Storytelling is a technique that can be used to promote products and services. It has a great potential to drive sales and thus, it’s very popular nowadays. Many brands use it to tell their own story, talk to their customers or even build an effective marketing funnel.
Your brand probably already has this story you can tell your audience and use different digital marketing channels for this. However, capturing the attention of customers in a competitive market is not an easy task.
The main task of using storytelling is to make your customers see your brand or your products with more interest and thus, be more open to making a purchase. So, if you are still wondering what storytelling is and how to make it effective, this article will tell cover these points and show you how to apply this technique to your business.
What Is Storytelling?
Storytelling is the technique of telling your brand story in a consistent manner using the chosen marketing channels. Storytelling usually includes such elements as characters, environment, conflict, and development. These elements are essential to building a narrative that helps the reader understand your brand and get interested in it. But to really impact your audience and get their attention, your story must feel important.
Storytelling is what helps you introduce your business to your audience and connect customers with your brand through a more personalized approach.
Storytelling in digital marketing is widely applied to the B2C business model, helping to create messages for those who visit your social media profile and website, or also those who see your advertising.
Let’s check an example of a small online business called My Balanced Space. The company offers products for home improvement so they should create a number of stories (or just one message with its variations) of how to solve different issues a person can have in their home or how to generally improve the home space. These messages should be then adapt for social media, a website, e-mails and used across other promotional channels.
Why Storytelling Is Important
Basically, it is a way to involve your audience in your business to build an emotional bond. This usually transforms into greater engagement and better brand awareness. And if people love your brand story, more likely to buy your product and can do it right away, or they just be willing to share your story and this way promote your brand. Therefore, this well-applied technique helps you promote your business and increase sales.
Just think that Instagram Stories, a widely used format for storytelling in social media, has a daily engagement of about 500 million people. This shows how much potential this tool has for telling about your brand with a wisely chosen channel.
How To Make Storytelling Effective
To tell a good brand story, it’s important to follow these rules.
Know Your Target Audience
Your target audience is people who will be interested in your product or service. In order for you to create stories that impact your audience and succeed, you need to know as much information about these people as possible. Remember that your target audience should find themselves in your story and thus you need to know what their interests are. Next, after understanding who your target audience is, you need to adapt your narrative to their interests.
Only with a story that is relevant, you can establish a long-term relationship with the audience.
Address Relevant Topics
By identifying the interests of the target audience, you will be able to understand what are the most interesting topics for covering with storytelling.
You can research your competitors to better understand what topics they are talking about.
You can even tackle some similar problems, but always try to bring something new to the consumer, and of course, invest in generating a narrative that makes your product stand out from the competition.
Create Your Characters
This step becomes possible when you know who your audience is and what topics are relevant to them.
Your main character, a person or thing that will be the central figure in your narrative, should be somehow an embodiment of your potential customer. Your character should have a striking personality that makes a good impression on your target audience, enough that they find a way to identify with you and put themselves in their shoes.
To create your main character, you need to think of characteristics that will make them look strong in the face of the obstacles they will face. That strength could come with your products or services.
Build Your Narrative
Remember that a good narrative must have an element of development, meaning you take the consumer from point A to point B. Therefore, it must have an introduction, a body, and an end.
Your narrative should reveal the obstacles to capture the attention of the audience. Those hurdles should be relevant to what real-life problems your customers have and how they can solve it with your product or service. But remember to present only the problems your readers surely can solve with what your business offers. So, your point B, the finishing of your narrative, should include using your company’s product to eliminate the problem described.
Be Creative
Use your creativity to bring something new, unique, and authentic to your brand’s story.
Your audience will not pay attention to your story if you offer them more of the same, so you should take the time to plan each of the steps to build your storytelling.
Readers like to be surprised, so take the time to create plot twists and break patterns. Create a surprising ending to convey the desired message. Also, avoid using direct sales models where you are too obvious when talking about your products or services.
Closing Thoughts
So, storytelling is a powerful tool your business can use on social media and across other channels. It can effectively promote your business while increasing sales and brand awareness. Follow the tips described here to make it work for your company.
