Ready to leave your mark and connect to the emotions of your target audience? Try a storytelling marketing strategy for your next big launch or ad campaign. Great storytelling sells.
Narrative marketing creates a valuable connection between your brand and your target audience. Brands like Nike, Disney and Apple understand and execute this concept well. They tap into emotions and create a devout following of people invested in their messaging.
Successful marketing helps brands stand out from their competitors with messaging that resonates with their target audience.
Tapping into the persuasive power of storytelling can grab your audience’s attention and build a loyal customer base.
Use this article as a guide to explore how to develop a storytelling marketing strategy to get customers excited about your brand.
What is storytelling in marketing?
Storytelling is innately human. From fairytales and fables to rousing emotional speeches, humans have used storytelling strategies to leave a lasting impact for centuries.
We crave connection and love a good plot, so storytelling remains one of the most effective ways to communicate with your target audience.
Humans use characters, plot devices and high-stakes moments to pass information from one person to another. This approach ensures key messages leave a mark on those listening.
This concept becomes particularly important in the context of brand marketing. It’s one of the most effective ways to get customers to see the value and benefits of your product.
Almost all famous stories follow the classic hero’s story arc. It uses three essential components that you can easily adapt to your brand’s narrative marketing plan:
Storytelling marketing ensures your brand resonates with the human experience. This helps your marketing team authentically connect with your core audience.
Why brands need to tell stories
Whatever you’re selling, a compelling storytelling marketing strategy is your ticket to building a committed following that believes in and trusts your brand.
Using storytelling in your brand messaging helps your marketing efforts become more effective by:
Uniting your audience
Effective storytelling brings people together over a shared pain point or concern, and human beings love belonging to a group.
Create a compelling story that allows your customers to relate to each other to build a loyal, engaged community.
Building an emotional connection
Emotional connection to a brand is a powerful motivator for getting customers to invest in your products or services.
With targeted storytelling marketing, your team can tug on the emotional heartstrings of your audience. This can encourage them to buy into your brand's mission and values, boosting their connection and loyalty to your company.
Making your brand stand out from competitors
No matter how niche your brand is, you still need to stand out.
Regardless of your target audience's size, using a narrative approach to marketing your product or services is the best way to have your brand stand out from your competitors.
Curate a bespoke and enticing offering that speaks directly to your core audience.
Inspiring customer action
Even the most loyal followers need a nudge to become paying customers. The narrative flow that naturally develops as part of storytelling marketing creates a clearer customer journey.
This can encourage your brand’s target audience to invest their resources in your products.
5 steps to building an effective storytelling strategy
Now you understand the importance of effective storytelling marketing, it’s time to create a story-based marketing strategy for your brand.
To help you through the process, follow our helpful guide. Let's explore how to craft a compelling narrative that speaks directly to your target audience:
Create a clear brand identity
To begin, your team needs a clear image of your brand and its offering to create a compelling brand narrative that connects with your audience.
Beyond understanding the features of your products, your team should be able to quickly and accurately describe the brand's core values, goals and messaging.
For a deeper understanding of your brand, host a brainstorming meeting with your team and answer the following questions:
- What are our brand’s core values?
- In a perfect world, what problem(s) do our products solve?
- When someone buys our product, what is the desired outcome?
- How do we want our customers to feel about our brand?
Identify a relatable protagonist
Next, an effective story needs a fleshed-out protagonist to lead the narrative. In storytelling marketing, the main character often represents the leading customer persona you’re targeting.
Collecting information about your target demographic’s needs, wants and pain points will help you craft a narrative that speaks directly to your core audience.
You can collect insights about your core target audience in many ways, including:
- customer surveys
- focus groups
- post-purchase interviews
- demographic questionnaires
Important note: For your storytelling marketing strategy to be effective, collect customer insights over time. This helps you identify trends and behavior changes.
The more information you collect, the more specific your marketing strategies can be. This builds brand loyalty and improves the customer experience.
Foster emotional connection
Next, create an emotional tether for your customers to latch onto as they learn about your products. This is one of the most important parts of your brand narrative.
Humans are emotional, reactionary creatures. Because of this, brands that connect to shared feelings and frustrations are more likely to land sales and build loyalty. Those that focus on statistics, numbers and features can fall flat.
To find an emotional tie for your storytelling marketing strategy, answer these questions:
- What are the most prominent pain points that your core audience experiences?
- How do these pain points make your target audience feel?
- What barriers commonly prevent your audience from seeking help to solve this problem?
- How does your brand address these concerns for your customers?
Support your message with visual wording
Next, your marketing team needs to use visually impactful language. Crafting a compelling brand story gets people interested in and engaged with your brand's key messaging.
Great stories grab us, creating an engaging, realistic world to explore and learn more about.
Using descriptive language in your marketing materials is an effective way to get your customers invested in the benefits of using your brand.
Paint a clear picture of what it will be like for your customers to invest in your brand by using these storytelling techniques in your marketing strategy:
- compelling metaphors
- sharing authentic customer experiences
- using vivid and descriptive language
Call your customers to action
Your storytelling marketing strategy needs to gently direct your customers to make a purchase or engage with your brand.
