How To A Use Storytelling Marketing Strategy For Your Business
Your customers connect with stories as it brings a human element to business. Discover three ways to create your storytelling marketing strategy.
Hi Trish Davies here and the focus today is storytelling and helping you create a storytelling marketing strategy. Everyone loves stories. Just think about your own habits right from when you were young and how much you enjoyed your bedtime stories.
Wind that on over the years and think about why you read book, watch television and go to the movies. All of that revolves around stories. How they start, evolve and end. Your imagination runs wild as the introduction introduces the characters. The plot takes shape and build into a climax so you are on the edge of your seat.
That’s why we all love a good story but most of that is based on make believe. It is fiction and gives us time to detach from the real world. However, there are real life stories that need to be told especially when it comes to business.
You Are A Story Book
You are a unique story book that is full or your life experiences which must be used within your marketing. Over the last few years businesses have cottoned on to this and are creating their own storytelling marketing strategy.
What they once thought was a fad or gimmick is now one of the most powerful marketing strategies to be used. Storytelling marketing is one of the most cost effective marketing strategies that you can use.
You don’t need to spend countless hours thinking about the content you need to create. Also, you don’t need to hire expensive content creators. The reason I say this is because you have it all their waiting for you in your brain.
All you need to do is connect your brain to a keyboard or camera to create the most authentic content. Blog posts, videos, social shares connect with your audience as this is what they are now looking for.
These are your communication tools so you must leverage them. Here’s how to do that!
3 Storytelling Marketing Strategy Tips
Tell How You Started Your Business
This is your starting point and should come naturally to you. How you started your business is part of your origin story. Your origin story starts from when your are born and is a natural ever evolving story.
There will be life experiences along the way which has taken you to the place you are now. You have a business which has that back story. Your audience wants to know who you are, where you have come form and where you intend to go in the future.
What made you start your business? Who do you want to serve? How do you want to serve them? These are fundamental questions that your audience needs to hear. They also need to hear the human side to you.
Therefore, share personal experiences so share stories around your family, pastimes, hobbies, travel etc. When you really dig deep you will find may commonalties relating to your personal values will become apparent within your brand and business.
Tell Customer Stories
Again, this is easy content to create. Your customers stories are real life case studies. They show the benefits that your products and services provide and are exceptionally effective.
When a potential customer sees a case study it is like looking at themselves in the mirror. It may be a different face but the person they are watching is where they want to be. They can imagine themselves receiving the same benefits as the person they are watching.
Now you can’t just publish this information without gaining permission. Think about people who have really good results through working with you. They should also be people who you think are happy to help you out, people you are close to.
Think about offering some kind of incentive for people to share their stories. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a cash incentive. If anything, try and avoid that. A better approach would be to offer a discount on a future product or service that you will be launching.
You will be creating the content but you must have direction and contribution form your customer. Ask for 3 – 4 direct quotes which can be gathered if you did a short interview with them.
This could be transcribed which gives you your written content. Ask them if they can provide some visual data on the before and after story to add that authenticity. Create video and text content but before you publish make sure that you give your customer the opportunity to review and approve.
Share Your Customer Stories On Social Media
Once you have got your customers approval it is time to share those stories specifically on social media. You will want to share your customers stories on your own website as well to establish authority when people visit your site.
Social media is the place to share your customer stories though as it will get maximum exposure. When people see something they like then they will share it to their circle of influence who will then share it and so on.
People connect with people and stories much more than over hyped marketing and advertising material. They want to see real people, raw, uncut, warts and all.
I have shared three ideas to help you create your storytelling marketing strategy. Storytelling is crucial to the first core pillar of my Build Your AU program. That core pillar is authenticity and there is nothing more authentic than real life stories.
To learn more about Build Your AU and how it can help you create authenticity in your marketing click here. I look forward to welcoming you on the inside.
Helping you build your authenticity, authority and audience.
Trish Davies
Build Your AU
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