What is Storytelling Marketing Strategy?

Did you know that by telling a story, the retention rate for your content is over 70% - deliver that same content with statistics and retention drops to 10%.

Storytelling in marketing gives your customers and clients, purchasers or prospects the reason to buy from you. Your company should be telling stories great and small that say, here is where you belong. Creating storytelling content for marketing campaigns will help you re-think your existing marketing methods - with a storytelling strategy at the center and demand tied directly those brand stories.

The two concepts for a storytelling strategy are Company Story Maps and Customer Journey Maps. The Company Story Map is formed from a POV of your business and the Customer Journey Map, clearly, is from the customer’s POV. The perfect storytelling strategy will mirror one to the other.

Story Maps are nothing new – except when you apply them to marketing strategy. Story Maps are an essential element for integrating brand, product and demand generation. Storytelling always has conflict and resolution. In its simplest form, your customer has a problem and you have a solution. That is where you develop your stories. Whether you have a long-standing story to tell or just starting up, storytelling marketing is integral to your content strategy to tell your company’s story and align them to the customers buying journey.  

If this is new to you, think books and chapters. Your brand is the cover, it tells a story in the title and image that provides an idea of what a customer will find when they pick it up, but before they open it. Chapter titles, like emails and calls to action will give a clue as to what will happen next. Content is the plotline that holds the story together and makes the customer want to get to the end. Content in all its forms, from blogs and newsletters to website text and video – it all creates the story of your brand and the solutions you bring to a customer.

It all starts by answering questions about How, Who, What and Where – and carefully crafting compelling stories for your company, your products and offerings.

How do your consumers and the community you are part of perceive you? Is yours a legacy organization and are you moving at the speed of your industry and your customers?

Who is your customer and how well do you know her/him? Do you understand their personal needs and group needs? What challenges do they face?

What are you doing to align with the aspirations of your customers? How do you help them overcome challenges?

Where are your customers on their journey? With your company? With your competitors? Is your buying journey effortless for your customers?

Storytelling Marketing Strategy uncovers needs across the buying journey and helps you adapt to do what every company must do – create an effortless buying journey. Just as a quick example:  If you create an email campaign with a great subject line and a perfect call to action that drops new customers into a convoluted or unaligned buying journey – what are you gaining in the long term?

I know, you might be thinking that this can be achieved through an integrated marketing plan. But an integrated marketing plan won’t answer the question – What story is this telling our customers? And it won’t uncover the gaps in a customer journey. Segue ahead…

Having a Customer Journey Map as a tool to outline and clarify your customer’s path to purchase and then mirroring it to your Company Story Map is a sure-fire method of demand generation, lead nurturing and customer acquisition. A Customer Journey Map is the essential guide for integrated marketing, sales, and service strategies that fully align with your brand!

Customer Journey Maps come in about every shape and form imaginable. What matters most is for your map to reveal who your customer is, what your customer is trying to achieve and how you interact at each step. Briefly, and this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, here are the foremost points for your Customer Journey Map: 

Personas – These answer the question, who are my customers? Personas are based on real customers, which differentiate them from simple segmentation in that you can start to understand buying motivation and more importantly, intent.

Intent – What is my customer trying to achieve? Customers rarely come to you prepared to purchase. Understanding intent helps you define content to deliver along the buying journey that moves them further and faster toward the purchasing decision through your touchpoints.

Touchpoints – How do I interact with my customers? May as well lie on your back and count the stars as to try and list the possible touchpoints you can enable for customer interactions. The fundamental starting point is to meet your customers where they already are. Facebook, LinkedIn, your website – all these touchpoints need to be documented and audited for effectiveness. This is where you will mirror the two aspects of a Storytelling Marketing Strategy. Together, the Company Story Map and the Customer Journey Map help you create an execution plan.

If you’re starting from scratch, your first thought might be – This is going to take forever. Well take heart. You know your company, you know some of your customers, so just start by asking them questions. And on one level you’re right – this should take forever. You should never stop building and rebuilding your customer buying journey. You should never stop asking questions and striving for that effortless buying journey.

One last thought on the importance of a Marketing Storytelling Strategy, and that’s how you can build and maintain storytelling by means of customers and influencers across channels for awareness, acquisition and retention. These are people who have been on the journey with you, who are part of your story already. Campaigns with thought leaders you know, who are specific to your industry that integrate email, web ads, print ads, downloadable brochures, and landing pages can be effectively employed. This method will establish trust for your company through non- celebrity influencers, current customers, social sharing and reviews, that don’t rely on your company’s efforts alone. A 2017 Inc. article cited 84% of people trust reviews as much as friends. A 2018 Medium article found that 70% of millennial consumers are influenced by the recommendations of their peers in buying decisions.

It all begins with content that people will remember, that they will connect to and that leads them to a solution. And that my friends, comes from storytelling.

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