Storytelling. It has always been the key for teaching and entertaining even before the recorded history. And now in our time, it is also widely used for marketing. Well, what can storytelling got to do with marketing, you may ask. The answer is simple. It’s known that storytelling has a strong power to attract people’s attention, persuade them and make them feel drawn to. So why don’t you give it a try at your next and trade show exhibiting and see amazing results?
What is storytelling?
Storytelling doesn’t have to be literally telling a story only. Storytelling is a way to connect with people. It sometimes can be an image, a video or a text but it should always present a slice of life that your audience can feel familiar with.
What can storytelling do in the name of marketing?
Storytelling can give your brand a personality. Have you ever thought about that? Sometimes you just love a brand even if you are not one of their customers. You love them because you find them genuine, just like you feel drawn to a person because you find their story interesting and suddenly sparks fly between you and them. Storytelling can create these sparks between your brand and your audience.
Storytelling is officially more effective. According to remarkable marketing researches, almost %90 of consumers tend to get drawn to the story-like ads and the brain processes images 60x faster than it processes the words. What does this information tell us? Giving your customers visual stories as ads will work much better than those old school ads.
Storytelling will make your customers come back more. When you exhibit at a trade show, your biggest aim is undoubtedly a big ROI and please be at ease because storytelling will be your biggest weapon on this. All it takes is a bit creativity and make your customers feel more connected to your brand. Your stories don’t have to be poetry. It will be more than enough if you can find the way to your audience’s heart.
If you are still not convinced, you may take a look at Adam Toren’s article, Storytelling Could Bring Your Brand to Life and Strengthen Your Marketing Impact on Entrepreneur and see how amazing results you can get using storytelling in your marketing campaigns.
How can you employ storytelling for your trade show marketing campaign?
Yes, this is the question. You now have a general opinion about what storytelling means in marketing but how can you employ storytelling for your trade show marketing campaign? Actually, you don’t have to invent a story. You just need to find your company a voice and catch the harmony with your audience’s voice which will make them relate with your brand.
As a first step, you should start with identifying your aim and find your company a matching story. You don’t need to wait for a muse to create one. Just think about your brand, your targets and your audience. It will be more than enough if you can reflect your brand in a genuine tone.
If you have difficulty in creating a story for your brand, you can start with asking these questions to yourself.
- What is your company mostly good at?
- What is the most interesting thing about your company?
- How do your staff see your brand? (your staff may always have a different and amazing point of view)
- Think about your targets, your audience and their expectations from your company. Always try to go beyond their expectations and surprise them like never done before.
Still can’t build your story or do you think your story is not good enough? You have a remedy. You can seek help from the professionals such as Poptype or Brand Story.
Now that you have a story, you need to present it to your customers. The trick is that you have to make your audience captivated by your story because they will be more likely to come back when they can relate to your story. If your story is interesting enough for your audience, then the limit of the ways that you present your story is your imagination. You find your characters (which should be inspired from your audience of course), you create a plot that will arouse curiosity, scatter some emotional elements in your story and there you go! Use your story anywhere in any form and reach even greater masses at your next trade show experience!