A challenge marketing presents is how to engage one’s audience. One way to face this challenge is through storytelling. Storytelling creates connections between your business and current and potential customers. After all, most people enjoy a great story. However, telling your story goes beyond what you share on your website or social media platforms.

Here are eight ways to tell your story through your marketing content:

1. Appeal to Emotion

Humans, by nature, are emotional creatures. Although you find what you do interesting, those reading your content may not. Use a conversational style of writing or speaking to appeal to readers’ emotional side more than logic or data you collected. Your goal is to make a human connection to what you do.

Let’s say you’re a real estate agent. While you could share statistics about the housing market in your area, readers may not be interested in that. If you share a story about how you helped a first-time homebuyer move into their first home, more people will relate to and be engaged with that story.

2. Stand Out

With so much media available to consume, attracting readers’ attention can be challenging at times. Some of this media may come from your competitors. You need to stand out from the competition.

Telling your story allows you to share something unique about your business that may appeal to your potential customers as it sets you apart from others in your field.

3. Use Different Formats

When most people think of storytelling, they think of novels or longer pieces of writing. In today’s marketing landscape, you have the opportunity to tell your story in varying formats. Along with blogs, you can create videos, social media posts, and more. You can even use all of these formats combined as part of your overall marketing strategy.

For example, a chef could have a blog where they share recipes. Then, they could also create videos of them preparing the recipes. Photos of the finished dishes could be shared on social media to attract people to the blog or videos. That way, the content, though the same, can appeal to different audiences on different platforms.

4. Answer Questions

Most likely, those consuming your content come to you with questions they need answered. Think of these questions as the conflict in your story and your product or service as the solution. Telling your story provides you with an opportunity to answer these questions in a creative way.

Before telling your story, ask yourself the following questions:

• What do you do?
• Why do you do what you do?
• How do you do what you do?

By answering these questions, you can tell your story in a way that’s more appealing to your audience. For example, when talking about what you do and how you do it, you appeal to logic. Meanwhile, when you talk about why you do what you do, you appeal to emotion.

5. Involve Your Audience

Every good story has a cast of characters. Along with yourself, consider your audience to be the characters in your story. Create a narrative that involves a real or fictional customer using your product or service. That way, readers can imagine themselves in the story and may be more likely to use your product or service.

If you can’t think of a specific situation you’ve encountered in your work, then create a buyer persona to use as a character. This is a fictional representation of your ideal customer based on actual information you’ve collected on your customer base. Considering this persona can help you better craft your story to appeal to them and as a result, your actual customer base.

6. Tell, Don’t Sell

Selling to your audience won’t appeal to them as much as telling your story will. Although it may be tempting to include a sales pitch as a call-to-action, your reader will feel like they’ve just been sold. The best way to provide a call-to-action to readers within the context of your story is to frame it as the next step or resolution of the story.

Going back to the real estate example, a first-time homebuyer may want to learn more about the home buying process after reading your blog post about how you helped someone buy their first home. You can end that blog post by encouraging the reader to contact you to learn more about your services as a real estate agent.

7. Be Yourself

Potential customers want to know that they can trust you. By telling your story, you have the opportunity to build that trust before that person ever contacts you. Be honest about who you are and what you offer. Your potential customers will appreciate it.

8. Make Yourself Understood

Also, speak and write in a way that reflects you and your audience. When appropriate, use humor to appeal to your readers. Most importantly, use language that your audience can understand while still effectively explaining what it is you do, especially in fields with a lot of complex jargon, like finance.

Want to Tell Your Story?

Telling your story can be the best way to appeal to both current and potential customers. However, you may not think your story is that interesting or worth telling. That’s where we can help. If you need ideas on how to tell your story in a way that engages your audience, contact Links Web Design for a free consultation.

Links Web Design is a content marketing agency in Bangor, ME, and Fruitland Park, FL.