Storytelling is a technique in marketing and advertising that conveys information and conveys meaning through storytelling.
Incorporating a brand story into your marketing is one of the most effective ways to connect with your target market. Clients are less and less interested in open sales – they want to feel unity with the company they are turning to for a product or service, they want to know that their problems are understood and can offer a quality solution, not just a profitable one.
Storytelling has a clear preference among other means of communication between the company and the consumer. Nearly 80% of people want to hear a brand’s story. As many as 55% would consider buying from a business in the future simply because they really like the brand’s story.
Recognizing the power of history is great. But what makes this story great? How can marketers consistently build narratives that resonate with customers on an emotional level?
Putting empathy at the center of your brand’s storytelling.
Whether you’re creating content about your employees or telling stories about your customers’ experiences, empathy is the emotional element that will make the story stick in the minds of your audience.
Let’s take a look at what brand storytelling involves, why using empathy to drive your stories is so important, and how to do it.
What is storytelling?
Brand storytelling is the use of narrative in marketing to engage with your audience on an emotional level. This is a completely new, deep and interesting way of conveying information.
After good storytelling, the client will “feel” the value of your brand, understand the meaning of its existence in the market and delve into the symbolism of the logo or other visual elements. You express the hopes of your entire team, showcase the achievements of all the people behind the brand, show that it was made for customers, other employees and society.
Be sure to ask how your brand makes customers feel. Storytelling shows why they chose your product and how it positively impacted their lives. Or how he solved the problem.
To use brand storytelling, consider incorporating the following four story elements into your marketing.
Characters
You can create client stories where the client himself is the main character. This is a compelling way to use storytelling in B2B marketing. Many big executives have used this method to generate customer interest in their brand.
(An example of storytelling: inside each SPLAT package you can find a letter from Evgeny Demin, CEO of SPLAT – https://www.splat.ru/letters/)
Installation
Use context when telling brand stories. When people understand where, why, and how things work in a company, stories come to life. It’s important to make it clear that their favorite brand is a powerful team of people like their customers and that they work together.
Conflict
Brand storytelling is not just about sharing how your product benefits customers. Share how you overcame obstacles for a client. Be transparent about problems in your business.
By using empathy and putting your audience in the place of the characters in the story, you engage them emotionally. They may have a personal relationship to these conflicts. This will help them imagine what it would be like to have the same experiences that you are trying to convey with the story.
Climax and ending
Storytelling is about connecting the target audience and the company. Storytelling is inspiring, intriguing and motivating content. Show your audience how any conflict was resolved. Build the storyline so that they can feel the sense of accomplishment and determination that the client or employee experienced.
Empathy helps you communicate on a deeply human level with both potential customers and current ones.
Storytelling in advertising: examples
Why should empathy drive all narratives?
So why should empathy play a leading role in telling your brand story?
Whether you’re creating a video, a blog post, or a short social media post, build empathy from your audience to connect with them and build trust.
Empathy is the vehicle that leads to the journey. Whether it’s a compelling romance or a well-designed “About Us” page on a website, when you make people feel something, they dive deeper into the information and remember it better. And if people can’t feel the gratitude expressed in the customer’s review, the triumph of the success story—joy, hope, perseverance, or suffering—they don’t care.
MAVR storytelling example
Benefits of Using Empathy in Storytelling
When you can convey emotions through a screen or on paper, brand storytelling becomes one of the most powerful marketing tools.
Thanks to this, interest is warmed up in the audience. Storytelling can be used to create a corporate spirit to show the importance of the work performed by employees, a sense of team unity.
Storytelling offers important benefits that you won’t see from product-focused ad copy or other content that neglects the human element.
With a story, you can express a brand’s personality, make it memorable, and engage your audience.
Express your brand personality
Empathy is the ability to experience emotions. So make your brand feel and personality crystal clear; this will make it easier for your audience to feel the emotions you want to express.
Try to describe the characteristics of the brand in terms of human qualities: is it helpful, serious, passionate, creative, innovative, energetic, caring? And then let those personality traits come through in every nuance of your marketing, from the visual feel of the site to the content.
Make your brand memorable
Research shows that emotions improve memory. When a brand story is able to make people feel something, the content will resonate with them on an emotional and psychological level.
You can do this either by making your brand the main character, or by placing it as a supporting character for the client, who will be the main character in the story. The audience will remember this story, and it will help your brand stand out from the competition.
Hook your audience
Empathy in storytelling is so powerful because it activates the brain. When the brain experiences an emotionally charged event, it releases dopamine. Unlike facts, which only activate two areas of the brain, a story can activate several, including the sensory cortex, the motor cortex, and the frontal cortex.
Once we get a taste of a good story, our minds yearn for more. Make that expectation part of your marketing and you won’t have to grab people’s attention. They will come to you.
Expert in legal marketing. Head of marketing agency MAVR.
Business degree “Master of Business Administration” (MBA).