Storytelling is an art. Like art, it requires creativity, vision, skill, and practice.
It's a crucial part of the most successful marketing campaigns, and it sets you apart from your competitors.
Studies have shown that telling a story makes information way more memorable. Psychologist Jerome Bruner found we are 22 times more likely to remember a fact when it has been wrapped in a story. Stanford’s Graduate School of Business found that when people listened to pitches, either containing facts and figures or a story, only 5% recalled a statistic, but a whopping 63% remembered the stories. And the list goes on.
Stories have the power to evoke emotions, which is crucial for building a strong connection with our audience. By appealing to their emotions, we can spark empathy, excitement, or even nostalgia, thereby creating a meaningful experience that resonates with them long after they've consumed our content.
How to use storytelling in marketing?
One way to use storytelling in marketing is by crafting a captivating brand story. This involves sharing the history, mission, and purpose of the brand in a way that resonates with customers. By highlighting the unique aspects of the brand's journey, storytelling helps humanise the business and create a relatable narrative for customers to connect with.
Choosing the right story for your content is crucial to the success of your storytelling efforts. A good story should not only captivate your audience but also align with your brand message and marketing goals. When selecting a story, consider the following:
Your target audience: What are their interests, pain points, and preferences? What kind of stories are they likely to relate to and engage with?
Your brand message: What message do you want to convey through your content? What are your brand values and how can they be incorporated into your story?
Your marketing goals: What action do you want your audience to take after reading or viewing your content? How can your story support those goals?
Relevance: Make sure your story is relevant to your target audience and relevant to the current time and context.
Emotion: A good story should evoke emotions, whether it's joy, inspiration, or sadness. Choose a story that is likely to evoke the emotions you want to convey.
Once you've identified a story that aligns with your target audience, brand message, and marketing goals, you can start creating your content around it. Remember, the key to a successful story is not only choosing the right story but also telling it in a way that is engaging and impactful.
4 Examples of Storytelling Marketing
The world’s biggest brands understand the power of storytelling in marketing – here’s a round up of some of the best storytelling marketing examples.
National Geographic
National Geographic does a great job incorporating storytelling into their social media strategy. The company is well-known for posting awe-inspiring images that make social media users stop scrolling and want to learn more.
After using the images to capture users’ attention, National Geographic draws them in by their captivating stories in the image caption. Combining powerful visuals with captivating stories contributes to National Geographic’s ‘wow’ factor, and it keeps people coming back for more.
Instead of making the photos branded assets, National Geographic credits the photographers.
Land Rover
Instead of creating their own story from scratch, Land Rover took a customer story and used it to promote its brand. For their 70th anniversary, Land Rover told the story of “The Land of Land Rovers” in a remote village in the Himalayas. As a marketing strategy, Land Rover does a good job of telling the story of its brand through the eyes of its customers.
Not everyone can relate to living in a remote village in India, but Land Rover owners around the world will identify with the villagers’ reasons for using Land Rovers. More than that, this story works to connect people of different backgrounds and shows that Land Rover has a good understanding of its audience and their interests.
Spotify
Spotify is home to one of the clearest and arguably coolest examples of visual storytelling and content marketing: Spotify Wrapped, a roundup of personal music highlights created automatically for every customer, every year.
The Spotify Wrapped data is presented as a literal story, making it immediately understandable and begging to be explored.
We all look forward to the wrapped being released every year, don’t we?
Burt’s Bees
When it comes to natural beauty products, Burt’s Bees is a familiar name in the industry. But the beauty of Burt’s brand isn’t just in its amazing products, but in the way it uses storytelling to help customers buy into their philosophies—that we should treat our skin, and the world we live in, with care.
Over the years they’ve woven stories about their brand into the fabric of their marketing and seeded a message along with it. Their website is full of stories, all of which paint a picture of an eco-conscious business on a mission to save the world.
But where they shine is on social media, where they use videos to educate customers about their business, and about the creatures who make it possible—the bees.
One of our favourites is ‘Burt talks to the bees: Worker Bees’.
Storytelling in content marketing is a powerful way to engage and connect with your audience on a deeper level. However, your stories must be compelling and resonate with your audience. As JK Rowling said, "No story lives unless someone wants to listen. The stories we love best do live in us forever."
The key to effective storytelling in marketing is to identify your brand's story and the value you wish to share and use empathy to create narratives that resonate with your audience.
Here at Hello Social Avenue, we specialise in helping SMEs, startups, and directors enhance their digital marketing strategies.Contact us today to discover how we can help you elevate your email marketing game!
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