Content
Storytelling for Marketers: How to Create Stories that Sell
October 4, 2024
10 mins
In modern marketing realms, where consumers are exposed to a myriad of ad messages, it is crucial to stand out from the crowd. Storytelling marketing is among the most effective tools to set apart.
Stories are 22 times more memorable than facts. Jennifer Aaker, American Behavioral Scientist, Professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
In this article, we'll look at what storytelling is, its types, and how it helps to create selling stories.
Storytelling is about creating and communicating stories designed to capture the audience’s attention, evoke emotions, and form a connection with the brand.
Storytelling helps to detail abstract concepts and simplify complex messages.
Would you recall when storytelling helped you to understand a concept? A teacher might use a real-life example to explain a math problem, or a speaker would illustrate a case study to demonstrate complex data.
Years of scientific research have proven that storytelling can change human behavior because it directly affects our emotions. In addition to grasping our attention, storytelling actively influences our decisions and actions.
In the marketing context, storytelling helps brands inform consumers and build emotional connections to increase loyalty and boost sales. That’s why storytelling is an integral part of a marketing strategy.
In marketing campaigns, the effectiveness of a brand’s storytelling heavily depends on how well it resonates with the target audience. Understanding various types of storytelling and using them correctly significantly increases customer engagement and conversions.
Let's now look at the main types of storytelling for marketing purposes.
Stories based on customer experience create an authentic connection with the audience and help build deeper trust in a brand.
Use real-life testimonials and case studies to create life stories that reflect user experience.
It's vital to showcase real-life beneficiaries of a product to make your story more authentic.
This type of storytelling focuses on the unique benefits of a product or service.
These are stories telling about a brand’s evolution: from the inception to modern achievements. They allow customers to better understand the company's history, values, and purpose.
This type of storytelling emphasizes the achievements of a brand or its customers. It demonstrates how the brand or product helped solve problems and achieve success.
Failure Stories: Crisis Storytelling
Failure stories may sound counterintuitive to marketing; still, they help brands show their humanity and ability to recover. This increases trust and builds an emotional connection with customers.
To make your storytelling effective, follow these principles:
Focus on the audience: it is important to know your target audience’s interests and tell stories that resonate with them.
Make a clear structure: every story should have a beginning, middle, and end. This will let you maintain the audience's attention and achieve your goal.
Authenticity: stories should be truthful and align with your brand values to build deeper trust.
These principles will help you create effective storytelling that resonates with your customers. Here are some key steps to create such a story:
For a successful story, it's crucial to identify the protagonist. In the context of storytelling in marketing, it can be either your customer, your product, or your service.
Customer as the hero: describe the challenges your customer is facing and how your product will help them overcome them.
Product as a hero: emphasize the unique features and benefits of your product that make it integral to your audience’s needs.
Understanding your hero's needs is key to building conflict and developing the story.
Conflict is at the core of an engaging story. In marketing storytelling, conflict can arise from unmet customer needs or obstacles to using your product.
Your story should have a clear resolution where the hero (customer or product) achieves their goals, satisfies their needs, and resolves the conflict.
An emotional touch with the audience is what makes your storytelling effective. It’s important not only to inform but also to engage and inspire
There are several effective storytelling examples and scenarios. Let's look at some of them:
This is one of the most popular and effective storytelling scenarios based on the classic structure of the “hero's journey”. The protagonist faces challenges, overcomes them, and eventually succeeds.
Marketers often leverage this scenario in their campaigns to demonstrate the journey of a consumer who solves their problems with the help of a brand's product or service or to share the brand’s success story.
How to use it:
Customer journey: show how your product helped customers pass through the challenges and achieve their goals.
Brand story: tell how your brand overcame challenges on the way to success, and evolved into a market leader.
The brand campaign shows customers facing challenges during a full-scale war and how Nova Post services help people stay in touch with their loved ones.
The campaign is built around human stories and emphasizes the company’s role in solving customers’ daily problems.
The scenario focuses on a specific problem faced by the consumer and demonstrates how the brand's product or service helps to solve it. It’s one of the simplest, yet most effective storytelling scenarios that lets you clearly show the value of your product to the customer.
