Content marketing has a lot of advantages for businesses. When used as a part of an overall marketing strategy, content marketing is an effective way to reach your target market. Content marketing is different from traditional marketing in that it isn’t disruptive, but instead curated and personal. For instance, a billboard is a disruptive form of traditional marketing – it is consumed by a mass market instead of targeted to a niche market. One of the ways that content marketing is different is that the content – whether it’s an email or a podcast or an infographic – can be customized to resonate better with one market or market segment. If your product or service is specialized for teenagers, a billboard isn’t the most effective way to generate interest. It’s better to communicate with that audience directly through social media.
One way that content marketing can be enhanced is through the art of storytelling and finding the best storytelling techniques to share your message with your customers.
What is storytelling?
Storytelling is one of the ways that people connect to one another or to a concept. Storytelling invokes emotion and imagery that people can relate to. Finding a compelling message or narrative is one of the most effective ways to reach an audience, as stories can grow trust with your customers. So what are the best storytelling techniques to help get your message across and grow your brand?
1. Solve a problem with personalization
The best marketing is shaped around your customer. You need to show customers that you understand their unique problems or challenges so that they turn to you as the solution. If you’re addressing an audience of veterans, use examples that pertain to them and tell a story about a fellow veteran to help make a bigger impact and connection with that audience.
2. Use data
Just because you’re using creativity to build a narrative, it doesn’t mean you can’t back it up with facts. Using data can be a useful way to build credibility and help readers take your narrative more seriously. Journalists use this storytelling technique to enhance the impact of their news narratives and it’s a way to help B2B and B2C clients better understand the relevance and impact of your story.
3. Use visuals
Visuals can be a very effective way to tell a story. Not only is it direct, but visuals grab the attention of consumers the way that words often do not. They also have the ability to convey meaning and create emotional responses in audiences, which creates a deep connection with your brand.
4. Utilize gated content
One masterful way to use storytelling is to hook the audience and then ask them for something for the rest of the story. For instance, if you’re sharing a testimonial that tracks the narrative of a business who grew or succeeded through using your product, you can use storytelling to set up the problem and then if they want to know more – how the problem, perhaps like the one they’re facing – they would need to fill out a form with their name and email address, which would allow them to view the rest of the content.
The best brands can tell powerful stories that make their customers think and then act. Content marketing is shaped in such a way that you can easily thread a narrative through your assets or tell a story that connects with customers in a blog, email series, or whitepaper. Stories are more than just facts, though they use facts, and more than just stats, though stats help; stories are the things that make us think and ultimately help us make choices.
