Not Using Storytelling in Your Marketing Campaign Yet?
By: Jayson Demers
Tags: Brand Strategy, Storytelling, Branding, Marketing, Business

Not Using Storytelling in Your Marketing Campaign Yet?

Now’s the perfect time to start

Photo: Colin Fearing (Adobe Stock)

Think of the last time you experienced a story. It could have been while sitting in a movie theater, watching a TV show, or listening to a friend tell an anecdote about her job. Were you excited? Were you bored? Were you thinking of ways the story could have been better?

Stories come in all shapes and all sizes, and there are many ways to tell an effective story — or an ineffective one. But something about the nature of stories compels us to pay more attention, and usually, recall more information from them. Right now, storytelling is more effective, more powerful, and easier than ever to adopt as a marketing strategy — so it’s the perfect time to create one for your business. Let’s explore how to do so.

The Power of Storytelling

First, let’s take a look at why storytelling is so powerful. There are a number of possible theories and explanations for this, but I think there are only a few factors that really matter. For starters, our brains have evolved to learn information through experience, not through instruction. We learn how to hunt, or eat, or travel more effectively by actually doing it.

Storytelling gives us a chance to absorb information in this secondary, experiential way, rather than by reading a list of instructions or data points.

It’s simply more accessible.

Storytelling is also effective because it characterizes things. You can’t tell a story without characters, even if those “characters” are abstract representations of identity like a brand. Characters make a story more accessible and approachable on a personal level, which makes stories capable of evoking more emotion.

Potential Functions

There are dozens of ways you can tell stories, and hundreds of possible stories you can tell. These are just three categories of storytelling you might consider for your brand:

1. “Our” story

“Our” story is pretty simple — it’s the story of what your company is and how it came to be. You see these stories on a lot of company “About” pages, and in certain types of marketing materials. Sometimes, it’s inspirational, like how a company grew from a garage operation to a global business. Sometimes, it’s meant to create a bond with the audience, explaining the brand’s mission and position. You have a lot of choices here, as long as you stay true to your brand’s identity.

2. Case study

A case study is essentially a “true” story about one of your clients or customers. It’s powerful because it shows, start-to-finish, how your brand impacted their lives or operations. You can publish these case studies, but be careful not to get too corporate with them — spin your case study as a narrative.

3. Illustrations and hypotheticals

What makes illustrations and hypotheticals so fantastic is that they can be adapted to almost any length or any application. They can serve as monumental stories of their own, such as in-depth articles, or they can fit in as one-off illustrations to make one of your tutorials a little more convincing.

Three Elements of a Good Story

Once you’ve decided on a type of story to tell, there are only three elements you need to tell a “good” story:

1. A central character with an emotional connection

Remember, the “character” here doesn’t have to be a human character. It just has to have some element of identity — a set of unique characteristics. Most importantly, it needs to have some sort of emotional connection to the audience. Is this character a stand-in for your audience? Is it easy to sympathize with? Is it inspiring? That’s up to you, but it needs to evoke some kind of emotion.

2. Beginning, middle, and end

Every story needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. Even if you only spend one sentence, or one framed image telling each of these sections, they need to be present. Otherwise, it’s not a story. These are the central points of your functional “plot,” and they’ll provide the framework for your audience to follow.

3. Lessons and takeaways

Finally, there need to be some key lessons or takeaways for your audience. These don’t need to be over-the-top moral lessons that turn your story into a parable, but they do need to have some kind of practical value. For example, you could use a story to explain how to approach a certain problem or showcase the hypothetical dangers of some action through the consequences that were rendered in your story.

Why Now?

So why is now the “perfect” time to start storytelling? In a word — technology. We have access to so many effective ways to tell stories, and so many channels to spread those stories, that almost anyone with a decent idea can reach thousands to millions of people. Just think of all the tools you have at your disposal to create images, videos, and written content, and format it however you like. On top of that, you have social media channels with billions of users, all hypothetically accessible and capable of sharing your work.

There’s no right or wrong way to use storytelling, but it’s important to recognize how powerful storytelling can be. It’s the perfect time to get your business involved, so whether you launch a full-scale campaign or merely add a few story-like elements to your existing collateral, I highly encourage you to take some effort here. Your customers and your bottom-line numbers will thank you.