Story Telling Marketing Services Southampton

(First appeared in Second Opinion Marketing e-bulletin May 2011 - subscribe to the e-bulletin here )

Are you emotionally engaging readers, customers and prospects? 

Over many years soap operas have been used to change behaviour, from The Archers teaching farmers how to increase productivity 60 years ago, to Mexican TV drama today with a family planning message. This demonstrates how powerful the art of storytelling is in getting a message across and changing attitudes and behaviours.

A great story can engage, educate and entertain but how can we embrace the power of storytelling in business?

When you look at how you are getting across your marketing message can you see the story? Do you show by example how your products, service or advice enrich the life (or in our case more likely the business) of the reader or listener?

Well written case studies are a great story telling opportunity for businesses, providing you with an opportunity to tell a story with a beginning, middle and an end. To follow the sequence of events as they occurred and show progression to the solution that you delivered. A well written story should never leave you asking ‘why’ or being unconvinced of the argument but it might make you stop and think, challenge pre conceptions or even result in a full about-turn in your opinion.

A case study provides you with the opportunity to give some background details about the customer, setting the scene if you like and getting the reader interested in what you have to say. The scene setting will include discussion of the problems that they faced or opportunities you were able to help them to exploit.

You can explain by way of real examples and the customer’s words what you did and why it was so important to them, and ideally you will be able to quantify the significant benefits that they have received as a result.

In researching this article I read many story telling tips, often relating to storytelling for children, but I found this comment especially thought provoking:

“Many professions such as historians, lawyers, physicians, economists and psychologists take advantage of the power of stories to illustrate and frame reality in order to help people better understand their subject matter.”

How many businesses, salesmen, article and blog writers, recognise the need to ‘frame reality’ to help others understand their products, services or thoughts?

So what are the secrets of successful storytelling, how can we all become better story tellers, whether we are writing an article, giving an important speech or making a crucial sales presentation?

Here’s a collection of what I felt were the most important storytelling tips:

1. Get your structure right. Every story has to have a beginning, middle and an end. When writing or preparing a presentation you need a clear vision of what message you are trying to convey.
2. Choose your words caref...