Nothing beats the essence of a good story that emotionally connects with an individual. It is one of the profound ways to attract customers. With a rational description and facts and figures about your products and services, you can convince even the toughest beings. Gladly, now brands have turned down their conventional ways of marketing and adopted ways like storytelling in content marketing to improve engagement. They leverage storytelling to help develop an emotional connection with the brand besides only fulfilling their needs.
In this article, we will discuss how we can use storytelling to attract more customers.
Table of contents
What is Storytelling in Content Marketing?
Businesses are more than just building up revenue for success and boost their existence in the market. Forming relationships with customers first is becoming crucial for many businesses. To form such a relationship, you might need to tell them how your products and services resonate with their needs and demands. In order to deliver a message, you can create a story around your product. When you create a story with an emotional spice, it compels audiences to choose your brand. The process of delivering your brand message effectively to the right audience is called “storytelling”. When we use storytelling in content marketing, it offers more opportunities to attract customers.
Building a narrative around your business makes marketing more human. Businesses must infuse this into their content marketing so that it aligns equally well with the buyer’s journey. When we say storytelling, we are generating a personal touch for our products and services. Personalized marketing catches the interest of prospects and builds loyalty. In this marketing, we collect data based on buyers’ preferences and offer a narrative that resonates with their demands.
Why Is it Important for Business?
Marketers have realized that content marketing is incomplete without storytelling. They now know the importance of storytelling in marketing, which can bring some great results. Ditching the old ways of marketing when businesses needed to look for instant action from customers, businesses now want to build a narrative around their products. Using storytelling helps businesses engage and connect emotionally with their audience. Businesses need to build concrete relationships with customers as well as gain their trust.
Elements of Storytelling
You need to create an emotionally driven campaign in order to connect with your audience’s emotions. Storytelling will help you build one. But first, you need to know what your story must have to compel audiences to buy from your brand.
Here are key elements that make storytelling even more valuable for your business:
Choose Your Main Character
Every story has some main characters. There is a main character who is the hero of the story, which people like to relate to. A character must be your target audience so that it resonates with their needs and demands. So, always choose an appealing character that leaves an impression.
Start with Good
Just like articles, you need to put great stuff at the beginning of your story rather than dragging it to the end. People might lose their attention if the solution is not addressed at the start.
Create Conflict
People do not like to read typical content, just like they do not want to eat donuts every day. The content must have crisp elements to get the attention of readers. So, to keep your audience engaged, you need to create conflict in your story.
Only Show What you Offer
Unrealistic stories often lead to negativity and give birth to a false perception of the brand. Always mention realistic offers in your story. Keep your story authentic and original so that it aligns with your company goals and creates uniqueness. To beat the competition in the market, you must not steal someone else’s idea. For the best idea, always identify your brand’s message and goals. Your brand’s value must be depicted in your story.
Benefits of Storytelling in Content Marketing
As we have discussed the great aspects of storytelling in marketing, here are some benefits you need to know.
Increases Engagement
Storytelling hooks the audience to the content and captures their attention for its uniqueness. When your story resonates with the needs and demands of your audience, it keeps them engaged. Unlike conventional marketing, people tend to remember your brand for a longer time.
Develop Bonding
Great bonds are formed on the basis of emotions, and storytelling can do this for you. It drives emotional touch by delivering empathy and trust that audiences need to put in their brands. If the story resonates with their emotions, it is highly likely that they will remember your brand for a long time.
Convince the Audience to Take Action
The purpose of storytelling is to compel the audience to take action. A good story always provokes emotions that compels audiences to take certain actions.
Unites Audience
Regardless of your race, religion, language or country, a good story speaks for all. When you have a targeted audience, they might have similar pain points. You can address them with a solid story so that they understand what your brand has to offer.
Top 3 Examples of Storytelling in Content Marketing
You might have seen businesses that are famous for their storytelling-led marketing initiatives. People remember companies that have been conquering people’s hearts with their emotional stories. Also those brands have the highest customer retention rate.
Land Rover
Land Lover, a well-known name in the automotive industry, created an advertisement to commemorate its 70th anniversary. The content of the ad was not about promotion and services that the company has been targeting; however, they added another angle to their ad. They told their brand story through the eyes of their customers.
The slogan of the ad was “The Land of Land Rover”, It depicted the story of a small village where the muse was seen driving the car smoothly. The idea of the story is to connect people from different walks of life to make the most feasible choice when it comes to their cars. The brand depicted that it has all that its audience wants.
Dove
Dove, the brand, is famous for its fine-quality personality grooming products. Lately, the brand launched a campaign in which it told the story of a family that has been separated for more than seven months. The problem was highlighted at the start of the ad to gain the attention of the audience, and then it invaded the characters of the ad. The idea of this story is to educate people about common issues that are ruining family life and how to overcome them.
The concept of this ad is not only to promote products but also to deliver the message that you can solve any problem together.
The idea of the story is to create brand awareness as well as a sense of trustworthiness among its existing customers. The campaign really touched the audience emotionally and formed a positive image of the brand. It draws attention to the fact that Dove values family bonding and relationships.
Nike
We have been watching Nike’s endless motivational videos to emotionally recharge its audience. Nike is a symbol of fitness and improving well-being physically by focusing on self-improvement. Nike’s campaign of original stories coming from its existing customers was a big hit. Famous athletes and fitness enthusiasts took part and narrated their life stories to help people achieve their goals. They shared their experience with the brand and how they created relationships with it other than just buying their products.
It is an ultimate example of storytelling in content marketing. The campaign generated higher ROI than improved customer satisfaction towards the brand.
Leave a Lasting Impression on Your Audience
We have seen that in the past, marketing was all about promoting products for the sake of selling them. Though the ultimate purpose of marketing remains the same, the idea and technique have changed. Now that people’s preferences have changed, the competition has increased.
To stand out in this fierce market, brands want to present themselves as the safest choice for the customer. To compel them to stick to their decision and purchase, brands create authentic stories to connect with their audience emotionally. The story involves the depiction of brand value, beliefs, and how it values its customers. This creates a unique bond between both parties and increases retention as well as satisfaction.
Featured Image: ContentWriters
