Back to the Basics: Storytelling 101

In its simplest form, marketing is storytelling.

Let’s briefly revisit the lessons from elementary English class about what storytelling is. It’s about the who, what, when, where, why and how. Now as a marketer, you get to decide how to communicate these details. You are the person at the campfire, capable of luring and captivating people into the narrative as the story unfolds with every word.

No matter what your method is, it most likely follows a basic story structure. The story begins, a problem arises and then the story culminates with a solution to that problem. Unless it’s a tragedy, and then we’re talking Shakespeare.

My question to you is simple: are your marketing efforts reflecting the simple structure of a narrative?

To quote Confucius, “Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” And sometimes as marketers, we can find ourselves complicating our own efforts, effecting the story in which we are telling.

That’s a tragedy (now we’re talking Shakespeare).

For your next marketing message, try simplifying the solution and bring it back to the one idea, one narrative that you are trying to communicate for that one segment within your community. Really focus on that last part, because for a story to resonate deeply, the audience must first connect with the story. Sure, you can have a generalized message that appeals to a very broad audience, but how much will it resonate with them?

Let’s take video for example. According to 2012 State of Online Video from SundaySky “viewers spend 2.5x more time watching personally relevant short-form videos.” In other words, if a video has a targeted audience and relevant message, or story, then viewers will likely be more engaged.

Within our own efforts at PTP New Media, our video production process has been simplified so the story is not lost along the way. Before, we might have produced a video just because we needed a video. There was no reasoning or thought behind it. We shot first and strategized later.

At other times, while we might have been a bit more strategic in the execution, there were too many message we were trying to cram in the video.

But we redefined our own process to become more effective and strategic with our efforts. We took the same principles of storytelling learned in elementary English and now apply that thinking to every single video we plan to produce.

• Why is the video being made?
• Who is the target audience?
• What is the one message of the video?
• When will this video go live?
• Where will this video live?
• How will we define success?

By asking why first, we can determine if video is an appropriate vehicle to drive the message. In some cases, video might be the perfect channel to use. But at other times, video might not work. And if not, that’s OK. By asking these questions before the camera starts rolling, we can better use our internal resources and become more efficient and effective marketers.

How about taking that same thinking and apply that across the board for other marketing pieces?

Ultimately it’s about connecting the right message to the right people at the right place and at the right time. Or, in terms of storytelling basics, it’s the what for the who at the where and the when. Because we know the why (in your case, your credit union’s mission statement) and the how (through the services your credit union provides).

How are you using the basic structure of storytelling to help become more efficient and effective marketers? Are you? Feel free to share your thoughts below.