The golden rule in marketing is to walk in the target audience’s shoes and understand their preferences, expectations from the product and loyalty constraints. If you wouldn’t watch, read or use it yourself, how do you expect your target audience to return the favor?
The busier the target audience, the more engaging your content needs to be, making the content curation strategy a challenge for most brands. With an average attention span of just 8 seconds, it is no cake walk to capture their attention and ensure a high brand recall. To put things in perspective, by the time you would have completed reading this statement, your audience would have lost their interest.
This fact is a bit difficult to stimulate interest if the time span is negligible, but how did people succeed to keep their audiences’ engaged for longer durations?
Let us put ourselves through this test.
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Poem of Masses- Storytelling
“She peeked out of the blanket, once and then twice, contemplating the removal of it from her face. How else she was supposed to see the stars, she wondered. As she focused on the dark inside her little tent, she could imagine them sparkle on the roof, she could create random shapes from these tiny dots. She knew they were not real but nonetheless they were enchanting.
Slowly, she lifted the blanket, her hair disheveled as it was ripped off and then the sparkle caught her eyes. There it was, beautiful as always. Even before she could stretch her lips to smile, the attack happened, is that what was scaring her, to begin with? One hit right on her nose; another blow came behind the ear. She quickly took her hands out of the blanket to protect her but that only left her more exposed. Suddenly her mother barged in the door, with the weapon in hand, 7 seconds later, the enemy was destroyed and the battle won.
Who was this enemy? Cruel enough to attack a child in their bed in the middle of the night? It was what every parent’s nightmares’ are made of, mosquitoes. The weapon, the hero of our story is a mosquito repellent fast card.”
Controlling & Responding
“Mosquitoes are the biggest threat to kids in rainy seasons; they cause several contagious diseases such as dengue, malaria, yellow fever etc. It is very important for a child to have a good night’s sleep but mosquitoes can take that away. Therefore, one should use a repellent…..”
It is no rocket science to know which one would capture your attention better. This leads to conclude that the most irresistible form of content marketing is storytelling.
A whopping 92% of consumers prefer stories over prosaic advertisements; let us have a look why these numbers should impact your strategic digital marketing plans.
Overload of Sales Content on the Web
Even though people are always searching for new content, they do not always find direct sales pitch attractive. They want something that speaks to them and is trying to tell them a little more than pros and cons of a product. This year, brands are supporting what we call social change and stories that speak of them, for example, Audi’s Daughter Campaign, that tells the story of a father who is struggling to protect his daughter from gender bias.
The Emotional Hook
Never underestimate the power of raw emotions, sadness, happiness or even anger. The target audience appreciates something that moves them, people don’t mind soul-stirring ads, and they rather appreciate and fancy it. British Airways has presented some of the best examples in the category; they are always careful not to take touch extremes but still speak thousands of words. Here, a British air hostess is helpful and compassionate with an old Indian woman by making her feel at home in a strange country. This particular ad killed two birds with one stone; it helps their potential employees see the ease of working in the company and the consumers to get a feel of the personal care being offered.
Build Up
A good story teller would tell you a story but only when you are ready for it, they build up the curiosity. They start living the lives of these characters and connect to the brand in a similar manner. This very feature makes it perfect for marketing as it leaves them coming back for more.
Higher Brand Recall and Retention
It is easy to remember a story-line but difficult to remember the dialogues, a story in an ad help people remember the brand message much more easily than any other communication method.
The use of storytelling in marketing can change your social media marketing game as well, it has higher chances of going viral than a traditional ad campaign.
A content creation agency that incorporates storytelling in your plans is the one you should settle on.