How to apply:
The scenario showcases the problems experienced by PC users like viruses and slow performance. Here comes ‘Mac’as the best-fit solution free of flaws owing to a reliable system.
The case outlines a specific PC problem and offers the Mac as a solution, emphasizing the simplicity, security, and efficiency of the product.
The Mac comes as a “modern” mentor, highlighting the advantages of the product over older PCs and demonstrating its reliability. Users see the benefits of switching to a new system. Over time, they experience improved productivity and satisfaction with the product.
The scenario shows the transformation or change caused by your product or service. It demonstrates the initial state before using the product (problems, difficulties) and the final result: improvement, and problem-solving.
How to apply:
Health and Beauty Marketing: cosmetics ads often use this approach, showing how the product changes the appearance or condition of the skin.
Fitness and healthy lifestyle: shows the transformation of the body or health improvement owing to a certain program or product.
Example: A ‘Before-and-after’ campaign for weight loss products often uses this approach, showing real user results due to the effectiveness of the product.
The scenario is based on the concept that people are more likely to trust the opinions of others, especially with the degree of authority of their peers. The use of testimonials, reviews, or stories of successful customers in advertising creates a sense of reliability and trust in the product.
How to apply:
Case studies and testimonials: sharing how a product or service has helped real customers achieve success.
Influencer marketing: using influencers who share positive experiences with your product.
An example of a successful advertising campaign with a social proof scenario is the Vodafone campaign “Everything changes, the numbers remain”, directed by the famous Ukrainian director Antonio Lukic. The campaign shows real-life stories of people who have kept their subscriber numbers even when they changed operators.
The campaign's slogan emphasizes that despite all the changes in the world, there are unchanging values, including the ability to stay in touch with family and friends thanks to reliable operator services. The campaign evoked nostalgic emotions through the use of Kuzma Scriabin's song “Old Photos” which further strengthened the emotional connection with the audience.
The approach demonstrates how “social proof” builds brand trust through real stories and emotional connections with customers.
The script emphasizes the brand's mission and values, explaining why the company does what it does. It helps to build a deep connection with the audience by demonstrating the ethical or social motivations for creating a product or service.
How to apply:
Here are some featured brand story examples.
The video storytelling case perfectly illustrates the “Why We Do It”, where the hero is a female clients Dove helps to solve a social problem - pressure due to unrealistic beauty standards. The campaign shows real women without retouching, emphasizing true beauty and encouraging them to accept themselves as they are.
This scenario embraces an unexpected or creative use of your product capable of solving a problem or generating a new value. This approach draws attention to the product's versatility and generates interest.
How to apply:
An example of the “custom use” scenario is the well-known Coca-Cola ad campaign ‘Share a Coke’ launched in Australia in 2011.
The campaign aimed to replace the traditional Coca-Cola logo on bottles and cans with people's names, which added personal value to the product. This was an unexpected and creative approach. The product commonly perceived as a drink only became a powerful means of communication among friends, family, and acquaintances, creating new opportunities for social interaction.
The scenario presents your product or service as a solution that “saves” the customer from a difficult situation or a big problem. It focuses on the product strengths that can quickly and effectively solve the customer's problem.
How to apply:
Emergencies: show how your product helps to respond to critical situations in no time.
Urgent care: use this scenario for products or services that solve urgent customer problems.
The campaign focused on how the service can help not only with traditional transportation but also become an integral part of Ukrainians' daily lives. It emphasizes the multifunctionality of the service, its speed and reliability as a solution for those who need to solve their transportation problems quickly.
The campaign features Uklon as a “savior” solving transportation issues and becomes an important part of customers' lives.
Storytelling is a powerful tool with the potential to increase the effectiveness of marketing efforts. With the right types of storytelling and its principles, marketers create selling stories and build strong connections with their audience,
Product stories shape mindsets by reminding customers how your product helps them overcome challenges and achieve their goals.
Whenever you show how people overcome problems with your product, product-related stories encourage further action.
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