Great storytelling techniques for content marketing success

Great Storytelling Techniques For Content Marketing Success

Kevin Ocasio

Great Storytelling Techniques For Content Marketing Success Every time you write to your audience, you’re telling a story. You may not just be aware of it.

Powerful storytelling is every content marketer’s best friend. Why? Because the human brain is hardwired to pay close attention to stories.

When we are told a good story, we picture ourselves as part of the narrative. We relate it to our day to day lives. Uri Hasson of Princeton says that stories light up parts of the brain, allowing listeners to personalize them according to their experiences.

So if you want to make an impact on your blog readers and make them convert, never undermine the effectiveness of telling a story in a compelling way.

Important Characters In A Marketing Story Always remember to make your story about your customers – NOT YOU. Give your customers the starring role and they’ll gladly do business with you.

Below are the important characters in your marketing story:

Protagonist/Hero

Great Storytelling Techniques For Content Marketing Success

Great Storytelling Techniques For Content Marketing Success You customer has a huge role to play in your marketing story. He is your protagonist or hero. Your customer has his own needs and problems and his goal is to overcome his existing challenges.

As a brand, you should be able to convince your customers that you have what they need to be successful – through your products or services.

Antagonist/Enemy Is the antagonist of your story your brand competitor? Definitely not!

The enemy is your customer’s major problem. Sometimes or most of the time, you customers are unaware of a problem until you make them realize its existence.

Their obstacles can either be related to…

Weight Health Money Time management Love Relationships Beauty Fame Every person has his own set of pain points. Identify those pain points and use them to craft your engaging content. Paint a clear picture of your customers’ challenges. Let them realize that your product or service can make their lives so much better.

Effective Storytelling Tips For Your Content Marketing Now, how do you convince your prospects to follow a desired course of action with your content? How do you deliver your message in a way that influences their decisions?

Great Storytelling Techniques For Content Marketing Success

Great Storytelling Techniques For Content Marketing Success Make it visual.

A great way to tell a story is to make it visual. According to Shorthand.com, words and visuals combined bring powerful results.

Therefore, you can never go wrong with including high quality and relevant images in your blog posts, emails, and web copy. Any type of visual content including infographics and videos get your message across faster.

Below are more reasons why you should use visuals in storytelling: Visuals entertain audiences.

Visuals affect human emotions.

Visuals increase engagement by 180%.

Visuals are easier to understand.

Visuals increase online trust.

Tell the truth.

In Sonia Simone’s The 5 Things Every (Great) Marketing Story Needs, she mentions that a winning element in your marketing story is honesty.

Being authentic and open with your audience helps them appreciate you more. Don’t be shady. Let your customers know the problems you tackle, why your business exists, the real price of your products, your traffic stats, and more.

A perfect example of this is Neil Patel’s blog section:

Identify what your customers need and want.

Here’s the tricky part – being able to pinpoint the needs and wants of your target audience. Any marketing strategy becomes ineffective if it isn’t tailored to the interest of customers.

Great Storytelling Techniques For Content Marketing Success

Great Storytelling Techniques For Content Marketing Success Remember that listening to your audience allows you to create any piece of content, product or service that they would happily accept.

To identify your customers’ expectations, do the following: R un custo mer feedba ck surveys – Run a survey and use a customer feedback tool such as SurveyMonkey. You’ll be able to select from various survey types including multiple choice questions and rating scale questions. You can even ask open-ended questions to gather people’s exact opinions.

Crea te a specia l feedba ck pa g e o n yo ur website – Here at FiveFigureMonths.com, we’ve created a page (Suggest a Topic ) that allows our readers to leave their suggestions on topics they want to know more about so we can cover them. You too can create such page.

Tra ck yo ur bra nd mentio ns a cro ss the web – Check what your customers or audiences are saying about you. An excellent tool to use for tracking updates about your brand in real-time is Mention. With this tool, you’ll be able to check more than 1 billion sources like social media, forums, and more.

Highlight the BENEFITS. Each time you offer something to your audience, a common question they’ll ask is, “What’s in it for me?”

Craft your story in a way that it emphasizes the reasons why people should try your product or service. These reasons are the benefits. They meet your customers’ needs and address their pain points.

For example, for a natural weight loss product such as a protein shake, its benefits may include the following:

Great Storytelling Techniques For Content Marketing Success

Great Storytelling Techniques For Content Marketing Success A decrease in hunger and appetite.

Weight loss in 6 weeks.

Reduction in belly fat.

Improved self-esteem.

Increased metabolism.

Remember that there’s a huge difference between features and benefits.

Features are the outward descriptions or technical specs of your product – dimensions, color, etc. Benefits are the end results that people get from using your product. Between the two, benefits are what matter most.

Final Thoughts All of us would love to hear a good story. That’s for sure.

Storytelling grabs attention and persuades – in a beautiful, creative way. Never forget to make your customers the center of your story and you’ll always win.

Are you ready to tell your stories in a much better way this time? Hopefully, you are.

D o yo u ha ve a ny sto rytel l ing tips to sha re? Feel free to co mment bel o w!

Great Storytelling Techniques For Content Marketing Success