Storytelling and Modern Marketing

One of the most powerful weapons you have in your marketing arsenal is telling the world your personal story.

You should craft and convey it in such a way that it appeals to your target consumers, allows them to relate to you and your business, and encourages them to take action and purchase your product or service. 

Remember, products don't market themselves. It is up to you to convince consumers that your product and your business are worthy of their money, and a compelling story is one of the ways in which you can do this. How can you make the story that you're telling effective and engaging?

Consider one of these storytelling models:

1) The Person-Driven Story.

This is by far the most common model. In the person-driven story, sometimes also called a personal story, you will detail your own personal journey. This will typically detail a painful or difficult problem that you faced and then explain how you were able to conquer the challenge and come out victorious. There are a number of ways to maximize the appeal of this story. The symptoms, difficulties, or pain you experienced should closely mirror those that the target consumer is likely to be experiencing. For example, if you are selling a software that records and tracks finical aspects for a business, you will want to detail your experience with the problem - the hectic effort you used to perform to do the paperwork, the time you used to spend on this work, etc. If the target consumer can identify with the same difficulties and challenges you faced, he or she is more likely to buy into your solution. This kind of story is all about establishing an emotional connection between you and the target costumer.

2) The History-Driven Story.

The history-driven story is all about research. It will typically detail the history of a particular product or service. For example, imagine you are opening a coffee shop. You might detail the long history of coffee, where the best seeds are cultivated, etc. You then situate yourself and your business as part of the ever evolving history of coffee. The idea is to make your product or service sound exciting, relevant, and worthwhile using history.

3) The Guru-Driven Story.

A variant of the personal story, this focuses on a problem you faced and the "guru" that helped you to overcome the problem. Like in a personal story, you will want to focus on a painful, difficult, or challenging problem that you faced and the debilitating symptoms of this problem. However, in the model, you didn't come up with a solution to the problem. Endowed with the wisdom and the insight of this guru, you are now here to help individuals who are facing the challenge you faced before. This helps to boost credibility with the target audience, facilitating a connection.

Using one of the above mentioned models will help you to tailor your own personal story and use to market your product or service and effectively target you potential audience. When someone lands on your website, your personal story can help your target audience relate to you, and then move them along to hit the buy button.