There are, admittedly, a few opposing views on this subject, but I remain firmly in the camp that storytelling is an essential element of many content marketing strategies. It won’t work in every instance, but in my professional pursuits providing content writing services to companies of every size and description, I can tell you that it’s effective far more often than not.
Here are a few reasons you should be using storytelling as part of your content marketing strategy. As you read, ask yourself how each of these points relates to your business and how you can integrate these principles into your content marketing strategy.
1. Storytelling Makes Your Brand Relatable
A good story humanizes your company and helps you to more effectively engage your target audience. The relatability comes from communicating that your brand recognizes the needs or even the pain of the consumer, evidenced by the details in your story.
Storytelling is all about psychology – getting inside the heads of your readers and thereby converting them into customers. With that in mind, it’s also important to proceed ethically. Tell yourstory, not just “a” story. Being less than honest in your storytelling might get you an initial sale, but it will do nothing for creating brand loyalty or building trust.
2. Storytelling Creates Connections
One of the many reasons why storytelling is so effective in content marketing is that it creates points of context that links the reader’s experiences to your brand message. Nothing elicits the emotional response necessary to make a buying decision more than a good story.
When a person feels connected to a brand, it creates brand loyalty. As I’ve said many times before, it’s not enough to convince people to buy from you. It is necessary to communicate to them that you are the only viable and reputable source for what you’re marketing. Only you really understand their needs, so only you can effectively meet them.
3. People Don’t Care About the Product as Much as You Think
The classic sales model revolves around the product: its features, its benefits, what makes it superior to other similar products. Here’s the thing: In the information age and in the advent of social media, these things are beginning to matter less and less.
People want to know how it feels to use the product. They don’t need to understand the subtle differences between Product A and Product B. If you’re old enough to remember the Pepsi Challenge back in the 1970s and ’80s, that’s a great example of how that’s true.
We saw it on TV, we saw it in grocery stores and malls… we saw real reactions of actual people shocked and amazed that they chose Pepsi over Coca-Cola. Well, there’s a reason why that happened over and over, and it had nothing to do with which drink was better. It had everything to do with how drinking Pepsi made people feel.
For starters, the Pepsi was kept on ice while the Coke was held at room temperature. The moment they picked up that cool cup of Pepsi, they were being conditioned to prefer it, even before it touched their lips. They also allowed the Coke to go a little flat before serving it. It was subtle, but try it at home: Break the seal on a bottle of soda and let it sit, capped, for a day. Then open a fresh bottle and compare the taste side-by-side. There will most certainly be a difference.
You can look at that example as a “story for the senses.” The way the product was presented and how it felt interacting with it made all the difference in how it was perceived. Sure, you can’t offer people a cold drink with their web content, but you can make the content more palatable, and, in so doing, you will also create brand loyalty where none exists. How many people were persuaded, even for just a minute, that a product was superior just by being handed a cool cup?
4. Storytelling Creates Sustainable Brand Loyalty
The thing about the Pepsi Challenge is that those people probably still headed for the drink aisle and bought some Coke. Any converts Pepsi made with its little scheme were short-lived. So how do you get around that problem? How do you keep the cup cool long-term? As I mentioned, a good place to start is with honesty.
The Pepsi Challenge was straight-up deceptive. If you don’t believe in your product, find one that you can. If you’re marketing something for the express purpose of having something to market, you won’t gain any loyal followers. Why? Because you don’t feel any sense of loyalty to it and if you think that won’t be obvious in your content, think again.
If, however, your story is genuine, if it reflects your personal values and beliefs, you can rest assured that people will pick up on that, too, and your excitement will be absolutely infectious. That is how you build sustainable loyalty and repeat business.
5. Storytelling Proves That You’re a Believer
Anyone can list bullet points about product features, but a story lets people know what you think about a product and that you personally believe in it. I cannot stress how important this is. If it’s worth putting the energy into explaining why your product is a game-changer, it’s worth giving the product some attention.
Remember that you’re not selling the steak, you’re selling the sizzle, and the more emotional your story, the more sensual the images it creates, the more desirable it’s going to be. That, in a nutshell, is the purpose of storytelling in content marketing.