The advertising game has changed locations quite a bit over the years, but one thing remains the same through it all: effective advertising/marketing/sales starts with a really good story.
How to Use Story in Your Digital Marketing Strategy
How do you do it? How do you use a story to create your own Digital Marketing Success? It’s really very simple.
When you start creating your digital strategy using a story, you’re going to be crafting something wholly unique, different, and eye-grabbing. At least that’s the point—to stand out from the competition. Think about the many ways you can utilize different digital media to share that story.
Consider creating shareable content that can be used on social media, such as a short Instagram video or a longer YouTube video. Consider creating case study-type blog posts about happy customers that you can share on Facebook.
Whether you decide to use stories to boost sales, or you simply use stories to create brand awareness, there are a great many ways you can use this tool for your own digital marketing success. All you need to get started is a little bit of creativity and a passion for telling a phenomenal story.
Google Uses Story to Reach 10 Million Views
Take Google’s 2013 ad campaign called “Reunion.” The search mega-giant wanted more people to use their product: Google Search. So they told a story about two old friends who were separated in the partition of India who were reunited after a simple Google search. The heart-warming advertisement got more than 10 million views on YouTube and in 2013 was one of the most viewed ads. The ad campaign’s takeaway?
Google Search is for more than just finding “top local restaurants,” it’s a way to connect with the world.
Now that we understand the importance of Story in marketing and advertising, let’s apply that same logic to digital marketing, specifically to target one of your biggest customer bases today: millennials.
My generation (people between ages 18 and 36) is online a lot. According to a 2014 article from Entrepreneur, Millennials spend an average of 17.8 hours each day online with some type of media. Now that ranges from social media use (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) to watching television. But most of the media we’re consuming is stuff posted or created by our peers.
How Story Spreads in Digital Media
So say my Grandma Sally posts that heartwarming 2013 “Reunion” video from YouTube to my Facebook wall because she misses me. My friend from high school who I haven’t seen in a decade sees the video and re-posts it to her own wall. That, my friends, is how videos go viral. And how story is shared in a good old-fashioned word of mouth. Of course, word of mouth today is online in the digital world. So that means you’ve got to take your story to the people where they are.
Good stories can surprise us. They make us think and feel and stay in our minds and help us remember ideas and concepts in a way numbers and text can’t. Still not convinced that story is the way of the future? Check out how the Science of Neuromarketing backs up this technique in Stream’s article The Science of Neuromarketing.
Stream’s Kick-Start Step:
Think about your target customer and the ways in which your product can change the life of your customer. For example, a brand new SUV can give a young family room to grow, explore their local outdoors, and make that cross-country road trip to see Grandma Sally. Now, create a heart-warming, funny, or sentimental story with your target customer at the center and build your digital marketing strategy around that.
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—Ashley Bailey is an Inbound Marketing Copywriter at Stream Companies, a full-service Philadelphia-area advertising agency.