A great way for a business to demonstrate a capacity to “be human” is to use story-telling techniques through their marketing. Regardless of platform, digital marketing in particular is perfectly suited to this approach. Story-telling is all about effectively conveying emotions that generate a positive or negative response in the listener. Obviously, when marketing our businesses, we want the response to be a positive one! Generating a positive emotional connection to your business is more likely to create a favourable response to your brand.

What stories should we tell via digital marketing?

To find out what stories to tell, continually ask yourself questions about your business and take note of the questions clients or prospects ask you.

Start with:

• What is my life experience?
• What is your life experience (client)?
• Why did I start my business?
• Who do we help?
• Why do we want to help them?
• Why do our clients like us?
• Why are we successful?
• What problems do we solve for people?
• What type of experience do clients have working with us?

3 simple ways to “tell stories” using digital media:

1. Focus on explaining the qualities of your products and services rather than the features ie “this car will make you feel like a rock star; its black, sleek and goes like a rocket” rather than “this car comes in black or red, its maximum speed is 170 mph, it has a leather interior”*.  There is definitely a place for the detail of your products or services but not in the story itself.
2. Using appropriate pictures or connecting a series of pictures to tell the story will often go a lot further than any amount of written description. Imagine a picture of the rock star standing beside his car, then add another of him driving up into the mountains and another entering a night club. Now you have a story that the buyer can potentially connect to. He or she is not just buying a car but an emotional experience.
3. Learn about colour and design in terms of the look of your website, your logo, creating banners for your social media accounts and illustrating your email newsletter. Colour triggers emotional responses which set the tone of your story before you even say a word.

*This is an exaggerated example to get the point home of course. Describing the qualities of a snow-clearing service or selling coffee will take a little more finesse!