Why Storytelling is the Future of Content Marketing
How telling your brand’s story can help your business engage and connect with your target audience.
Throughout time and across every culture, stories have defined our world. They have been around since the birth of communication - from primitive paintings that adorn cave walls, to the tall tales recounted fire-side. Stories have continued to evolve, but the purpose has always remained the same - to teach, to entertain, to share, and to pass down traditions.
“Tell me the facts and I’ll learn. Tell me the truth and I’ll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.”
- An old Native American proverb
Nowadays though, we communicate a bit differently. Our information is fragmented across a multitude of media channels and delivered through continuously changing technology. It has become diluted, replicated and is cranked out in 200-word briefs that have lost their intimacy and personalization in a place where we should find an emotional connection that makes us care.
A good storyteller will combine emotions with engagement and turn it into a connection.
Why do we learn about history? Why do we study our past? We do these things to learn about who we are and to make a connection in order to be successful in the future, and one of the most important ingredients to our brand’s success are connections.
Another equally important ingredient is engagement. If you can’t engage your audience, then you can’t make connections. So how do we effectively engage our audience?
Make me care . . .
Make me care emotionally, aesthetically or intellectually, doesn’t matter how, just make me care. We all know what it’s like to not care, flipping through pages and pages of online content that becomes a highway of blurred words, but then something stops you, reaches out and grabs your attention and makes you feel something, it makes you care. That’s not by chance or by some glitch in the universe, that is by design.
“Stories teach, unite and motivate by transporting audiences emotionally.” – Peter Guber
There is nothing more powerful than emotion when it comes to engaging and connecting your audience.
Tell me a brand story . . .
A brand story is more than the subject matter and content of your web pages; it is a specific type of content that draws you in emotionally and tells the tale of your brand.
Each aspect of your business, from your company name, to your unique logo, plays a role in your brand story and every part should reflect from creation to production who your brand is. If you want to develop a profitable, sustainable business and a brand that will garner loyalty, you have to begin with your story.
Great stories create inspiration, arouse emotion and provoke engagement.
Storytelling is not meant to be a “sales” tool; it’s a way to develop strong relationships with your customers and a loyal community of followers over time. Your story identifies what you are passionate about and serves as the groundwork for all future content.
Brand stories can be told in many different ways, with a developing storyline and a cast of characters, but it’s important to pay attention to continuity and consistency, and avoid any gaps. Your brand’s story has to resonate with your customers at a level that goes way beyond the purpose, benefits and features of your products or services, to form a meaningful, emotional connection with your audience.
Ask us how we can help tell your brand’s story.
Let us show you how efelle creative can help you tell your brand’s unique story and achieve the results you want, gain more user traffic and bring your business more revenue. With years of creative, technical and marketing expertise, our team can help you reach your marketing and design goals with options you probably didn’t even know existed. We offer services in Seattle, Redmond, Bellevue and Tacoma, Washington. Call us at 206.384.4909 or use our online contact form to arrange for a free web design consultation.