Storytelling, the key to boost your brand in a saturated marketplace

In the world of entrepreneurship, innovation to break with tradition and find new formulas to achieve good results is essential. Even more so when we are immersed in an increasingly saturated market that complicates the mission of attracting the attention of the audience and connecting with them. In recent years, the arrival of new technologies and social networks has meant that we are exposed to a large amount of content through multiple channels. In this context, how can you make your brand stand out from the rest and attract the viewer's attention?

One of the ways of achieving this is through storytelling, a strategy that, thanks to its good results, is increasingly used. In this post we talk about it.

What is storytelling

Who hasn’t been thrilled at some time with the traditional Christmas commercials. Some people even look forward to their arrival on those dates thanks to the connection they have managed to establish with the audience. This is thanks to well-crafted storytelling.

Storytelling is a content marketing modality that abandons the traditional advertisement promoting your product or service to tell a story that reflects the values and essence of your brand, appealing to the audience's emotions to achieve a connection with them. The fact is that people have loved stories since time immemorial, they attract our attention and keep us captivated until the end to find out how the story unfolds. Therefore, many brands take advantage of this to create their own narratives through literary techniques or scriptwriters to convey messages in a more attractive way and connect with their audience.

You must have in mind that, although the storytelling represents your company, it is not a promotional advertisement, nor something that talks about your brand or that directly encourages people to buy. The ultimate goal of this strategy is to attract and move the audience so they connect with you. If done correctly, there are many benefits:

• Capture attention. Stories are a format that catches the audience's attention more easily than any other. In a context in which we are saturated with information, what better way to attract the audience's attention than with a good story that makes them connect.
• Long-term relationship. The emotions that your story can arouse in the audience, can provoke a very positive experience that will take time to forget. This can help increase loyalty to your brand and establish a solid, long-term relationship.
• Encourage virality. Using storytelling greatly encourages you go to viral, something that is not easy. 

The keys of storytelling 

The truth is that many people consider storytelling to be an art and, as such, it requires creativity, skill and practice, because for it to work, not just anything goes. We give you a series of steps you should use to put it into practice:

1. Define your objective and values. The story you tell must reflect the soul of your brand, so before telling anything, you must know who you are.
2. Know your audience. You must be clear about who you are going to talk to, know your audience well. Only in this way will you be able to create a story that they can identify with.
3. Choose the format. Nowadays, stories can be told in multiple formats: in video, in social networks, in a transmedia campaign. Choose the one that best suits your needs.
4. Structure your story. Since storytelling is about telling a story, it must have the key elements of any narrative:

• Message. The idea you want to convey.
• Context or environment. The story must take place in some place and time and have to be described and shown for the audience to connect more easily. 
• Character. What is a story without its main characters? There must be characters and a protagonist that will be the one to experience the final transformation after resolving the conflict.
• Conflict. A story is not interesting if nothing happens, that is why there has to be a conflict, which is what will awaken the audience's attention. This will be the challenge that motivates the protagonist to reach the end of the story. It can be, for example, the problem that your target audience may have and to which your service or product provides a solution. The conflict must make the audience feel identified.
• Resolution. This is the end, when the conflict is resolved and reaches its conclusion.

5. Integrate the product but without forcing it. The product or service that your company offers is not the main character of the story, but it can be part of it as an element of the outcome, for example.
6. Appeal appropriately to emotions. Decide what emotion you want to provoke and structure the story focused on awakening it in order to generate a real connection with the audience.

Clear examples of the use of this strategy can be seen in large companies such as Coca Cola or Nike. Do you remember the last ad in which they sold you a soft drink or a pair of sneakers? Now is your time to make use of this strategy. Think about what story you want to tell your audiencia and how you want to tell it: will it be written or video? What emotions will it appeal to? Will it tell a real story or will it be fictional? Unleash your imagination and start creating a story that will captivate your viewers to create a lasting connection with them.