Why building stories is essential for Content Marketing

When you start off as a marketer, you imagine the type of audience you want to capture through the content that you design.

Your buyer persona, i.e., the fictional representation of your ideal customer that might be interested in your product, needs more than just a plain explanation of the product that you are trying to sell.

There are many B2B firms that believe in informing their clients about their businesses. They do this through tons of text about

• what their business model is
• how they are different from their competition
• what they think is wrong with their industry, and 
• how they can help in solving those real-world problems through use cases. 

All this is brilliant when you are trying to stand out from the fray of corporates in and around that specific industry. But what about something like a small sized B2C firm? 

A customer in today's day and age is flooded with information when they try and search the internet for something.

For example, it's midday and your car has a flat tyre. You have to reach somewhere, but obviously you decide to delay your plans because it was not too urgent. You take your phone out and a perform a Google search for a tyre shop.

Now a simple search for the keywords "tyre shop" returns around 2.4 billion search results on Google. However, you click on the ones that are located nearby, for a quick fix. 

But if your potential customer is researching for, let's say, a mobile phone, the same facets of a search result turns on its head.

The research that a buyer performs for a mobile phone is way more detailed in comparison to the flat tyre fixing scenario.

Buyers look at prices, features, and the works to make sure they are putting their money's worth.

Keeping the quality of product aside, the best brands such as Apple and Samsung, produce fascinating storylines and taglines that attract billions of dollars worldwide. 

In 2017, Apple teamed up with Michel Gondry, director of "Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind" to produce a short film. 'Detour' was shot completely on the iPhone 12, so the film showcased the phone's features such as Slo-Mo, time-lapse, filming underwater and so on.

Have a look at what it is all about: 

If your content marketing strategy involves a proper storyline, chances are that you can convert your customers much more effectively.

Three things to consider from a storytelling point of view: conflict, authenticity and the audience

Conflict

The way your content interacts with your audience needs to be captivating, and must have different views that are being expressed to try and build a conflict.

That's because conflict creates a sense of tension, which in turn keeps your audience engaged with your story.

It is an aspect of storytelling that makes some blogs and podcasts stand out from the rest. Therefore, if your content is challenging the order of things through an out of the box storyline, it can maintain the onset of drawing more readers and followers.

In 2005, Pete Cashmore, the founder of Mashable, had constantly been blogging and trying to do better than he did the day before. Readers increased tremendously during a period of 18 months as he was one of the early adopters of the content marketing industry, thus gaining an advantage. 

Keeping all that aside, Cashmore having humble beginnings of creating Mashable at the age of 19 from his room at his parent's place in Scotland, garnered profound respect amongst its followers.

The conflict of being a young entrepreneur, finding his way out just with his sheer perseverance in writing, defines the way he conquered the industry.

He brilliantly sold his own story of success by appearing for interviews with various channels. In one of Cashmore's interviews, he says:

"My advice is don't take any advice. Just learn your own lessons, make your own mistakes. It's really the mistakes that are going to teach you about success."

Authenticity

As you explore the deep rabbit hole of storytelling through content marketing, the element of authenticity paves the way for a loyal fanbase. Your brand needs to stay true to itself to maintain a high standard of storytelling through marketing.

Most users on social media look for an emotion that connects them with a product. To present thoughtful ideas that have been cultivated in the product life cycle, you need marketers that know the language of the people. An example of bridging that gap being YourStory.

YourStory Media was started by Shraddha Sharma in 2008 to capture the essence of the Indian entrepreneurial space. Originality and authenticity were the only ways to bring about an enthusiasm and passion amongst her readers.

YourStory began by reporting stories of start-ups and presented them in a reader friendly content piece. These content pieces in-turn resulted in driving engagement and gaining visibility for the start-up as well. (Content is king, as they say)

Although Shraddha was told by many that her idea is not long lasting, she kept putting up original stories. Eventually it helped the start-ups in raising funds, along with establishing a better network.

Today, YourStory Media has managed to reach around 10 million users across the world and has produced content through multiple avenues like social media and videos.

The Audience

You can never forget what your audience wants. Generating different types of content that is readable, watchable, easy to understand, and made for the right audience is essential for a content marketing campaign. 

Audiences have welcomed new forms of content such as infographics, podcasts, webinars, videos and much more with open arms.

Nowadays, marketers make sure that they utilise every channel to produce content that makes their audience revisit them. Corporates engage in creating memes, or tweeting pop culture references, or even post GIFs to enhance their image as a brand that is 'cool.'

According to SEMrush in 2019, 94% of marketers use social media for content distribution. This can include memes, tweets, GIFs and more. Although, long form content such as articles in the marketing industry that are over 5,700 words in length are still the top performers as compared to others. 

This brings us to the juncture of luring in both types of audiences with the right approach. You can either address issues and solve them with your long form content such as blogs and articles, or you can maintain handles that post short form content such as infographics.

Like the tech YouTuber Mayuko Inoue's favourite quote "It Depends", the success of your content marketing strategy can depend on various factors of the persona that you are trying to target.

But the best bet can be to trust the process of generating fantastic content through the art of copywriting and storytelling.

You can learn the concepts of storytelling for marketing through the Power of Storytelling course provided for free by HubSpot Academy.

In Retrospect

Content Marketing and storytelling are two sides of the same coin. Trying to land the coin on its edge might be a difficult task at first. Some may say it is impossible.

Plus of course, the coin needs to be a bit thick to have a better probability of landing on its edge, similar to the content that you produce being elaborate and eye-catching (both for the readers and the search engine).

However, if done consistently enough, there is always a probability for it to work wonders.