As your team crafts your narrative, be clear on the desired outcome for those who follow your story. Do you want them to buy something? Visit your website? Follow you on social media?
Whichever you choose, you can use a common marketing prompt called a call to action (CTA). These provide direction and increase engagement.
Using your hero’s journey outline, spend extra time fine-tuning the endpoint. Highlight the following things to increase the chances of customer purchase:
- the benefits of selecting your brand
- success stories of people who chose your brand
- how the person will feel when your product solves their problem
Effective storytelling marketing examples
Need a little extra inspiration to make your brand story stand out?
These well-known brands use storytelling marketing to rise above their competitors and take over their chosen niche:
Disney
When you think of movie magic, you probably think about Disney.
As one of the world’s leading entertainment companies, Disney has built a decades-long reputation for creating feel-good entertainment for everyone.
The Disney brand has successfully monopolized its niche within the entertainment market, making it a stand-out fan favorite for light-hearted fun and magic. But how?
Disney uses the power of persuasive storytelling marketing to create a fun, whimsical and nostalgic multimedia brand identity.
Consider its brand slogans, “The Happiest Place on Earth” and “Where Dreams Come True,” and the inviting, fun atmosphere at Disney-themed amusement parks.
These illustrate Disney’s total commitment to its marketing strategy, which creates a place of belonging for customers.
Watch the Disney magic messaging come to life in this whimsical advertisement for Disneyland Resort.
Dove
Another excellent example of a brand that understands the impact of emotional connection is Dove. This beauty and body care brand is famous for its body image campaigns worldwide.
This well-known brand makes shampoo, conditioner, body soaps and skincare products primarily for women. While other brands in this niche tap into insecurities, Dove avoids this traditional messaging.
Instead, it’s created a powerful movement highlighting the importance of self-love and self-compassion in its marketing.
In a society where women regularly experience advertising that makes them feel self-conscious, Dove’s socially empowering, empathetic marketing approach is a breath of fresh air.
Dove uses powerful, emotionally resonant storytelling to connect with its audience and build brand loyalty, which we see in its Self-Esteem Project and Real Beauty campaigns.
Olive Garden
When you go to a chain restaurant, do you feel like family? You already know the answer if you’ve ever visited an Olive Garden for dinner.
Olive Garden, a popular fast-dining Italian chain restaurant, has risen above its competitors by using compelling storytelling marketing to create a friendly, inviting atmosphere.
With its slogan, “When you’re here, you’re family,” Olive Garden knows its market. It primarily targets young families and groups of friends looking for a comfortable and affordable meal to share with loved ones.
It uses this core messaging in everything from its advertisements to the layout and feel of every restaurant. Olive Garden has become a cult classic through its storytelling, helping it stand out from other fast-casual food options.
Watch how Olive Garden uses messaging about family and belonging to speak to its target audience.
Patagonia
What happens when a company uses authenticity to communicate its values? The answer is instant brand success, as we’ve seen with outdoor gear brand Patagonia.
Patagonia makes high-quality outdoor clothing and accessories with an environmental focus. Through solid storytelling, customers know all about the brand’s commitment to sustainability and eco-activism. This is a significant selling point for many of the brand’s loyal fans.
Patagonia has initiatives like its self-imposed “1% Earth tax” and many environmentally focused awareness campaigns.
Customers who value environmental sustainability understand that supporting Patagonia also helps a cause they care for.
Putting this messaging and mission at the forefront of its marketing materials proves Patagonia understands its core audience.
Building a business model that emotionally connects with an audience’s concern about important issues is vital to creating a loyal customer base.
Dawn
What do dish soap, ducks and crude oil have in common? Together, they form Dawn’s very compelling and emotional marketing campaign.
Dawn pulled on our emotional heartstrings by creating a memorable ad campaign that highlighted the benefits of using its soap.
It also drew attention to the company’s sustainability efforts, showcasing its commitment to supporting wildlife affected by crude oil spills.
The emotional impact of this ad stuck with consumers even though most who purchase Dawn soap are not using it to clean duck feathers.
This ad campaign is a great example of thinking outside the box while committing to a strong brand identity and narrative that resonates with a core audience.
Watch the Dawn dish soap advertising campaign that endeared their audience to their core mission.
Improve your marketing strategy with storytelling
Marketing is an essential part of any effective sales strategy. If your team isn’t using storytelling marketing to highlight your brand's benefits, you’re leaving money on the table.
Storytelling is a powerful, inherently human communication tool. Connect with your target audience and increase your customer loyalty by crafting a compelling, emotional and engaging brand narrative to highlight the benefits of your products.
Become a marketing mastermind and explore how to build an effective storytelling marketing strategy with Pip Decks. Explore our entire collection of story-based marketing resources by visiting our website today.Level up your career with Pip Club
Join 100,000+ leaders who get unique tips every week on storytelling, leadership and productivity - plus exclusive how-to guides, first-dibs on upcoming Pip Decks and our very best discounts.
One of the few newsletters I look forward to.
— Dave Cunningham, Head of DesignOps @ NHS
