Using storytelling to connect with your customers
Contents
- The Marketing Tactic You Can't Ignore in Tourism
- The Science of Storytelling: Why does it work?
- What is it and why do you need to know?
- Why you need to find your ‘why’
- What is the tone of voice for your brand
- Using storytelling to connect with your customers
- Effective brand marketing is more than just features and benefits
- Emotional marketing: why it’s important when using storytelling to sell your brand
- Storytelling across all your marketing platforms and mediums
- Digital Storytelling: Why Is It Important for Your Brand
Contents
- The Marketing Tactic You Can't Ignore in Tourism
- The Science of Storytelling: Why does it work?
- What is it and why do you need to know?
- Why you need to find your ‘why’
- What is the tone of voice for your brand
- Using storytelling to connect with your customers
- Effective brand marketing is more than just features and benefits
- Emotional marketing: why it’s important when using storytelling to sell your brand
- Storytelling across all your marketing platforms and mediums
- Digital Storytelling: Why Is It Important for Your Brand
Using storytelling to connect with your customers
By integrating storytelling into your marketing strategy and adopting it at every level of the customer journey you can create a much more enjoyable experience for visitors and customers when engaging with your brand.
First it’s important to consider what your customer/visitor journey looks like for your tourists.
There are eight stages of the customer journey your customers will go through before, during and after a purchase.
In some cases you will be able to easily identify these stages, especially when you have big ticket items, such as a package holiday, and the customer journey is one that takes time and consideration. For smaller purchases, things like one-off ticket purchases or gift shop items, it will be harder to define them and more difficult to target the customer at separate stages of the journey – this is why some schools of thought will decrease the stages and often merge some together.
Regardless of how long these stages are and the time spent by a visitor in them it is vital that you target your story and other marketing and sales activities to the right customer at the right point in the customer journey.
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Storytelling allows a business to establish its identity and serves as a persistent marketing tool. It also enables every level of the sales funnel. From generating awareness and leads, to closing a sale, storytelling can be a powerful influence on the customer journey.
Think of your brand as a person, you want that person to resonate with each of your customers. Like a person your brand has a name, personality, character and reputation. Just like people you can respect, like or even love a brand.
For many customers they want to feel like a brand is an old friend, someone they know and trust. Just like people, there are many brands your customers will warm to and some they won’t.
Here are 4 reasons why storytelling is vital to your sales process:
1. Customers will relate to your story
Stories can be relatable, so a business with an engaging story behind it will generate more awareness and increase the likelihood of discovery. Good stories spread by word of mouth – something that’s considered by many to be the most potent form of advertising.
Customers may see themselves reflected in your company story. Their own personal/professional narrative may echo your own. Even if they don't buy from you immediately, storytelling is an effective way to get on their radar.
You never know when they may need what you offer. Should this day come, you're likely to be their first port of call. This is especially true if your story resonated with them in some way.
2. Good stories create compelling characters
People buy from those they like; this is why celebrity endorsement has been used as a sales tool for many years. But this principle also applies to the characters who created or represent a business.
Some companies are built around charismatic personalities. Imagine Apple without Steve Jobs or Virgin without Richard Branson. We buy from people we like, trust or admire. If your company is owned, was started by, or now run by a charismatic or eccentric individual, especially one who has an interesting story behind them – then lean into this.
They don't have to be larger than life figures like Jobs or Branson. Your compelling character may simply be an expert in their field. Their expertise can promote trust and confidence in your brand. Your product is the best on the market because they are the best creator of it etc.
It may even be your founders' unique vision or the story of how they cleverly identified a gap in the market. You can also incorporate stories of how these characters helped others and how your customers can also attain what they want/need — through you.
3. Customers want to support a positive cause
Businesses that have adopted a bold and optimistic vision of the future are often supported over those that have not. There's a reason why most people choose to buy eggs from free-range farmers. They still want to eat eggs, but they care about the welfare of the chicken that produced them. This is a worthy cause, and customers vote with their wallets.
A worthy cause is vital to storytelling. It turns your company mission statement into a crusade for change or a better tomorrow. Buying from you instead of your competitors helps your customers get closer to reaching your story's climax – and they get to be part of it.
This could be any goal, as long as it helps your customers or makes the world a better place. It all depends on what part of the industry you’re in. Working towards this cause needs to be part of your company narrative. This will encourage more customers to buy into your story – and buy from you.
4. People are becoming resistant to traditional marketing
Customers are savvier and more clued in than ever today. They understand the difference between a story that's designed for marketing and something genuine. When they weigh up a decision to purchase, they take these factors into account.
If your customer feels they are being manipulated or patronised they will take their business elsewhere. This is why all storytelling efforts need to be subtle and geared towards the customer's interests without them feeling misled in any way.
Many traditional sales methods and marketing tactics are losing their power, for example, applying pressure is a useful sales tactic, but it will always put off a select few potential buyers, especially in a marketplace that offers plenty of alternatives.
A narrative-driven approach is much more covert and far more powerful if done correctly.
Brand Storytelling is the future; the "This is who we are, and this is what we do" approach is no longer enough. Embrace the art of storytelling to win the hearts and minds of your customers.
At all aspects of the customer experience visitors want to be enticed, wowed, enthralled and excited about your brand.