Once Upon a Time: How Storytelling Fits into Your Business Marketing Strategy

How to use the power of words to capture your audience

• Emotions drive preferences and buying decisions.
• We adopt stories to give ourselves permission to make purchases.
• People connect with your brand, product, or service when you provide them with the perspective to understand what they have in common with you.

The concept of storytelling and its ability to power the marketing engine has some proven and powerful results. Storytelling can:

• Help people remember stories 22X better than facts alone
• Provide a 30% increase in conversion rates
• Help people connect with your brand

We remember stories. They connect information with emotions, which are the building blocks of ideas. They allow us to associate and store information. It helps insert your “why” into a consumer’s worldview. Your story becomes their story. Here’s the most powerful thing about that transference. It transforms information into a conversation. People love to share stories.

Storytelling evokes emotion

Throw some statistics into a conversation, and people will take you more seriously, right? Consumers believe purchase decisions are based on rational analysis.

However, emotions drive preferences and buying decisions. Emotions are the glue that help us collect and associate the attributes of a brand. If there are no emotional links, we can’t form perspective. Storytelling generates rich representations of a brand. We are attracted to the narrative, much the same way we are attracted to similar personalities.

Most importantly, the emotions generated by storytelling are what spur consumers to action.

We have more ways than ever to tell these stories, ranging from long-form blog posts to 10-second TikTok videos. The successful ones all share a storytelling aspect, and those stories are working on all parts of your brain.

Facts and figures are powerful but they have a limited effect when used alone. We use emotions and storytelling because we think in narrative. We turn practically everything we experience into a short story. This shouldn’t be surprising, when you consider that personal stories and gossip comprise 65% of our conversations.

Learn how to use storytelling in your content to generate traffic and leads.

Masterful storytelling grips us. The message resonates, and we adopt it. And, you don’t have to be today’s Leo Tolstoy or Shakespeare to use it.

Why being meaningful matters

If emotion is the glue for a good story, empathy is its carrier frequency. People connect with your brand, product, or service when you provide them with the perspective to understand what they have in common with you. This is empathy.

According to Michael Brenner, author of Mean People Suck: How empathy leads to bigger profits and a better life, the use of storytelling to create empathy can help a brand outperform others by more than 200%. Brands like Nike, Patagonia, and Dove use empathy and genuinely look for ways to offer value and meaning.

In his book, Brenner crunches the numbers. The most meaningful brands:

• Are 80% more likely to have a positive overall public impression
• Generate up to 38% more purchase intent with their marketing
• Are 70% more likely to generate repurchase intent with their marketing
• Are 40% more likely to command a premium price for their product and services

Don’t despair if you’re unable to extract the “why” or elicit empathy with your blog posts. Storytelling is a skill, and it might just be one that your organization doesn’t have. In that case, it’s time to consider outsourcing.

There are professionals in the marketing industry who specialize in creating stories that sell. ContentBacon has a team of writers, designers, and marketers who believe in the power of storytelling.