is for everyone it's not it's not for person based I mean it's the same thing with novels I mean we'll read them and we visualize them differently so each person will interpret it in their own way which makes it so special so yeah I think that makes sense any other questions I just have one more comment sometimes or a question for myself do people often feel reluctant to share of themselves for example with the soul carrier this was a very personal story do people often feel like wait a second I don't want people to maybe know so much about me personally and how do they work around that so the video that I showed isn't actually the one which is the one on YouTube because this is the original that we worked on so because the first time the video was told exactly what you said it was a little bit different it wasn't so personal but I think it's important to explain to people that especially in this case that it is you that's created it so you were the best thing about that product and so you do it's difficult to open up but once you sort of break that first take that first step or break the ice whatever you like then it becomes much easier to tell your story but it is a challenge and I think it's very difficult to encourage people but if you get someone who's very passionate about it you're more likely to tell them your story in I hope yeah any other questions or comments okay you guys are really making me sweat I like it I was just wondering what you thought about other people's stories you know you spoke about Airbnb but Airbnb stories in my mind come to those ones people have really bad experiences and it being on the news and the PR side of things okay that's a really good point so I don't know if any of you keep up with Airbnb they did a whole new campaign about diversify is that sort of have you seen that one because apparently a lot of a lot of hosts there was some discrimination and so they did they have great PR and they did a great campaign talking about how they're trying to diversify I actually think this is the first thing Airbnb has done which is great because it's coming from the people because they are the ones writing the stories it's not actually anyone behind Airbnb but there is a lot of stuff where people try and cover stories and try and shape things differently I mean that's always going to happen people are always going to do that you can't avoid that you just hope that you're not one of those people and that you're doing the right thing and you're telling your story the right way so to speak any other questions last question as I'm told so if anyone has last questions this is your final chance and I I do I just wanted you to elaborate on that focus on a moment because I think that I've seen a lot of people or companies try to tell stories that were a bit too diffused and you didn't know where it was going so could you elaborate on that focus on a moment so just to keep this short but basically so I started languages and literature I know a bit of a bookworm I guess so the key to having a very good story is people try and tell everything you can't tell everything in detail without it being thousands of pages with some very famous people very great writers have done but there's a very small amount of those people who can pull it off so my advice to people who do if you're attempting to write a story is just focus on one thing and you can play around with it you can take a banana and try and describe a banana and the first time you've tried a banana and anything really simple things try and tell it and you'll get better at it and then you will learn how to focus on a banana and the first taste of it for example and you'll get better at it, it's just practice I did say empathy is a bit like yoga you do have to practice it for it to become to come better at it thank you so much I think we all learned a lot