The art of story telling in marketing
The most popular adage in most Marketing classes goes “Is marketing an art or a science”. We all know that art is fluid and science is rigid. This discussion does not have a conclusive answer to support or to deny the above statement.In this context we will have to look at Marketing as an Art.
Storytelling is best described as an art … the “art” of storytelling; art encompasses creativity, vision, skill, and practice. Growing up as kids we witnessed the various foklore that was passed from generation to generation on the various conquest of our then heros and heroines.
The way the stories were created to make them memorable and pass on a crucial message to the listeners was most captivating as exemplified by the Tales of Luanda Magere, How the hare lost its tail, Kinjeketile Ngwale, and Abunuwasi among others.
Brands need to tell their stories to endear them to their customers and make them memorable. The reason why brands need to tell stories is because Stories help solidify abstract concepts and simplify complex messages. This makes it easy for the target audience to understand.
The need for fresh and relevant content is very important in making marketing communication relevant and catchy to the intended audience. Formulation of a story should be in line with the company’s values and is the next frontier that brand managers need to exploit.The best stories are truthful, are infused with personalities, involve characters the audience who are the customers can identify with and aspire to be or consider them as role models, and include a beginning, middle, and an ending.
When a brand is personified and a story is told that embodies human challenges you create a scenario that your customers can identify with and thereby creating an emotional connection with the brand.
Good stories should be entertaining, educational, universal, organized and memorable. The story should have characters who represent real people in the society whom the audience can be able to relate to. This will be important when the marketer makes a call to action. The other part of the story should have a conflict which elicits emotions and customers can be able to relate with the situation in which the character faces. The final part of the story should arrive at a resolution in which a solution is arrived at and winds up the story with a call to action.
The first step when telling a story is knowing the intended audience who will identify with it; consumer research is needed at this stage to understand the consumer preference, attitude and beliefs. This will be important in understanding your buyer personas.
After figuring out your audience another crucial step is coining the message you intend to pass to your audience. The message here will be the marketers’ intention, whether it is to introduce a product, to increase sales, to build brand loyalty, introduce new product features etc. This is the most important aspect to the marketer and should be very carefully reviewed. After this the marketer decides the kind of story that they want to convey which should be in line with their objectives.
Good storytelling is not only about the marketers intentions but about their brands and the solutions they offer. It’s about emotions, experiences, needs and the written and unwritten images associated with these emotions and needs, in relationship to what their brand evokes.
Apart from being in line with the firms objectives, the story should be consumer centric, which necessitates steering clear of the traditional marketing approach, including but not limited to focusing on Return On Investment. It should revolve around the life of the intended audience. At times the audience dictates the kind of stories they want told by the marketer, and with the advent of social media the control has shifted to consumers and brands have to listen.
Any medium can be used to tell a story, including blogs, film, print, social media channels and multimedia. Each medium elicits a different reaction from the intended audience, so stories must be tailored to fit each unique platform. The key to success is knowing which story to tell in which medium. Short, snappy messages work best on television and the Internet, while online conversations, conferences and seminars provide a personal connection.
Some of the marketing activities that lends themselves to storytelling are content marketing, experiential marketing, testimonials, and celebrity endorsements.
Content marketing is much more than creating, distributing and sharing content in order to engage audiences, generate leads, improve branding, and other marketing goals you can serve.A content marketing strategy analyzes the different ways content marketing can be used across the buyer’s journey,the customer life cycle and/or the different customer experience touch points and still goes beyond. Essentially a content marketing strategy looks at how content marketing can be used in a strategic way infusing other marketing, customer and sales strategies. When developing a content marketing strategy the marketer must know the intended audience persona and their content needs and preferences. This will look at the information they seek when making a purchase, their buying journey and the various touch points.
As our world becomes increasingly well-connected through the advent off socual media, blogs etc, consumers have many platforms to share their thoughts and opinions therefore user-generated storytelling will help to increase engagement, build trust and hugely expand a firms reach.
Customer testimonials highlight the customer experience with your brand without the slick promotional gimmickry consumers are exposed to from print, TV and radio ads. In their less flashy and less salesy way, they build trust by veering from your brand “voice,” standing out as candid and unbiased accounts of your company’s value proposition.
When crafting customer testimonials that will tell outstanding stories marketers should select a compelling story that are a testament to the struggles we all face and that your products and services help resolve. Let your customers’ testimonials add the color and flare to your marketing message, which should stick to the facts.
These third-party stories are more believable to readers than even the most straightforward truths delivered by a company spokesperson. So, let your clients tell readers how amazing your products and services are. The testimonials should highliht product benefits and attributes, validate your brand’s personal truth – what your products promise to do for the buyer, focus on the identified consumer need that inspired your business, and highlight customer needs your products and services address. The user’s story should be replete with facts and figures that substantiate your claims.
Keep uppermost in your thoughts that honesty and transparency are the tools to impactful storytelling. So, root your story in reality and be sure your message remains consistent across all content deliverables and channels. In identifying characters choose those that your audience will like and relate to, so they want to follow in their footsteps. If for instance you sell primarily to seniors or to moms with young children, aim to have characters of a similar age, or with similar interests.
Celebrity Endorsementscan also be used in storytelling whereby a celebrity acts as the brand’s spokesperson and certifies the brand’s claim and position by extending his/her personality, popularity, stature in the society or expertise in the field to the brand.The endorser should be attractive to the target audience in certain aspects like physical appearance, intellectual capabilities, athletic competence, and lifestyle. It has been proven that an endorser that appears attractive has a greater chance of enhancing the memory of the brand that he/she endorses.
The personal credibility of the celebrity is crucial. Credibility is defined here as the celebrities’ perceived expertise and trustworthiness. As celebrity endorsements act as an external cue that enable consumers to sift through the tremendous brand clutter in the market, the credibility factor of the celebrity greatly influences the acceptance with consumers. The success of the storytelling depends on the compatibility between the brand and the celebrity in terms of identity, personality, positioning in the market vis-à-vis competitors, and lifestyle.
We should therefore all embrace the art of story-telling and tell our stories in the most befitting way because that’s the way we were brought up!
