Storytelling has become essential to any communication strategy. Telling a good story from your brand or business can lead to incredible results. Connecting with your audience, promoting greater engagement, generating higher brand fidelity are a few examples. But, how can we tell a good story?
Before going through the steps to tell a good story, let’s recall what Storytelling is. Known as the art of telling stories, Storytelling is a way to communicate what makes us feel identified with something, generating empathy. It’s a different way to reach your target audience, but it’s worth trying.
How to tell a good story? Here are 5 useful tips
We would love to tell you that there’s a unique and universal way of telling a good story or applying Storytelling. One that manages to attract your target clients and hook them forever, but this is not possible. However, here are 5 tips that will help when telling your story:
1. Define your audience before telling the story
How would you know what kind of story to tell and how to tell it, if you don’t have clarity about who are you telling it to? Remember that what you want to achieve is that people identify with what you’re saying, that they empathize with it. Therefore, it’s key to know who you’re targeting to achieve every goal of your content strategy.
2. Have clarity about your Storytelling goals
Now that you’ve defined your audience and have clarity about it, it is time for you to define your objectives. What do you want to achieve with your Storytelling? Do you want to inform, or teach something to your audience, nurture your relationship with it, ignite your brand, sell something, or just inspire? Don’t lose sight of the fact that your objectives must be specific, measurable, and reachable within a specific period of time. Leave aside those ambiguous and without fundament goals.
3. Build the narrative thread of your story!
Generally, a successful story starts with an incident that invites you to know more. This, in turn, will lead to an escalating action building to a climax that will ultimately settle into a satisfying resolution. Alex Cattoni is the founder of The Copy Posse, an online copywriting agency and academy. With more than 10 years of experience in the world of digital marketing, Alex is a firm believer that effective copywriting must have authentic Storytelling. In this article, you can find 4 Storytelling techniques to apply when writing the story you’re planning.
4. Create a clear message that will be remembered by your audience
What’s the use of telling a story that nobody understands and, therefore, remembers? We have to understand that Storytelling is not just about thinking about a story and telling it. It’s about creating a narrative strategy around our brand. One that is honest, that reaches our target audience but above all, that moves them.
5. Support your story with images
Did you know that our brains are capable of processing entire images that our eyes only see for about 13 ms of a second? The importance of our visual perception is such, that people remember 80% of the things they see. And not just that, the human brain is also capable of processing images 60,000 times faster than text!
That’s why, in this digital age, supporting what you say with visual material, whether images, infographics, or videos is extremely important to get the attention of your client.
Let’s do a little exercise now and watch a few good examples of how to tell a good story…
If we ask you about brands that, in your opinion, are benchmarks in terms of how to use a good story to generate emotions that allow them to connect with their audiences, which ones come to your mind? We instantly think about these three 👇
1. IKEA
The renowned Swedish furniture manufacturing and retail company do a very good job when it comes to launching new successful marketing campaigns. They’re experts in mixing good concepts with great executions but, above everything, in telling stories that make us feel something.
Like this one called “Terraza”.
2. Coca-Cola
In Coca-Cola’s world of happiness, it would be strange to be disappointed when it comes to getting us excited with a story. Watch the next video, and get emotional like us!
3. Estrella Damm
Perhaps this beer brand doesn’t sound so familiar to you as the two previous brands, but you must know that, when it comes to creating stories around their products, they manage to excite the audience. See this short with Dakota Johnson, directed by Alejandro Amenábar called “Vale” y you’ll understand everything.
What did you think about them? If you want to see more successful stories of other brands that have been able to use Storytelling principles perfectly to position themselves in the minds of consumers, Hubspot has a very interesting and complete article with 17 brilliant examples of Storytelling.
Now that you know what Storytelling is, how you can integrate it into your communication strategy, the benefits it can generate for your brand, and how well-known brands use it in their marketing campaigns to connect with their audiences, are you ready to implement it?
If there’s something we want you to take with you today, is this: All that humans want is to connect and feel something. And the only way you have to achieve that with your client is by humanizing your brand, and what better to do that than through a good story? Challenge yourself to do it!