I started my content marketing business because I knew that there was a huge amount of value in telling stories.
It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in or the type of products and services you sell – your business can tell a story a Hollywood blockbuster would be proud of.
Your marketing strategy is much more than a plan for promoting the business – it should be the script and storyboard for the tale your business needs to tell.
Here’s how to make it just that.
Use the 5 Cs
Every brilliant story feature circumstance, characters, curiosity, conflict and conversations.
To tell the story of your business in your marketing, you’ll need to rely on these five Cs in order to draw in an audience and keep them engaged.
The characters could be your staff, the curiosity centred on the solution you provide and the conflict that of your customer (who’s troubles you can help overcome with your product).
There’s not much of a story without the five Cs, so layout yours before you undertake any form of marketing activity.
Don’t talk relentlessly about yourself
Clearly, any form of marketing you undertake is going to be about the business and its products (and, most likely, the people behind those products).
This is a great way to tell the story of your business, but it can go too far.
The more you talk about yourself, the less interested the audience will become. Instead, give your audience what they want and always tune the script (be it literally a script in a video or a blog post) to address their concerns, wants and needs.
The more you focus the story of your business on its customers, the more engaged they’re likely to be.
Go for emotion
Unlike the John Lewis Christmas adverts, there’s no need to try and tug at the heart strings of your audience – particularly if you’re a manufacturer of ball bearings.
However, there’s a lot to be said for deciding on a type of emotion you want to communicate and demonstrating that you can provide support for that emotion.
For your audience, it might simply be because they’re fed up of finding well-made ball bearings that can be bought in bulk cost effectively.
Go Hollywood with a trailer
Hollywood has long relied on the power of trailers to whip up intense anticipation, and you can do exactly that with your marketing output.
If you’ve created a video for a forthcoming product, for instance, there’s no reason you can’t start teasing the audience with little clips of what’s to come.
You can do this via social media (even if it’s nothing more than a smartphone photo from the shoot or a screen grab from the edit) or via email marketing.
This is also a great way to grab the email addresses of people who are interested in hearing more once the product has been fully released.
Wrapping up
Storytelling is fun no matter how old you are, and in business, it can turn an otherwise humdrum, mundane marketing strategy into something far more exciting.