Business Storytelling: How to Drive Customer Engagement

Not familiar with business storytelling? It’s time to get familiar quickly because storytelling has everything to do with driving customer engagement for sales.

When you wrap important information into a story, you increase engagement and improve recall. Smart marketers know this, and that’s why they use storytelling as a tool for engaging customers. Business storytelling helps brands become unforgettable to their target audience.

In fact, business storytelling works so well, it has become an integral part of the marketing process. Through storytelling, businesses just like yours, can better connect with your target audience, increase trust in authority, and stay engaged with your customers.

Unfortunately, many businesses are reluctant to use storytelling.

They just don’t know how to incorporate that into their marketing efforts in a way that feels organic, and not forced. If you see the value in storytelling but are unsure about how to use it in your marketing, keep reading.

The best stories keep the audience in mind

Before you can tell a good story, you have to understand your audience and what they need. You’ll be using storytelling to reach a specific audience. To do that you need to know as much about them as possible.

Demographics are a good place to start. You can draw some conclusions from that, but it’s better if you can dig a bit deeper. What are your audience’s values, interests, hobbies, needs, preferences, and concerns.

Tell a variety of stories to connect with your audience

Anything that you want to tell your audience and anything they want to know about can nearly always be communicated via a story. Think about some of the typical questions customers might have before they decide to do business with a particular company.

• Is this company trustworthy?
• Will they have the products they need?
• Do they share my values? If I spend money there, will it go towards things that I support?
• Do they have the experience required to deliver a product that is worthy?
• Will I have a good experience dealing with this company?

Here are some stories that you can share to communicate with your audience about your brand, your values, and your products.

• How you decided to begin offering the specific products and services that you do.
• Any challenges you faced when bringing your products to market.
• The story of your company’s launch, and the challenges you’ve overcome along the way.
• Stories about your employees oh, such as interesting experiences at work, challenges they faced and overcome, and stories about their passions and interests.
• user-generated content from customers about their experiences with your company and products.
• Stories about going above and beyond to help customers solve problems.

You can also share stories that don’t have an absolutely concrete connection to your products and services. Remember that part of branding is creating a feeling. It’s about building an association between your company and specific emotions and sentiments. One thing that you can do is curate stories that you believe are relevant to your branding, and that will touch your audience on an emotional level.

For example, if your company sells pet products, you might share stories about animal rescues or profile people in the community who work to help animals in crisis. Doing this would help you communicate your values to your audience, and provide content that would drive engagement.

Use your about us page to share your core story

Your website is your home base, and ultimately where you want your customers to arrive. When they do, many will take a glance at your About Us page to get more information. Unfortunately, if your page is just a dry inventory of corporate info, you won’t get the attention you need.

Instead, use what you know about your audience to share information about your company in the form of a story. Depending on your audience, you could share a motivational story about challenges your founder overcame, you could discuss what motivated you to focus on your particular products, or something else. The idea is to connect with your audience.

Whatever you decide, this is likely to be your brand’s core story. It must be well written. It should also contain great visuals. You can even incorporate animation. If you need help with creating an original branding story with high-quality visual elements, that is professionally edited, take a look at the following tools.

• Grammarly: An app as well as a plugin that automates grammar checking.
• WriteScout: A professional writing service that offers business copywriting including social media content.
• Canva: A free tool that allows users to add visual elements to their content. Perfect for users who are not very technically competent.
• Writing Judge: A clearinghouse of writing service reviews for brands seeking professional writing, proofreading, and editing assistance.
• WhiteSmoke: An English language spelling and grammar checking utility. Works for all users, but is particularly well suited for ESL writers.
• Studyker: Another option for those seeking professional copywriting support.
• Powtoon: A tool for adding simple animations to online content and presentations.

Social Media is The Perfect Platform for Sharing and Telling Stories

Social media is a great place to share and promote for business storytelling. It’s also the perfect platform for boosting engagement. Not only can you share your stories, but you can also engage in conversations with your audience, and your followers can broadcast your stories by liking and sharing them.

In addition to this, you can use social media to look for brand mentions, share customer’s stories about their experiences with your brand, and engage in those conversations as well.

Here is something to consider.

You will be more likely to earn engagement on social media than through any other channel. Because of this, it’s important for you to have a powerful social media presence, and to consistently share stories and other content.

Engaging Stories Have Visuals

Not only do engaging stories have visuals, but a story can also be entirely or almost entirely visual. You can use photographs, images, graphs, charts, GIFs, and other visual elements to enhance your stories. You can even tell entire stories through the use of videos, animations, and infographics.

Tell Your Stories Across a Variety of Platforms

By now, it should be clear that you have plenty of stories to tell about your business and brand. You can share these stories on your website, and on your social media channels. Now, it’s time to consider other options. If you want to expand your reach, consider sharing your stories through:

• Blogging
• Writing Articles and Guest Posts for Industry Publications
• Podcasts
• Public Blogging Platforms Such as Medium

Final Thoughts

Storytelling is an ancient craft. Throughout history, it has been used to share information, inspire action, and create an emotional response. If you think about it, that aligns perfectly with the goals of most marketing professionals. By using the tips above, you can use business storytelling to increase customer engagement, and boost familiarity with your brand.