Storytelling 101: How to Use Stories to Market Your Business
“Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell.” – Seth Godin
“Those who tell the stories rule the world.” ― Hopi American Indian proverb
A lot of people think of a word called ‘Redbull’ and a bunch of associations come to mind. The word ‘redbull’ is bound up with themes of energy, courage, drive, power, and doing something new (remember when Felix Baumgartner freefell from the Redbull Stratos craft back to the earth in 2012?).
Redbull is a soft drink brand that is second only to Coca Cola in yearly sales, and one powerful reason for this, is the brand’s ability to tell impactful stories! Stories make the complex simple, and mold an infinite amount of variables into a digestible form. Stories have been told for millennia and they ripple across generations; the case for the power of stories in life can’t be overstated, and marketing is no exception!
What Is Storytelling in Marketing?
Storytelling weaves together threads of events, ideas and feelings into a coherent form; just like knitting, pottery, or playing an instrument, storytelling brings a bunch of elements together into something that is more than the sum of its parts. Using stories in marketing offers many benefits:
- They are coherent: Stories are structured, simple in nature, and digestible as a result. Marketing shouldn’t leave us scratching our heads!
- They are engaging: Stories stir up feelings, emotions, keep attention, and from this, they drive change.
- They are relatable: Stories speak to our lived lives in so many ways; they help people to feel understood and navigate their lives.
- They are memorable: Owing to the emotions they stir and their format, stories get remembered, and so do the storytellers.
- They change perceptions: Stories can dissemble and re-assemble our beliefs; they change our thinking and frames of reference.
- They motivate change: For all these reasons, stories create shifts and power change at every level of human existence. Powerful stuff!
So, the ability to tell a story offers every business the chance to earn and keep attention, relate to their audience, inform and persuade, build trust, and ultimately, make sales and help people with problems. The power of stories in the world of marketing is something that’s often talked up and yet overlooked in practice; it takes much time, imagination, empathy, and quality to create a story that moves hearts and feet.
To make an impactful story for your audience though, you don’t need to be a Tolstoy, nor have the resources of a Redbull! As we’ll see, the tools that allow us to tell moving stories are available to all of us. First, let’s concretise storytelling with an example and then talk about how to make impact using the power of stories.
Let’s go back to Felix and the Red Bull Stratos jump. It was and still is, Youtube’s most concurrently watched live stream, one viewed live by 9.5 million people. Now, let’s look at the power of the jump for Redbull’s brand from an everyday viewer’s perspective.
Back in 2012, just before he made the jump, viewers across the world tuned in and looked on in awe as live footage from the Stratos capsule contrasted the enormity of the earth and the jump ahead of Felix, with his comparatively tiny body and the craft he was stood upon.
We watched and watched, the details of the earth’s features obscured by a canvas of clouds dwarfing the man and the tech he would use to land safely. As the pre-jump checks were made, viewers teetered on the edge of their seat as each second seemed to stretch beyond itself. And then, he jumped! Here is a man, with a spacesuit and parachute, making a courageous leap. One that bears undertones of the moon landing and the ‘one small step for man’ motif.
Redbull’s Stratos project is a great example of a story, a visual one in this case, that tied in layered themes of challenge (David/Felix v Goliath/Earth, the elements), daring, change, humankind and progress, and breaking through limits. Sound familiar? That’s Redbull; they made a story that reflected both their brand and a lot of human themes and concerns. They tied them together, and left a lasting impression. Isn’t that really something? What’s more, this visual story allowed us to simply digest the underlying themes and messages for ourselves through the sensual experience of the jump, no eBooks or guides needed!
That’s also why the motifs of light and dark, heroism, and good and evil that are so vividly portrayed in the Harry Potter and Star Wars franchises resonate so much with people all over the world. Storytelling relates a part (your brand/business) in context with the wider concerns of your audience and the themes of their lives.
This all could sound corny, abstract, or overly-emotional; but that’s what the most powerful stories demand; they require values, depth, engagement, soul-searching, and the ability to relate you and your business with something wider than it’s products, value prop, and lists of pain points and benefits. For the rest of this piece, we’ll explore how to put stories into your service.
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How to Market Your Business Using Storytelling
Firstly, storytelling happens within a world that sets the scene. Then, like Marvel’s Multiverse or Tolkien’s Middle Earth, a wide range of stories take place in it. So the first task is one that goes hand in hand with marketing plans and research; it is to set the scene/storyworld that encompasses your business (a guide/problem solver), target market (the hero/protagonist), the stories of what is currently happening (the audience pain point stuff), and stories that show a better way (the benefits, solutions, and case studies stuff).
Once you’ve outlined this world and mapped the stories that are and could happen within it, you’ll be able to concretely shape campaigns and marketing materials that tell engaging stories that guide people from where they are, to where they want to be. No thick books or plots are needed, these stories that you make in this world can be as simple as a post about a customer or colleague, a blog, or a video for example.
The difference is, your marketing material and messages will be consistent, more engaging, and bring your brand into people’s memory. They will all link to an overarching narrative and mission. The fonts, colours, shapes and graphics that you use will vividly speak to this storyworld, your brand, and audience. Though Red Bull is ‘just’ a soft drink company, their mission statement is “giving wings to people and ideas”, something that is very wide in scope and consistent with their marketing materials and the associations people make with their brand.
So, if you happen to believe that what your business does is too mundane or uninspiring to make into a compelling story, think again! Whether we buy into Red Bull’s storytelling or not, it’s undeniable that it has its power, and that power is available to you too.
The Storytelling Process
1) Create storyworld: what’s it about? Who is involved, how many, and why? What drives progress or not?
2) Outline the characters and their stories; we’re talking audience segments, personas, their stories (what they do, what devices they use, what they value, their worldview, characteristics/personality the story of your business’s ‘why’ and ‘how’
3) Outline the guide/your business’s character and story; the who, the why, the what, and the how. Make it into a mission statement etc
4) Bring it together using the storybrand format to make a framework for your storytelling! You now have a consistent messaging framework
5) Use the structure of stories in your marketing materials and campaigns (problem to solution, start to end, engage emotions, make it sense-able, refer to symbols and metaphors that people can relate to)