Ask yourself this: What do you want to achieve with your marketing campaigns as an entrepreneur? Ultimately, you want to create a strong and happy relationship with your customers. Incorporating storytelling in your marketing campaign will do exactly that.
Have you ever wondered about the dreaded B word in business communication?
No, it’s not the B word you’re thinking. It’s B for Boring.
When you run a business, boring is not a word you want to be associated with. It’s not rocket science that people simply ignore rigid writing stuffed with boring facts and data. People want to be engaged. They want to be taken on a journey. And they want to connect with your business more than anything else.
Every time I talk about what Bellbird Writing does, I have ‘Storytelling’ squeezed in between ‘Content Marketing’ and ‘Copywriting’. It puzzles a lot of people because they associate storytelling with Snow White and Hansel and Gretel. But it also has an awful lot to do with successful marketing and entrepreneurship.
When it comes to selling a message, Cinderella had it sorted a long time ago.
The power of storytelling in marketing
Interestingly enough, Richard Branson is an avid advocate of the ancient tradition of story sharing and the baffling effect it has on successful entrepreneurship.
“Storytelling is a great way to get your point across, differentiate your brand, and work out new ideas. Today, if you want to succeed as an entrepreneur, you also have to be a storyteller. “
“I’m not always caught up in the details of what a particular app will or won’t do. I’m more interested in the personalities behind the companies, and the purpose within their visions.”
If you ask the best marketers around, the man is on to something.
The science behind storytelling in marketing
But it’s not just Richard Branson who realised the power of storytelling in marketing. Stanford University has the research to back it up.
Just like Branson, Stanford University found that stories stick with people 22x more than boring facts and figures. But what’s even more interesting from a marketing point of view is that storytelling can increase conversion rates by a whopping 30%. Aha!
The reason for this can even be explained from a medical point of view. Brains are wired to connect with stories. The responsible hormone is called Oxytocin, one of the happy hormones. It’s called the ‘Love Hormone’ because it plays a part in falling in love. It increases mother-child bonding after birth. It even plays a role in the happy feeling you get when you are greeted by your dog after a days work.
So ask yourself this: What do you want to achieve with your marketing campaigns as an entrepreneur?
Ultimately, you want to create a strong and happy relationship with your customers. Incorporating storytelling in your marketing campaign will do exactly that.
Emotional Copywriting and Content writing
That’s because storytelling puts the human factor in to marketing. Engaging stories help people connect with your brand. They will see people they like and trust, rather than product you’re trying to push onto them. In a fragmented media world, that trust is something we should not underestimate.
In the longer term, stories are an extremely effective way to create brand loyalty. Not only will people come back to you for return business. They will also talk to other people and promote your brand by word-of-mouth marketing. And when it comes to the holy grail of marketing, a word-of-mouth recommendation is up there.
Just like Richard Branson observed, business owners like to think people base their choices on facts. But the way they relate to a company ultimately drives a sale. (Although you want the top-specs to be there in the background, of course. No amount of storytelling will help sell a poor product. )
In other words, there is no good Content Writing or Copywriting without a healthy smothering of storytelling. Get your business story right and you’ll leave the competition watching you open-mouthed.
Discovering your brand’s story
The question is, how do you discover your unique business story?
Your story is more than just a random tale you serve your customers. A good business story is based on your company’s values, your goals and mission statement. What does your company stand for? What is your unique selling point? Who is your audience? What problem are you trying to fix? And how did you get where you are?
In a few easy steps, this is how you approach it:
– Start off with some brainstorming with trusted people who know your brand
-Determine your audience and create persona (Mmmm…we’ll have to talk some more about this another blog)
-Review your Mission Statement
-Pull it all together and pin down your brand’s story
-Create a marketing campaign around it.
But above all, make it believable, inspiring, engaging and easy to understand. Take your customers on a journey and convert visitors into evangelists.
So what are you waiting for to tell your story?