Storytelling marketing uses a narrative format when communicating marketing messages to business audiences.
The reason why stories work so well in corporate marketing is because stories allow us to connect better with our audiences.
Storytelling marketing invites your target audience into a story with your company.
Candidate Journey of the Information Era™️, a key element in the Magnetic Employer Branding Method™️, gives you an employer branding framework to invite your talent target audiences for a journey with your company.
Combining these two gives you even more strong format for building your modern employer brand.
In this week’s episode of the Building a Modern Employer Brand podcast, I talk about storytelling as a form of effective marketing.
In this episode:
- What is storytelling marketing?
- Why does it benefit you and your company to care about storytelling?
- How stories affect our brain and make storytelling marketing so effective.
Check out also a previous episode (46): “What is business storytelling?”
What is storytelling marketing?
Storytelling marketing uses the narrative format in business communication and marketing.
Typical business communication and marketing is about messaging facts and benefits. Whereas storytelling marketing focuses on triggering feelings because emotions tend to inspire people to act.
Stories work especially well in brand marketing because branding is all about building emotional connections towards the brand subject or object.
That’s also why the modern, Magnetic Employer Branding Method™️ applies storytelling to invite talents into the Candidate Journey with your organization.
Why storytelling is referred as the “art” of telling stories?
Google storytelling marketing and you’ll notice multiple references to the “art of storytelling”.
It is an art. Learning how to write stories requires skill and a lot of practice. I’ve studied and practices writing stories in business since 2015 and I feel like there is still a whole lot to learn!
What makes storytelling an art is mastering the scientific impact stories have on the brain.
The human brain evolved to use stories as a decoder for reality. Stories became a sense-making mechanism for the brain way before written language.
As soon as we start hearing stories as a child, we are able to recognize an effective story. This is because stories were built in the architecture of the brain.
“Most people know what a story is. Until they sit down to write one.”
(Mary) Flannery O’Connor, author and one of America’s greatest fiction writers.
When we hear a story, we don’t even have to think about it. That’s why we are also unaware of the impact hearing a story has on us.
According to author Lisa Cron (Wired for the Story): “The power of story on us is biological. We automatically respond to a story.”
The problem for story marketers is that writing a story is not a built-in skill.
What is the difference between narrative marketing and actual storytelling?
Most business writers begin with changing from the media release type of communication to the narrative format first. This is a great way to start practicing the art of storytelling.
Narrative marketing mirrors stories with the systematic flow that moves the audience forward.
Each narrative message consists of a beginning, middle and the end.
- The beginning is used as a hook catch the audience’s attention. Starting with the audience’s problem is the best way to catch attention.
- The middle part tells how it gets solved and what life looks like after the struggle is gone.
- The end inspires the audience to take action and follow your lead to get rid of the problem.
Actual storytelling is more complex. There is the plot we assume to be the story we read or hear. But the actual story is not the plot. It is what happened to the main character, also known as the protagonist, before the plot begins.
When we read the plot or watch it as a movie, the actual story takes place in between the lines. We experience as feelings and emotions as we relate to the story and mirror ourselves in the protagonist.
Even though you don’t need to become an actual storyteller to create effective storytelling marketing, through my own experiences, I find learning actual storytelling has made it much easier for me to write narrative marketing messages.
How the Magnetic Employer Branding Method™️ helps you to get started with narrative talent marketing
The Magnetic Employer Branding Method™️ I developed was designed to help you incorporate storytelling marketing in your employer brand messages and marketing.
Here are three of the five primary ways this method helps you to build your employer brand based on narrative marketing.
- The Method reverses the roles: Talent is the Hero and you as the employer position yourself as their trusted guide and work-to-life mentor.
- When you build the modern employer brand, it’s not about you as the employer. It’s about them, your talent target audience and how you as an employer can help them to achieve a better, more meaningful life.
- The Candidate Journey of the Information Era™️, a key element in this method, gives you the framework for planning and executing your modern employer brand.
- Your employer brand messages and marketing invite your talent audience members on this journey with your company.
- During this journey, your employer brand messages clarify how your talent audience members fit into your business story and how that story becomes their ideal career story.
- The Key Story Themes replace your EVP and give you the repeated themes for your narrative employer brand marketing.
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