How To Use Storytelling In Content Marketing To Generate More Leads?

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Jimmy Neil Smith had quoted, “We are all storytellers. We all live in a network of stories. There isn’t a stronger connection between people than storytelling.

Storytelling is one of the best ways to woo audience and grapple their attention. A proven marketing tactics, storytelling is one of the cheapest yet effective methods to fulfill your boot.

What you think? Storytelling means a big budget movie or big ad campaigns which is an out of pocket budget?
Let me make you clear. All you need for storytelling is a video cam or might be a set of color pencils. The main part required for storytelling is your brain which will generate stories.

Content storytelling is a fad now-a-day. The best way to include in your marketing strategy is either by adding your tussle stories to bring your business where it is today or telling about how your imagination of becoming CEO became a certitude or might be through a video commercial airing your journey from a boy next door to a famed blogger turned business exemplar which is a common method currently. You can also add up user experience or their messages which has helped your business grow. It can be a social media post or a blog, storytelling can be apprised to people in variegated ways.

Since storytelling is a fizzing topic for content marketing, its has become essential to append it in our content which is a challenging caper itself. Thus here I will be giving few tips about how you can include storytelling in your content ergo increasing number of leads.

1. A video with instant appeal:

Lisa Lubin truly said, “Video informs and entertains people and, good or bad, today most people prefer to watch a video rather than read a page of text.

If you tell me what your product is about and how have you done it, it would fall on deaf ears. What excites me will be only how your product will be a boon to me in my purpose of buying it or as per my usage requirements. Mostly in this case, I will get thousands of blogs with a To-do list and might be few articles stating hacks for this and that. But as all might not have reading as a hobby, people will start avoiding reading after gazing at the length of your article.

The best way you want to make people listen to you is a video that not only entertains them but also engages them.

As Brian Kramer was of the opinion that we get more inspired from videos. We learn and get involved watching a video more. Therefore to touch lives of people it’s necessary that we capture our views and let people listen us.
It’s better to put your words into a short video that lasts for couple of minutes. Speak your heart out in the video and a clear CTA will act as an icing on the cake and then share it as much as you can.

How to add these videos?

  • Keep in mind the three hows- how your product will benefit your customer? How your products have already helped the previous customers?
  • How is your customer support?
  • Give them examples of your customers or a direct message from them as how they were thankful for such a product/service.
  • Be available to your clients always. Answer their queries.
  • Sometimes your social presence is very important for your business. Don’t miss that out.
  • Give a demo of your product or service and make them walk through a tool of your company.

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2. A protagonist in the video will do wonders:

Many Web Design Companies are adopting this strategy. A protagonist is someone around whom your story revolves. In business this can be a customer for whom your service was an asset or might be the brand itself who was involved in some social cause, etc. In our marketing scenario, a protagonist is someone who can create a connection with the clientele.

    How to add these things in videos to benefit your business and aim?

  • Capture the words of a person who is an esteemed customer of your business and had experienced all your services.
  • Inspire people through his/her story as how your product has changed his/her entire life.
  • Add a clear CTA with the video so that they can directly communicate with the customer as your products are “sold by your customers.”
  • Share it on all your social media platforms.

(Mr. Amitabh Bacchan, Brand Ambassador for Gujarat Tourism is speaking about Ambaji Temple. He is increasing the brand value of Gujarat Tourism.)

Image Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-JiDBEHryc

3.Share your stories, about the company and about your employees and about your work culture:

Mark Zuckerberg has truly said, “The only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.” Keeping this in mind, you have seen several ups and downs in business with your employees and know what kind of risks you all have taken in this journey of success. But it’s not wise to blow your own trumpet. Therefore, rather than saying what your company has done, tell people what kind of risks they have taken for the company to excel and say, “Yes! I am here to stay!

The next thing that you can do to attract people about your work culture is telling about people. For example you can say Mr. ABC has joined as content writer recently in our company and previously was working as a lecturer in some other city. This will help to hire talents of better quality not restricted to a particular region. This helps in growing the competence level of the employees which in turns gives a better productivity beneficial for the company.

How to add these in videos?

  • You can simply give mind-boggling videos of your employees with their success stories in your company.
  • The way they took risks and excelled is another way of portraying the level of employees your company has.

Image Source: https://www.iadvize.com/blog/en/air-france-iadvize-success-story-video/

4.Press Releases:

If you are a regular reader of any newspaper, you must have observed that institutions or any local body during any events compulsorily have to be brought into existence. This is done by the PR department of the institution/organization.

The reason behind this is to show their existence among the people and keep them updated regarding the where-about of an organization. John D. Rockfeller quoted, “Next to doing the right thing, the most important thing is to let people know you are doing the right thing.


How to involve press release?

See that all the events are perfectly covered and shared in details.

Its necessary that prior to any event, your company should be in talks.

It means, whatever event has to take place, the schedule and the entire details should be shared in a conference with the press as well as should be circulated in social media.

How to merge press release with storytelling?

