With every marketing strategy, you pursue the same goal: to attract the target group’s attention and motivate them to buy. Sometimes you convince with your product, sometimes with the way you communicate. But hardly anything convinces customers as much as an exciting, emotional story that touches people and with which they can identify to some extent. You can also use stories like this in marketing. So-called storytelling marketing allows you to reach your target group creatively and can take your content strategy to the next level.
We will answer the following questions about “Storytelling in Marketing” in this article:
- What is storytelling?
- How do I use storytelling in marketing?
- Are there examples of successful storytelling in marketing?
- Why should I use storytelling?
Definition: Storytelling Marketing
Storytelling allows you to present information about your company, product, or service within a narrative framework using dramaturgical means. In other words, it’s better to convey relatively dry information through an emotional, exciting, or funny story that ultimately leads to a message. In doing so, marketing storytelling helps get news, and as a means of communication, it can emotionally connect customers to your brand. No matter what business you run or what products you sell, every entrepreneur can use storytelling for their business.
Origin, Function, And Goals
Storytelling in marketing works so well because we humans love to tell stories. Stories not only help children understand the world better, but they can also make complicated issues more accessible for everyone to understand. Even back then, people used to describe their experiences through cave paintings to record and pass on their experiences for posterity. People sat together around the campfire and told each other myths and legends to present information and social conventions in a simplified way. Through stories, we learn and remember statements better as we assign meanings to different patterns of information, especially when narratives touch and inspire us.
Storytelling in marketing, therefore, pursues the following goals:
- to increase attention
- to keep information in mind for a more extended period
- to convey messages in a more comprehensible way
- to strengthen brand loyalty through emotion
- to achieve a higher credibility
Storytelling In Marketing
Storytelling in marketing, therefore, aims to transport advertising messages within a story that reaches potential customers on a personal and emotional level. For you and your company, it offers the advantage that your message is much more easily absorbed, and the information is stored more long-term. If you tell a story that excites your target group, they will remember it for longer. And thus, you as a company remain anchored in the minds of the target group. So storytelling is particularly compelling for companies and startups that aren’t known yet and want to make a name for themselves.
Crucial questions are: How and where can I use storytelling in marketing? What is a story worth, and how do I construct it? On which channels do I communicate my story? And what do I do once I’ve developed the perfect level? So that you now know exactly how to use storytelling in marketing correctly, these questions are answered below.
Areas Of Application For Storytelling Marketing
As already mentioned, there are various areas of storytelling application. In principle, a good story can be developed for any subject. You can tell a story about your product, your campaign and slogans, your company, your founding story, and certain people. Because good stories need strong characters, and that’s precisely what storytelling is all about: Personalization. Do you have a unique founding story? Is your team made up of extraordinary people? Are the CEO’s personal needs and wishes behind your product? Try to give your company, product, or campaign a face and a message.
Conception Of The Storyline
So for successful storytelling in marketing, you need a story that works well. A story that conveys emotions contains information and has a specific and recognizable message. That’s precisely where you must start designing a storyline: with the news. What do you want to convey? What do you want your target audience to take away from this story?
It would help if you focused on the core elements of a good story. A story is usually carried by at least one character with whom the target group should identify. It’s enough if the character has an attribute many people would attribute to themselves. So make sure you know your target audience and their wants, needs, and maybe fears. You can go into a bit of detail here.
In most stories, there is a problem that is resolved during the course of the narrative. Resolving that conflict can then be the thread in your plot along which your story shimmies. Whether it’s drama, comedy, or thriller, any genre is possible and allows you to create emotions. Your story does not have to be fictional. If, for example, you want to tell an exciting story about the founding of a company, it’s even more authentic if the real founders are in front of the camera.
Depending on the story, these questions can help you create the storyline:
- What is my product used for?
- What is the key advantage of my service?
- What is my unique selling proposition?
- What is my founding story?
- Why did I develop the product?
- Who is my creation for?
- What does my company stand for?
Communication Channels
Suitable communication channels are predominantly those that allow moving images. Of course, you can also publish storytelling in the written word and thus as text, but pictures work best. They attract much more attention and can convey emotions much better. That’s why photo stories and small films or videos are suitable for commercials and social media channels such as YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. Social networks also offer the opportunity for videos that users particularly like to go viral. That’s because social networks allow users to share, like, and comment on the content, potentially making your content accessible to an even larger audience. So when you publish your story, try to connect your channels and let the story shine everywhere, like a common thread. Consistent communication is vital here.
Storytelling Marketing: Video examples
To give you an idea of what successful storytelling in marketing looks like, we’d like to show you a few video examples. On the one hand, these examples show you how good stories can be told. On the other hand, they should inspire you and illustrate how different stories can look.
Dove: Real Beauty Sketches
Since then, the American body care brand Dove has focused on natural, individual beauty and the love of one’s body in all its advertisements. To express this, even more, the company developed a campaign about women’s perception of their bodies. The film is about women describing their appearance to a phantom painter so that the latter, without seeing the women, can draw a portrait of them. Then the painter drew the same women again, using strangers’ descriptions. The result: two different pictures. With this storytelling, the company wants to convey the message of recognizing one’s beauty and wanting to conform less to societal ideals of beauty.
Red Bull: Jump From Space
Red Bull launched a classic hero and action-packed campaign with extreme athlete Felix Baumgartner. In search of ever more fantastic and more spectacular adventures, Felix Baumgartner wants to attempt a record: a jump from space. To do this, he climbed into a capsule with a helium balloon, was observed and accompanied by a team of experts and the media, and soared 39 kilometers into the air. With the subsequent jump from the capsule, Felix achieved a world record: the highest free fall. With this unique story, Red Bull succeeded in generating millions of viewers’ attention and reviving its own slogan: Red Bull gives you wings.
Three Good Reasons For Storytelling Marketing
If you are still trying to convince yourself that storytelling can be an effective tool in marketing, we would like to give you three good reasons.
Nothing Can Explain Something So Well As A Story
Information can be absorbed much more readily through stories than through simple facts. Since we experience the story through protagonists and can put ourselves in the individual situation much sooner, we understand. We can derive conclusions much better and also remember the story much longer.
Stories Are More Effective Than Pure Facts
Everyone can confirm that we are bombarded with information these days. No matter where we go, advertising jumps out at us. Stories, on the other hand, which are immediately convincing through their content and can generate attention, have a significant advantage over pure facts: They stand out from the everyday flood of information.
We Long For Closeness And Familiarity
We, humans, are empathetic by nature. Above all, we crave closeness and familiarity and want to feel emotions. And what better way to convey emotions than with stories? Not at all, because these rely on us being able to identify with the protagonists and their situations and empathize with them. So facts can only keep up here.
Conclusion: Storytelling Marketing
In summary, storytelling can work in a variety of ways. It requires emotions, identifiable characters, a plot, and a clear message. It doesn’t matter if it’s completely crazy, sad, dramatic, or funny – as soon as people are emotionally touched and personally addressed, the story, the brand, and the company are much more likely to stay in their minds than a mere conveyance of information or clumsy advertising. Storytelling in marketing makes a brand tangible and accurate and can ensure that potential customers become actual customers. And real customers ultimately become fans.
