We are regularly asked by our clients what methods or styles of content they should use as the centrepiece or anchor point of their content marketing plan. Storytelling is often one of our suggestions.
Being able to concisely explain what you’re offering and the benefits to your future clients is the best way to introduce your business offering. People warm to and can relate to a well told story because it's personal to them. They can understand your offering in plain terms and then, in turn, can take what they need from the story and relate very much to their own business requirement.
Your customers might not wake up in the middle of the night thinking that they need your precise product or service but what keeps them awake at night is the problem that's causing that stress within their organisation or their business. Telling the story makes it a reality and allows people to form the conduit between the features and benefits of your product and what you can offer and the actual fix you are ultimately going to offer that business.
This is commonly known in the world of marketing as a case study or what some of our clients in North America call a customer success story. Case studies telling the story of how you work with a client and how you helped them to overcome an issue, achieve their marketing or sales objectives or change the perception about their business are marketing gold standard! This type of content is a valuable part of our clients marketing plans and increasingly, across the board, B2C and B2B marketers site testimonials and customer case studies are the best form of explaining what they do.
Case studies and ecommerce
A large digital ecommerce client of ours has adopted a storytelling approach into the sales process. If you were to contact Optimizely with a new business enquiry, the first thing the team would do before organising a demonstration or giving you pricing is to ask what sector you work in, what you want to achieve and following this send you a relatable case study from that sector explaining how they've done something similar with a client.
This immediately positions them as experts and gains an advantage over any competitors who may also be pitching. Having been able to explain what they do without talking about product names or sales driven chat that's not relatable at that stage or talking too much about products features and benefits can turn buyers off before you’ve even qualified the client’s requirements. Check out some examples of those case studies here. Simply, yet very effectively they are story telling, getting people to understand how the product works in real terms.
Apple is another great example of a business using storytelling to show how businesses around the world are using Apple devices and apps to change the way they work. Apple has some great video success stories it uses for storytelling accompanied by statistics and a short testimonial.
Have you considered how you could use storytelling in your business or sales process? Check out our customer case study page to see how we help our clients do just that.