Every news has a story therefore you need to brief it. For example: Why the event has taken place? Motivation for the event. Whats new in your product?Have you taken a market survey? How did you thought of this product? What difficulties you and your team had to face? And so on.

While sharing this on social media as well, its better if you put the description/story behind your product in addition to the launch of the product.

5.Quality content should be shared to differentiate your status in the market:

Since we are talking about content marketing, a good content with prodigious collection of words will prove your innovation and level that would decide whether you are different from the herd. For content marketers, you will need to set a mark for others in the competition. If you cant pen down your points as why your brand/business is here in the market you will be another regular business in this ocean of competitions.

How will you add content marketing in business?

To write you need to analyze and to analyze you need to know. So know your customers and their pain points

Action is required. So your content should not be another theory. It should give some action planned solutions to your customers.

How to use content with Storytelling?

Your story can start with people who are describing their pain points and none of the service or product has been able to solve their complaints.

How your company is providing solutions for the same. How the team is working on such cases and how did you shine out from the pack.

Image Source: https://www.collective-evolution.com/2015/03/16/are-your-symptoms-related-to-low-stomach-acid-the-truth-about-heartburn/

6.Lead Magnets:

If you really want to gain trust of a person then the best way to opt for it is by exchanging information with the details of the person in scene. If I would get a research paper in return while going through a video tutorial on machine learning then definitely I would provide my details like email id and name. I can infer that when you give customers something then definitely they give you something in return.
How to include this in your business?

Generate a content that benefits information seekers or solves their queries. Your content can be a blog post or any video.

Use keywords which has relevance to the topic your content is about and also to the services provided by your company so that they link to your landing page of the website.

Well, in this section your content plays the most important role. But if you think to move ‘the storytelling way’ with content, then the simplest way is to gain trust of the customers by telling them how your services and products are picture-perfect for the existing customers.

For instance, a company whose business is of cakes can tell a story of a girl who had never celebrated her birthday after her mother’s death and how your company had given her the biggest gift she haven’t thought of.

Yes! A story with a suspense. A perfect CTA like “share this link” or “if you have any comments kindly comment in the box below” or “if you want to do something same for someone kindly leave your details we will reach you and so on.” Through this you not only emotionally touch people but also try to grab attention of people.

Image Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8jHf6cwWB0

LG has instigated a campaign named #celebratingthenew.

As per this video: A teenage girl searching for something in the old boxes accidentally discovers a mathematics answer sheet with a score of 3 out of 100 marks. The answer sheet turned out to be of her father’s. “Was your math so bad?” the daughter enquires.

There is a flashback ride. A boy was being scolded by his father, who also happens to be a mathematics teacher in the same school, for scoring poorly in his math exam. The 14-year old boy was so embarrassed that he ran away and started roaming around the streets. The scene cuts back to the present day where he regrets running away from school after flunking the test, and how that incident has changed his life forever.

As the story moves on, we see the daughter putting her best efforts in teaching math to his father to an extent that she convinces him to appear for an exam. The girl then sends the answer sheet to her grandfather to check. In the end, we see a surprise planned for the father where the grandfather is holding his answer sheet wherein a score of 93/100 is seen.

7.Inch-perfect aim:

The ultimate aim of any marketer is to convert leads into definite prospects and then ultimately into sales. To fulfill this aim, the marketer has to be dependent on the content writer. The value through the contents if provided to the customer only then your customer will take interest in your company.

How to achieve inch-perfect aim?

As per Sam Hurley, Global Digital Marketing Influencer, it’s essential to know what exactly our customers need. Therefore its necessary to analyze their pain points and interests and what engages them with us.

Its necessary to analyze which content is the most readable content. Go the topic, create a unique content which is quality wise excellent.

Click on the link below to get top content marketing examples with results.

www.optinmonster.com/content-marketing-examples

How to add storytelling with this?

Ultimately, your aim is to generate leads whether its through storytelling or through a purely topic based content. To achieve your aim, you can use the tactics of “learn by playing” logic.

Example, I want to a video tutorial on parallel processing. You can put up a video describing parallel processing right from roots in such a way that your audience don’t get bored.

You can add up few tutorials on parallel processing having hands on practice and ask them to pause the video and describe their answers in the comment box as if how they have solved and so on. In short making it interactive.

Peroration on the Write-up:

Storytelling is an efficacious way to influence your customers decisions and to create a brand name in the market. It gives you an opportunity to establish a connection with your target audience. It gives you an excellent platform to speak-up so that you can share your in-depth knowledge and prowess with people.

This can be done by videos, images, blogs or anything. If you get these ideas clear no one can stop you to be a top-class marketer to involve storytelling as a marketing strategy with content marketing.

Harikrishna Kundariya
Harikrishna Kundariya is an accomplished Design & Development executive with over 10 years experience in the Developing industry. He is currently President and CEO of eSparkBiz Technologies, a Mobile App Development Company. Connect with him on twitter @eSparkBiz.

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