Notes on Storytelling
I’m obsessed with telling the right stories.
Storytelling helps your audience become invested in the outcomes. Facts and figures are important for supporting your arguments, but it’s the narrative you build for your audience that will have the emotional impact necessary for inspiring action.
An effective marketing campaign uses stories to make your messaging meaningful and memorable. The principles of good business storytelling are:
1. Spark interest
2. Explore challenges
3. Reveal the transformation
When you frame the objectives of your business this way, your audience will take notice and respond to your invitations to act, whether that means spreading your ideas, investing in your growth, or buying your solutions.
Storytelling Builds Trust
When I began diving into the neuroscience of storytelling and its importance to marketing, I had the pleasure of learning from Bernadette Jiwa and Seth Godin courtesy of the Story Skills Workshop.
One of the most important concepts I learned is getting the attention of your audience isn’t enough.
If you want your ideas to catch on or if you need to make more sales, storytelling is the key to building the foundation of trust necessary to achieving those goals.
When you need to cut through the noise and build profitable connections, skillfully telling the right stories at the right time is your way forward.
How Should You Use Storytelling in Your Business?
The two main reasons to communicate with your audience are to:
1. Inform
2. Influence
These goals are accomplished primarily by writing content and copy, respectively.
Like any medium, words can be interpreted in multiple ways according to factors such as the worldview and experiences of the recipient of your messages. That is a wonderful outcome for a novel, a poem, or an opinion piece.
But if you aim to empower your audience to make better choices, secure your next round of funding, or close a sale, you must structure your content appropriately.
Creating your content and copy with narrative structure will help shift beliefs and encourage prospects to progress to the next stage in the buyer’s journey.
In other words, story-based content and copy lead to better outcomes for your audience and a better bottom line for your business.
Storytelling Begets Action
Make your content and copy more effective by answering the question, “What comes next?” Go beyond an info dump and explain to your audience what they can do with it.
Should they schedule a consultation with their provider?
Should they share what they’ve learned with their loved ones?
Should they examine their current habits and make different choices?
Should they gather more information from you or another trusted source?
Don’t leave your audience hanging. Tell them their next steps so they can apply what they’ve learned from you.
