Storytelling is hardly anything new. People have used storytelling for thousands of years to communicate and connect with one another, long before the internet or the written word were around. However, despite storytelling being one of the oldest forms of communication, it can sometimes be overlooked when it comes to marketing. Today, it’s estimated that people can be exposed to as many as 10,000 ads a day. Of course, many can’t even remember a handful of the ads they see.
While you might not be able to name one of the businesses that advertised to you throughout the day, you can likely recall a story someone told you. Not only is storytelling an important part of our daily lives and the lives of many people before it, but it’s also essential for marketing. Learn more about why storytelling in marketing is so important.
Why is Storytelling Effective for Marketing?
Storytelling in marketing is just like any other type of storytelling, but it helps your business reach certain goals. This is much more than putting a product in front of someone and telling them why they need it. Some of the most effective marketing utilizes storytelling to communicate a message to audiences. Storytelling in marketing appeals to people’s emotions and entertains them, and businesses in all industries can find a way that makes this work for them.
Here are a few specific ways incorporating storytelling in your marketing can help make it more impactful.
Engage with Your Audience
Connecting with people as a business can be incredibly hard, especially today. For many businesses, your audience might consist of people who no one representing your business will ever come face-to-face with. There’s a good chance that there are many businesses just like yours, so actually getting anyone’s attention can be a huge challenge. Standing out as a business is a huge challenge online and on social media, so engaging with your audience can feel impossible.
This is why you need to provide your audience with something they can engage in and be interested in. What better to do this than with an entertaining story that captivates them right off the bat?
Show Your Authenticity
One difficult aspect of marketing is that most people don’t like being marketed to. Ultimately, every business has something they need to sell to survive. Unfortunately, more than enough businesses only care about making a sale, not how they can benefit their audience and the benefits they can provide. Actually making an effort to create a message that can impact your audience’s emotions sets you apart from that competition that’s simply trying to sell something.
Storytelling helps people see your business as more than just another business. You’ve provided them with something they’re able to care about. By telling a story and really connecting with your audience, you can help your business appear more human. People can relate to your messaging and your story in a way they can’t relate to a business. This isn’t only important for first impressions but throughout your whole relationship with people. Building trust with your audience through storytelling can help you earn their loyalty, which can continue to benefit you long into the future.
Make Your Message Resonate
Even when you can get people to pay attention to your message, there’s no guarantee that they’ll remember it. This is especially true when they’ve heard the same thing from multiple other businesses. Many people are busy all day long with constant distractions, so even if they were interested in what your business is offering, they might not remember it after everything.
If you made people feel inspired, tugged at their heartstrings, or made them laugh, you may have made a greater impact that will make them remember you. Naturally, people will remember the things they connected with, which, in many cases, isn’t a business trying to sell them something.
How to Use Storytelling in Your Marketing
While storytelling in marketing is important, doing it successfully isn’t easy. There are many different parts involved in this process, which is why getting help with your business’s marketing can be beneficial.
Understand Your Audience
Of course, you can tell a story effectively if you don’t know who you’re telling it to. What works for one group can be off-putting to another. However, you might realize that you don’t actually know your audience and what type of messaging will speak to them the most. You might have an audience of what types of people can benefit from your business but don’t know the demographics that make up this audience and what their interests are. This can require a great deal of research to determine how to tell your story.
Craft Your Business’s Message
There are a few different components that every good story needs, including characters, conflict, and resolution. You need characters your audience can relate to for them to care. People should be able to identify with your characters and see themselves in them. These characters also need to have some sort of problem that your business can solve. You also need to know what your goal from putting this message out there is. Your audience should feel encouraged to take some sort of action at the end, such as subscribing to emails or buying your product.
Know How to Communicate Efficiently
You might know the story you want to tell, but actually creating it and getting that story out there is something entirely different. Conveying your message in a way that’s entertaining and easy to understand isn’t a simple task. Not only do you have to figure out what your message is, but you also need to put it into writing, a video, a podcast, or a different medium. There are also many different platforms you can share your business’s story on, and some might be more effective than others.
Make Your Marketing More Effective with ENX2 Marketing
There’s no denying that people love stories. When storytelling is such a vital part of society, it’s not hard to understand that this needs to be in your marketing. However, storytelling as a business is much more complicated. To help make the messages your brand puts out more effective, you need an experienced digital marketing team. At ENX2 Marketing, we know what people like to see before they trust a business and can help you get your business’s story out there.
Contact us today to learn more about our digital marketing services!
