Let me start off by asking you a quick question: when you wake up in the morning, grab your phone, and open your social media app, how many times have you thought to yourself, “Gosh I can’t wait to be sold to today!”? I bet the answer is NEVER. So why would you market your brand with a typical pushy sales pitch? In a digital world bombarding us with ads at every scroll, swipe and search, your brand needs to stand out from the rest.
When it comes to marketing, storytelling is a powerful and underrated tactic to get in front of your audience and HAVE THEM LISTEN. Although creating a story is more time consuming, and requires more work and thought, here’s 3 reasons why you should be using storytelling to market your brand:
What exactly is storytelling?
Now that you understand the importance of storytelling in your marketing efforts, perhaps you now need a better understanding of what exactly storytelling is. Let me give you a quick example:
Let’s say I have a business selling lip balms. Which of these pitches are you more likely to act upon and click the [BUY NOW] button?
SALES PITCH:
Dry lips? Here’s a lip balm made to soothe the driest of lips, guaranteed! Made with 100% all-natural ingredients, like vitamin E and beeswax, this lip balm is sure to please.
STORY PITCH:
After struggling with dry lips for years, finding a good quality soothing lip balm seemed impossible. Even the all-natural lip balms often contain questionable ingredients. I came to the realization, that if you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself! After months and years of perfecting the ultimate lip balm recipe, only using high quality, skin nourishing, all-natural ingredients you know and trust, like beeswax, vitamin E, cacao butter, shea butter, and honey, I finally created a lip balm that worked! Moisturizing and protecting, my search for the perfect lip balm was over. And I’m happy to share it with all of you.
See the difference? A sales pitch will leave your mind as quickly as it came in. A story pitch will compel and stick with you for a long time.
More storytelling examples
Here’s a wonderful storytelling example from Volvo. Note that it never mentions the brand during the ad, except at the very end, letting the story do all the talking:
Also applies to social media
We’ve all scrolled through our social media, seeing pictures of whatever our friends posted that day (like what they ate for dinner), and thought to ourselves “okay, that’s nice, but do I care?”. But what if the caption held a story to go along with that otherwise uninteresting picture?
Here’s a post I recently added to Instagram. I could’ve just posted a picture of my new tattoo with a simple “check out my new sleeve!” caption, but is that what my followers really want to see? Rather, I made it engaging and inspiring, by sharing my story.
Are you ready to dive in?
Have I convinced you? Have I shed a light on the importance and impact storytelling could have for your brand? Good!! Now it’s time to put that spark into action.
Good storytelling doesn’t just happen overnight. Like everything in this world, it takes time and practice. The Web is filled with a plethora of storytelling information; explaining the What, Why, Where, When, Who and How’s of it all, and expand your knowledge for better success.
Here’s a great article by The Next Ad, which explains Storytelling and Advertising – How To Bring The Two Together, further acknowledging my point and giving more great examples.
And this article, bringing you to the start with the basics, Aerogramme Writer’s Studio helps teach the fundamentals of writing a great successful story using The Story Spine.
Off you go!
Don’t let that imposter syndrome hold you back! Just start, and you’ll only get better overtime.
Oh! And don’t forget to have fun with it 🙂
EXSM 3989 - Digital Storytelling Class Blog 