Marketing trends – content and story telling

Creating engaging content was another big topic at the Inbound Marketing Conference.  These days, everyone is bombarded with information and it is overwhelming.  How do you stand out from the crowd?  Telling a good story is a great way to do this.

For effective content you should:

1.  Tell a story.

Since the beginning of time, human beings have loved stories. It was how history was passed down from generation to generation before books. Malcolm Gladwell was one of the keynote speakers and he had the entire audience, of 10,0000 people, mesmerized. He had no props and no power point. It was just him up on the stage telling a story. He told the story of Malcom McLean, who revolutionized the shipping industry by his developed an efficient way to transport containerized cargo. That’s those humongous cranes and boxes you see at shipping ports.

Unless you are a trucker or in the shipping industry, you may not think this is such an exciting story. But the way Malcolm told the story, you would be riveted to your seat.

2. Attract, not interrupt.

Does anyone really like being interrupted? Since when has that EVER sold a product? If people are annoyed enough they will create a backlash. With the prevalence of social media, this word will get out a lot faster and to a lot more people that that expensive TV ad.

3. Get rid of that boring product specification.

Even if it’s a technical product, people don’t really talk that way. Wouldn’t it be much more interesting to your target audience if you told a story about how this product helped someone solve a problem? If your customers see themselves in the story, they are much more likely to buy from you and to recommend your company and its products to their friends.

4.  Use images, pictures and videos.

Still not convinced?  These stats should help:

• 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain than text. (Source:  Hubspot.)
• 40% of people will respond better to visual information than plain text.  (Source: Hubspot.)

5. Use data to tell you if your strategy is working.

Change one thing at a time, e.g. the link names, the story title etc. and see what happens. It makes sense to only change one or maybe two things at a time so you can really isolate exactly what works.

How have you used story telling to attract viewers and customers?

Photo is courtesy of Janet 59’s Flickr Photostream, under Creative Commons Licensing.