Stories drive our world. That’s why storytelling is one of the most successful techniques in content marketing and PR. Storytelling is a way of conveying certain meanings, delivering information through a story, or a history. Be it a jewelry brand or an online bookmaker company like sports bet, customers are more interested in not what you produce, but how you do it. This is where storytelling helps. It is not perceived as marketing in its purest form. People don’t like advertising, people enjoy reading stories. Your sales directly depend on your ability to tell them. The technique is widely used in such fields as marketing and advertising, business, psychology, and journalism.
What Is Storytelling?
Storytelling is a marketing technique that can be used to present advertising content in the form of stories and examples. Stories that help promote products online are digital storytelling. Storytelling technology is not just about listing events. Your story is bound to have a conflict, a hero, and a plot It helps to gather an audience around an individual or brand that shares values and approaches to the business. Good stories immerse the reader in different scenarios, excite, inspire, and drive important decisions or purchases. Storytelling is a versatile tool that suits very different businesses and people.
Here are some tips for effective storytelling:
Identify Your Storytelling Goals
First, determine why you want to use the technique of storytelling. What do you want to achieve in the end: to increase user confidence or lead to a purchase? A clear goal will help with the following elements of the story: to come up with an interesting character and plot, and to lead the audience to the conclusion you want.
Define The Emotions Your Story Has To Evoke In Readers
We remember the stories that evoked some kind of emotion in us: regret, disappointment, joy, outrage, anger, etc. Think about what you want your target audience to associate with. In a blog, the emotional spectrum can be expanded. For example, a story about building a business from scratch will appeal to people if they realize that the founders of the company are like them: they make the same mistakes and get disappointed, but get up and move on to the goal. Allow the audience to empathize, but don’t play on their feelings – tell the truth.
Choose Realistic Characters For Your Story
When we read a book, we believe that the main character could have lived outside the book. Similarly, you need to bring the hero of your story to life. You don’t need to describe him in detail, but you should think about what kind of life, job, and family he could have had. The story will be believed if a person can associate himself with the main character or recognize in the hero an acquaintance or friend. Heroes can be several, they must be alive and realistic. It is also important that in the center of your story is one main character, a kind of collective image of your audience. Endow him with expressive features that will give a similarity to the audience. In this way, your readers or viewers will begin to associate themselves with the character, and an emotional connection will be built between them. This will increase the impact of your storytelling.
Think About The Right Storytelling Structure
A quality story in the storytelling genre should follow a few basic rules: it should be short, credible, have a linear plot and an unambiguous interpretation. Like a fable, it must have a moral – a succinct thought, including a call to action. But the trick is that the idea that needs to be conveyed to the addressee, in no case should not be intrusive. The impact on the target audience should be as gentle as possible and not cause rejection.
Visualize Your Target Audience And Speak To Your Readers
Defining the target audience, especially for a newcomer to copywriting can be quite difficult. Start with the simplest, namely, visualize one specific person who would be interested in your text. For example, this is Maria, a 35-year-old corporate law specialist. Her daughter Vera’s birthday is coming up and she is looking for a good event agency. What would you verbally tell Maria? What would you look for when choosing a firm if you were her? Start with this, and you will see how easy it will be for you to write a text.
Be Honest
It is important to realize that the stories told can be both true and fictitious. You should not overuse made-up stories so that you don’t cheat the trust of your customers. If you use this method, the consumer should realize that the story plot is made up. If the storytelling tells about the development of the company and the steps it has taken and later turns out to be fiction, then you can lose the trust of your customers.
Don’t Forget To Use Call-To-Action
A call-to-action can be explicit or veiled. Either way, the reader needs to understand how they can achieve a solution to their problems using your expertise.
Stories educate the moral qualities of a person, and commercial stories are also business stories. They move forward large companies and inspire small ones, warn against mistakes, and teach how to get out of difficult situations. As long as there is mankind, there will be storytelling, the transfer from mouth to mouth, from post to post. And no modern technology can prevent it. And don’t give up! Believe me, every copywriter has failed test assignments and unsuccessful cases behind his back.
