To attract users or potential partners, business has to be able to appropriately showcase itself and its products. In this case, it’s important to ensure that you grab your target audience’s attention and clearly demonstrate your advantages.  

In our article called How to Start Your Success Story we discussed the main point of storytelling, which is creating a main character. We looked at the case of a company that develops products and looks for solutions seeking to achieve business goals and the best possible results.

This story will attract the audience only if it reflects their lives, their struggles and problems they have to solve. The problem the main character is solving is a trigger that plays a role of a villain in the story. It is something that hinders the main character from achieving their goals. A background is also important, as it pushes the main character towards solving their problem. The story always starts with trouble. There’s no story without trouble and inner conflict. Once something hinders your main character’s journey towards their goal, there’s an intrigue. And that’s what attracts people whose life paths are similar to that of your main character. Besides, it is important to introduce additional elements. When you’re done with this, you can create “chapters” of your story. Add a new character who can transmit information, tools or knowledge the main character needs for fighting the villain or solving their problem. This is basically the role of your brand in the story. And please keep in mind that the main roles in your stories should belong to your customers, not to you. Focus on their challenges, pains and objectives.

Over the time of its operation, any company collects a lot of data to share with others: facts, figures, messages that should be communicated through one brief story. So where to start?


Remember several golden rules of storytelling:

First off, explore your target audience. Decide who will wish to hear your story. Who will benefit from it the most? To make up a convincing story, you have to understand your spectators, readers, listeners.

Before you proceed to writing the story, do a target market research and build a consumer image. This will help you get to know your potential listeners or readers and lay the foundation for further steps on the way to your narrative.

The next milestone is to formulate the main message. Your story has to contain the main message regardless of whether your narrative occupies one page or twenty pages, takes five minutes or half an hour. At this stage, it’s essential to understand the main idea of your story.  To do so, try to tell your story in maximum ten words. If you can’t do that, your story doesn’t have the main message.

Identify the main idea of your story. Each story pursues its goal, that’s why you have to understand what feelings and thoughts should be triggered in the audience. It will help you set the goal and decide how to build your narrative.

If you seek to encourage an action, your story has to focus on how challenges are overcome or success is achieved with the help of particular actions. Motivation is what this audience is looking for.

If your goal is a self-narrative, you have to be open and honest about your life path, rises and falls. Present-day consumers appreciate brands that are open for communication, and in this case, storytelling occupies an honorable place.

If you plan to share your values, tell a story that touches on familiar emotions, archetypes and situations so that people could understand how your narrative intersects with their own lives.

And if your idea is to build a community and establish partnership, you can opt for a story that will provoke discussions and make people share it with others. 

Formulate a call for action. It’s namely a call for action that determines what a person should do after hearing or reading your story.

We’ve finally reached the point when you have to write the text. After all key issues have been solved, it’s time to create. This step is an embodiment of the story, as it has to be well-structured, well-worded and integral.

The story has to possess integrity and contrast. Every time you use this or that design make sure it always performs the same function. A moderate color palette, laconic design, and appropriate spaces will help you make your story more readable.

Heading. It has to be eye-catching, interest-provoking and outline the topic of the article without perverting its main idea.

Illustrations. Visual input is very important, as visualization helps convey the atmosphere, dwell on the topic and immerse the user into the context.

To sum up, let’s reinforce the knowledge through a couple of example of how powerful storytelling can be in the field of marketing:

1. Check these websites for good storytelling options:

http://porschevolution.com/#undefined

http://tesla.aziznatour.com/

https://www.beautyofbrewing.com/

2. Chat-bot. It implies that a person on the opposite side uses messengers (Viber or Telegram) to communicate with a chat-bot via choosing an answer. Alongside an interesting story, the person is continuously engaged through questions.

3. Online/offline presentation. What else, if not the story, can communicate the main message to the audience and encourage them for action? For this reason, most webinars contain 70% of stories, anecdotes, and proverbs. This way, they indirectly encourage people to buy.

4. TV commercial. It’s a vivid example of how storytelling can be used as a brand promotion technique.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFNWnp1Lq6w&feature=emb_logo

5. Billboard. You’ve definitely seen the following examples of storytelling: two banners are placed along the road, one banner asks a question, and the other one answers it. It’s also a sort of a story, but a very brief one. Yet, the principle remains the same.