Who doesn’t love listening to a good story? Storytelling has been helping brands around the globe connect with their customers and increase brand loyalty. An essential part of content marketing, storytelling is a useful technique that helps business owners craft their message to their clients in the most engaging way to capture their attention and increase revenue.
What is Storytelling Important?
Storytelling is a strategy that brands utilize in order to help their target audience not only learn about their products and services, but form an emotional connection that will lead them to remain loyal to the company for years to come.
While traditional corporate messaging simply spews out ads about new offerings, sales, and other company news, storytelling helps the business owners or marketing team to focus on one overarching theme, and craft all of the messaging (text and imagery) around that topic.
As explained by Bryan Eisenberg, professional marketing speaker, “Facts tell, but stories sell.”
A great example of a corporation that is using their storytelling effectively is Weight Watchers. By creating ads showing real people discussing their weight struggles and what losing weight has meant to them, this company managed to create an emotional connection with the people that are looking to improve their health.
What Does Storytelling in Marketing Involve?
In order to incorporate storytelling in your content marketing strategy, utilize the all of the elements of storytelling, as identified in the book, The Power of Visual Storytelling, by Ekaterina Walter and Jessica Gioglio. The seven essential elements of storytelling are:
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Design:
- Use captivating and interesting imagery as part of your storytelling. This can include photos, drawings, videos, etc.
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Personalization:
- Although it’s important to keep a consistent narrative, it is beneficial to customize the story to each platform or channel used to deliver it.
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Usefulness:
- Explain to your audience why your product or service is useful to them. You must solve a problem they are experiencing, or don’t yet know they are experiencing, in order to connect to your customers.
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Personality:
- Don’t just release generic and boring content; instead, consider what personality your brand would have if it were a person. Would you be a young, fun millennial or a caring, wise parent? Pretend like you’re speaking directly to one person instead of marketing to thousands or millions of people, and concentrate on personalizing your image to your target audience.
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Storytelling:
- Before releasing any type of message, consider how it fits into the conversation you hope to be having with your audience. Does it tell the same story as previous marketing tactics?
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Share-Worthiness:
- Make your audience work for you by sharing and promoting your content. In order to do that, you must make sure it is worthy of sharing. This action can be encouraged by a call-to-action (CTA) urging readers to share your content.
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Real-time amplification:
- Utilize the content that your audience is already interested in for your benefit. To do this, “take owned content that people are already engaging with and add it to the targeted paid inventory to further maximize the reach of content that people already find interesting,” according to a source.
When creating your brand’s story, remember to be honest, creative and engaging! If you need financial help to make your story a reality, contact IOU Financial, who can loan your company up to $150,000 in 24-48 hours.
