Impact of Great Storytelling on Business

• Why does every business need storytelling?
• Elements of an impactful storytelling

The first thing to strike someone’s mind when we ask the purpose of storytelling is “entertainment,” but it goes beyond that. If used effectively, it is a powerful and engaging mode to communicate, connect, and learn from one another. It primarily holds true when we talk about the way we conduct our business. 

Nothing can grab the immediate attention of your audience as quickly and for a prolonged period than a compelling and relatable story. No matter how digitally advance we get, tapping onto customer’s emotions is and will always be a challenging yet essential task for businesses. 

There is a reason why certain start-ups gain massive recognition- it is because they can connect with their audience on a more profound level by telling a relatable story that hits the emotional chord. 

Your target audience is looking for reasons to connect with your business and find a reason as to how the products and services you are offering will add value to their life. You need a powerful story not only to strike a chord with your target audience but forge and foster a long term relationship. 

• It is more than just numbers and facts:

While it’s true that a business’s success is defined by the numbers, it has been able to achieve and the facts that make it stand out of the crowd, it won’t engage the audience long enough to convert into a customer or develop a long term relationship. It is only natural for the human brain to remember how they felt after reading a story far better than some specific data. 

• It motivates and influences the audience:

When a customer sees your business solving their real issues, they are more invested in what value can it bring to their buying journey. It acts as a natural motivator to bring the audience to your website and convert them from visitors to your customers. Evoking emotions that make the customer click on your product and service is the goal of every business, and storytelling is one potent way to do this. Storytelling is a way of giving a face to your brand, which, with the target audience, will relate. 

• It gives a competitive edge:

Businesses are churning out predictable, repetitive, mainstream content like a factory. To be able to let your target audience listen to your unique voice, you need to come up with a great story with which you will present your products and service. If communicated right, storytelling can be the support system your marketing strategy needs. No matter the vision or how potent the marketing strategy is, if you do not have a clear story that conveys the business’s message, it will fall flat. 

• It helps strengthen brand loyalty: 

Storytelling is an excellent way of letting your audience know and understand the values and beliefs with which you conduct your business and maintain the relationship with the customers. By letting the people know your unique story about how did you come across the idea, how did you materialize it and what are you planning ahead, will help build your brand, forge and foster brand loyalty. 

But what makes great story are certain elements that add to entice the audience and build a long term relationship:

• A Goal:

What do you want to achieve with the story? What kind of experience do you want to generate when the audience is done going through your advertisement? Understand your customers, their shopping patterns, and then decide on the type of transformation you want in your relationship with the customer. 

• The Problem:

Why should the audience engage with your business? How are you adding value to the lives of your customers? Your story should be able to address and fix the pain points of your customer. That could be physical, emotional, or psychological. Create a story in a manner that it talks about how your brand presents a unique way to resolve the public’s issue. 

• Data:

Just like how throwing numbers and facts won’t be helpful in engaging an audience, similarly, you need data to support your story and make it believable. But it is important to keep in mind that the data and facts are added naturally so that they flow with the story. 

• Personal Touch:

A story is believable and authentic when it is narrated with an emotional backdrop. It should be your story, your business’s story, and no two personal stories are going to be the same, which is what will strike the chord with the audience. 

Now we have known how storytelling can help a business and what elements make for a powerful story, but you can’t just go about telling a story without any reason, right? You have to pick the right time.

So how do you plan to tell your story?

I would conclude my discussion with the quote by one of the famous storytellers the digital world has seen, Gary Vaynerchuck, “Storytelling is by far the most underrated skills in the business.”