Content marketing is a powerful tool that all businesses need to be utilizing to produce marketing and sales success in today’s online world.
What’s great about content marketing is that it allows for you to potentially put your business in front of millions of people — if your content is truly engaging.
This is because the online platform allows the spread of information to be exponentially multiplied since the barriers of communication are pretty much non-existent.
With this being the case, it means there’s information overload occurring since any and everybody can put their content online.
Therefore, it can be hard for your content to get noticed when millions of other people are creating their own content the same time you are.
Yikes!
So how do you position your content to be seen among the vast sea of other content flooding people’s computer and phone screens?
But stories are for children, right?
Not at all.
Storytelling is a great way to build a strong connection with your audience, if done effectively.
This form of communication works to enhance the objective of informing your target audience about your business by focusing on the tactic of creating an emotional connection.
An emotional connection is the best way to create a new customer because the individual will fully understand the value offered by your product or service.
The reason being is because the story you tell should illustrate your product or service in action — showcasing a change for the better.
You want to take your audience on a journey that features the lows and highs of a dire situation to keep them engaged the entire time until they learn the final outcome.
I love the storytelling utilized by the University of Phoenix to share Carlos Ramirez’s journey from a lowly worker to a doctor.
It provides an emotional pull that makes the audience fall in love with the intended message — to never give up on your dreams.
In order to do this effectively yourself, you need to fully understand why the storytelling process works.
So let’s breakdown the storytelling system.
People Love Real-Life Experiences
Why do you think social media is so popular?
It’s because people enjoy peaking into the lives of others.
This fascination presents a very good opportunity for your business to exploit by taking people inside your solutions process.
Your products and services should be making a difference in your customers lives and the world needs to be shown how this happens.
It’s one thing to say how great your offer is and it’s another thing to provide real examples validating your claims.
You need to take the focus off of yourself and turn it on your customers.
Think about what a customer wants to see when they’re looking for a new provider to purchase from.
They want to see how your brand interacts with its customers and satisfies their needs.
Providing this type of observation is more authentic since you’re showcasing real interactions, instead of manufactured promotions that seem disingenuous.
In order to accomplish this, you need to capture candid moments in the process of them happening.
This can be phone calls you’re having with a customer about their experience with your business, conversations with attendees at events you’re speaking at, and any other form of interaction you have with individuals who are engaging with your business.
The goal when doing this is to associate real faces and voices with your business so that your audience can see and hear your customer’s stories.
It Gets Your Audience More Engaged
Remember that one of the initiatives of content creation is to create engagement with your audience.
When you tell a story, your goal is to make your audience a part of the conversation.
The reason for this is because a conversation is back and forth dialogue that can lead to the beginning of a relationship.
Think about what happened when your teacher or parents read you a story as a child.
You would ask questions to get further understanding about what was occurring in the story being told to you.
The same thing happens when you tell stories to your audience.
You’re involving them in the process of how your business works behind the scenes, how you solve your customer’s problems, and your inner thoughts about the industry you work within.
This allows your audience to talk with you and develop a deeper connection with your business.
The reason being is because you’re engaging with them on a personal level instead of speaking at them as a provider of a product or service.
Although your goal is to sell them your offer, you need to focus on providing them with clarification about the subject at hand — the value of your business.
When you do this, you take the pressure of making a purchase out of the equation so that they can focus of receiving education.
This allows for the nurturing process to take place, which potentially leads to a new customer.
A better educated lead becomes a very warm prospect since they have a good understanding about the value your offer will provide to them.
It Can Make Boring Subjects Exciting
Are you looking for a way to make your boring business seem more exciting?
Well, you can do this by highlighting the problems you solved for your customers by using personable language to craft an engaging story.
Being too technical isn’t pleasing because it’s too straightforward — ignoring any langue that creates an emotional response.
This isn’t good if the intended goal for your content is to create leads for your business.
If people are leaving your blog in under a minute, it means that your content isn’t interesting enough to keep their attention.
This issue will make it nearly impossible for you to generate any sales through your blog because you can’t get your intended audience interested in your products or services.
Therefore, you want your content to focus on an issue a customer of yours was having and illustrate how your business took their situation from a mess to a success.
Communicating this success story in a colorful manner will create far more engagement from your audience because you’re highlighting the emotions and stakes that were involved in the process, which will grab and keep their attention.
You must be conscious of the fact that invoking emotional responses are a key part of successful marketing and advertising strategies .
This is why telling a good story can turn your boring business’s content into a captivating subject people feel they must learn more about.
Conversations Leads to Conversions
As previously stated, having conversations with your audience further nurtures the relationship beyond the initial point of contact.
Businesses that are engaging in conversations with their audience seek to educate first and then sell after this has been accomplished.
This shows your audience that you’re focused on truly solving their problems, instead of only taking their money.
You must understand that people like attention and feeling like they’re important.
When you take their questions into consideration by answering them, you’re building trust.
Trust is needed for a prospect to be converted into a customer.
Do you think trust can be established without a conversation occurring?
It’s highly impossible for this to happen since prospects want to vet a number of providers before making their final decision about who they’ll purchase from.
Therefore, you need to craft the stories that encourage your audience to have conversations with you.
The more type of these interactions you have, the better your conversion rate becomes.
When this happens, you can begin to encourage your audience to take the step towards becoming your customer by providing them with a soft offer.
Your offer can be an e-book, comprehensive guide, webinar, or tickets to an event you’re having.
Your goal when doing this is to make your hard offer too difficult to pass up by packing your soft offer full of value.
By just initiating a conversation with your audience, you create a higher probability that a new customer will be produced from your efforts.
Conclusion
If you’re having trouble getting your audience engaged with your content, you need to incorporate storytelling into your content marketing strategy.
Storytelling positions your business as the relatable brand, instead of one that’s hard to distinguish from the other generic providers.
The key to effective storytelling is knowing how to write great content.
If you’re experiencing problems with this first step, you need to download our e-book, Creating Content that Sells.
It’ll teach you how to write engaging content that nurtures your audience into prospects who can be converted into customers.
When you know how you do this, you can then begin to craft stories that keeps leads pouring into your sales pipeline.