What convinces someone to buy into your brand and keep doing it? Perhaps the price is right, and the product quality surpasses expectations. These are solid selling points, but do they tell a story? It’s likely they do and are somehow woven into the brand’s identity and marketing messages.
Crafting compelling stories and captivating audiences through engaging content are hallmarks of effective digital marketing. Online marketers know they’re competing for attention in overcrowded spaces. The key is to discover what works and keep moving the needle further. So, how can your team create brand stories that resonate and become as effective as a Hollywood cliffhanger? Start with the basics of good storytelling and apply those tools to your messages.
Outline Your Message
All stories have a beginning. But a compelling plot doesn’t usually develop by itself. It needs an outline to follow. The equivalent of an outline in the digital marketing realm is a strategy. What makes your brand unique, what are its core values, and who is your audience?
At times, it can be challenging to cut through the data to truly understand your message and create your strategy, especially in saturated markets where customers view your product as a commodity. However if you don’t have a clear message for your brand story you’ll never successfully connect with your target audience.
The key is to understand the data so you can make more educated decisions about who you are as a brand and how to get that to resonate with your audience. For example, Hawke, an AI-enabled marketing company, suggests starting with research to know both your strengths and weaknesses. You can’t reach your audience if you don’t have a firm grasp on who they are and what is important to them. From there, you can strategize the most important tactics and practices that will help you craft your message in a way that will best resonate with your audience.
Incorporate Key Motivators
In a narrative, the characters are driven by key motivators. It’s the same with your audience. They’re not only buying a shoe because it fits. Something about the shoe matches their personality, the persona they want to display, or the goals they need to achieve.
Incorporating your audience’s motivators into your digital content will compel them to act. Retail Touch Points shows that 76% of consumers have purchased products they’ve seen in social media posts. Social media also has the power to introduce people to new products. In fact, 65% percent of consumers say links in social media posts bring them to items they weren’t interested in.
But how your brand features those products in social media posts can make a difference. The post won’t drive a purchase if it doesn’t establish an emotional connection. Think about how brands like Nike use an audience’s key motivators in marketing messages and posts. Remember it’s not about whether the shoe will fit the audience, but how it will help them accomplish their goals.
Make It Interactive
Riveting stories have audiences on the edge of their seats. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a good book, a blockbuster movie premiere at the theater, or a binged Netflix TV series. Effective storytelling elements place the audience in the gist of the action. They feel as though they’re a part of the unfolding tale.
Your brand’s story can accomplish the same with interactive online content. Hands down, interactive content is more effective than static content when it comes to moving the engagement needle. Stats reveal the interactive variety results in 4-5 times more page views. Plus, 66% of marketers say their engagement rates increase with interactive content.
Of course, you might automatically associate interactive content with polls, surveys, and quizzes. And you wouldn’t be wrong. However, Tilted, an interactive content tool, suggests using the context of your content to guide the type of interactive media you create. You can expand the concept to games, calculators, infographics, maps, and virtual reality. As long as the content is useful and demonstrates how your brand fits into an audience’s goals, it’s golden. Starbucks is an example of a brand that accomplishes this with personalized app-based story-driven challenges, contests, and promos.
Strategies for Effective Content and Social Engagement
Most marketers will agree creating online content for content’s sake won’t bring success. It will dilute your brand’s identity, confuse your audience, and fail to engage. Using storytelling techniques to create content may seem like an obvious win. You make your audience feel a strong enough connection with your brand so they don’t notice the sales pitch.
Still, 39% of marketers say creating content that resonates with their audiences is a challenge. To pull it off, you’ve got to begin with a purpose, leverage key consumer motivators, and make it interactive. Compelling brand stories combine facts, narrative techniques, and emotions. The end result might look easy, but it takes knowing your brand, your audience, and where they intersect.