Just how much of an impact can being transparent and vulnerable have on your business?

In today’s episode, we’re talking with Alaura Weaver, a copywriter who specializes in helping people speak ‘human,’ about the effect that storytelling can have on your business and how being transparent and vulnerable in your communication can create meaningful relationships with your customers.

She also shares a powerful story about the human cost of putting profit before people that’s definitely worth listening to. 

Alaura is a contributing writer to CopyHackers, one of the my favorite Copywriting resources online, and is the story editor and content manager for the PRX podcast, “Inflection Point.”

In today’s episode, you’ll learn:

• How putting numbers before people leads to poor choices and a lack of trust from your customers
• Why storytelling is essential to sales
• Why you should frame your relationship with your customer as a shared story, with the customer as the hero of that story
• How you can get actionable information out of qualitative feedback
• And why it’s so important for companies to be transparent and vulnerable.

So if you want to discover how to communicate your story in a way that can help you grow your business, then this is definitely the right episode for you. 

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

• [00:01:40] How Alaura got into copywriting
• [00:02:13] Alaura’s previous work in B2B sales
• [00:04:35] Why storytelling is intrinsic to sales
• [00:06:16] Why Alaura decided to pitch an article to Joanna Wiebe at Copyhackers and how the process worked
• [00:08:48] The moment that Alaura realized how dehumanizing business can be, and why that prompted her to look for a more human way of doing business
• [00:11:11] How putting numbers before people can result in making choices that cause guilt and break trust between companies and their customers
• [00:19:36] How Alaura applied a more human-first approach to her copywriting business
• [00:21:32] Why you should frame your relationship with your customer as a shared story, with the customer as the hero of the story ● [00:25:38] How Alaura walks companies through the process of discovering their story
• [00:27:09] How Alaura sorts through data to find out what’s relevant and what isn’t
• [00:31:20] The types of questions that Alaura asks in customer surveys
• [00:32:13] How Alaura creates customer profiles
• [00:33:56] How you can get quantifiable information out of qualitative feedback
• [00:37:20] What to do with a customer persona once it’s established
• [00:40:26] Why it benefits companies to be transparent and vulnerable
• [00:45:11] The results that Alaura has seen from companies that take a story-based approach to appealing to their customers
• [00:48:25] How Alaura would help people understand why a people-first approach is the most sustainable form of business
• [00:50:47] One resource that Alaura recommends