Without a doubt, Digital Marketing brought a wide variety of concepts and tools. And each day there are more coming up, due to methodology and strategy constantly changing and updating themselves. Once of these is Storytelling, but are you aware of it and why you should use it? What Storytelling is? SLet’s find out its secrets.
What is Storytelling?
It is literally to tell a story. The name of the tool already gives us the basic meaning of the word, since whoever applies storytelling do tell stories, being also known as “storyteller”.
It is one of the techniques that belongs to Copywriting and is based, mainly, in words, to communicate a story. Analysing so far, you could think there is nothing new about it, but a methodology as old as civilization itself. And you are not wrong; but we are not talking about just telling something interesting to somebody. But as a very efficient Marketing tool that takes advantage or storytelling, through a hook, or a catchy narrative, specially about a real story or something very close to reality.
Is it possible to sell with Storytelling?
So, telling a story is very old and has nothing new about it, right? But, as we previously stated, this ancient tradition was renewed with a new perspective, as it is used to sell. Yes, you read correctly; it is used for sales! There are many explanations for this, but there is one that could be starred as the main one. The fact that everybody likes hearing real life stories, even more if they are catchy, interesting or different.
Narrative is strongly used by marketing professionals to relate the customer to a company. With it, you show your real interest in knowing from up close about your customer needs and how to solve them; it shares ideas and brand values, tightening the link.
This selling modal has grown so much that many believe it is the hot tool of the moment. And, that when a brand has an interesting narrative, presenting a product in a delicate, intelligent way, that potential customer will get closer to your company. Although, it is not used just to call people that are not yet part of your list of customers, but also to retain your old ones. All of these takes us, necessarily, as an indirect, less aggressive way, to close sales.
Main components of Storytelling
This is a very good tool that we have available, as it encourages mainly for creativity, in exchange of sales or branding and quality. Storytelling is important because it generates emotions, design images and drives desires from the audience. In order to create a story that fulfils our commercial objectives, it is a must to have at least three components. Let’s see which ones these are. Before that, we must keep in mind that both the company and the customer must be part of the story, as the association of ideas is a must.
1- A Hero
The most important fact in history is to have a hero. Whatever the battle would be, there must be a hero that solves a problem in a heroic manner. It could be that brands build up a story thinking they are the ones that could become heroic figures, but it is a good tip to consider the hero being the customer.
2-A Sidekick
There must be a role, previously chosen by the company, ideally as an intelligent sidekick, one who has all important info for the hero to complete his/her task. As in every hero story, the sidekick must give strange tips, difficult to follow, bringing our hero to an inch of his life.
3- Some suspense
There must always be a place in between where the hero is and where he/she will arrive, or what is to be achieved. And, with suspense you could play around in different ways, putting your hero in different scenarios in order to create a bigger expectancy. After using it once, you could bring the expectancy to a minimum, for the reader to think about a solution and, just then, you bring back the suspense. Increasing the distance once again.
Storytelling Effect and its importance
Storytelling is working very well because, as you could imagine, it has certain effects in our brain. This means, when acknowledging a well-written story, with certain persuasive characteristics, it will generate some processes within ourselves. This is why, this tool gets to be very useful to close sales.
First, storytelling transforms stories into ideas. Stories allow for certain parts of our brains to activate, getting the reader to take the story as his/her own, switching the idea into an experience, due to what is known as “braincell coupling”. In other words, it is so effective for the reader to switch into reality, that the reader ends up believing it is theirs. Besides experimenting this feeling of belonging, people will share and comment what they read.
Another highly positive effect, to achieve an efficient communication, this story will be reminded much better than in any other format. Scientific explanation of this says that the brain liberates dopamine when experimenting events full of emotions. As a result, it will be easier to remember the content accurately.
If we think about the advantages of stories in a more practical way that could be proved by us, it just takes to remember our younger years, to verify how many values and concepts we have learnt through basic stories, either at school or at home. This shows the quality of this ancient way of learning. Then, why not using it to increase sales? Think about it and takes this methodology to practice.
Now that you know what storytelling is, see for yourself that Storytelling is efficient to develop and reach the top objectives of affiliation.
But how? Are you not an affiliate yet? Register here!