Marketing Storytelling: Tell Me a Story or Shut Up

Cave paintings and etchings represent humanity’s first attempt to convey information in a visual medium. Never before had people immortalized ideas.

Their significance can’t be overstated.

Without cave paintings, we could never have made the leap to the written word and all the knowledge and learning that came from it.

But 30,000 years is nothing.

Humans have been on Earth for nearly 300,000 years. And for 90% of that time, we couldn’t read, write, or draw.

So how did parents teach their children? How did the wise counsel the immature? How was anybody supposed to know to avoid the red berries and only eat the blue ones?

Mind control… the good kind

Humans spent thousands of generations evolving and adapting to verbal, narrative communication.

And that adaptation is so deeply embedded in our DNA that we can even map individual hormones to specific emotions, brought on by different types of story:

• Dopamine comes from suspense, increases focus & memory
• Oxytocin comes from empathy, increases trust & bonding
• Endorphins come from laughter, increase creativity & joy

Storytelling is a form of mind control. It’s all about brain chemistry. This is how our brains are evolved to think, remember, and use new information.

Brain chemistry for marketers

Digital marketing campaigns have to drive leads or customers. All the link building, impressions, CTR, and ROAS data in the world are meaningless if they don’t work — if they don’t make people do something.

That’s where brain chemistry comes in.

In all major areas of digital marketing—SEO, PPC, SMM and social ads—a good story will grab and hold your audience’s attention better than a direct sell.

That’s the bulk of my job as a digital marketing strategist.

My team and I find ways to make our clients’ outreach and promotion efforts as effective as possible—and most of the time that means we have to help them craft a story.

Here’s what that looks like—

At this point, it’s worth clarifying that I’m not talking about the craze of every social platform on Earth adding short videos and calling them “stories.”

Despite the ubiquity of this feature nowadays, that’s not what I’m talking about.

Webster says a story is:

Story

sto·​ry | \ˈstȯr-ē

An account of incidents or events, an anecdote (especially an amusing one), or the intrigue/plot of a narrative or dramatic work.

But I bet you already knew that.

So what does a story look like in the 4 major sectors of digital marketing?

A punnet square, duh.

There are more than just these choices, obviously. But these are some of the big ones.

You have to consider your audience and the type of story that might resonate best with them.

A major—and often overlooked—part of that consideration is the channel they use to find you and/or your story, and the common User Experience conventions of that channel.

Storytelling in Paid Search (PPC)

This is almost exclusively Google Ads (formerly Adwords). How do you tell a story in limited screen real estate and competitive bid market of PPC ads?

Creatively. And think like Twitter.

BuzzFeed + Buzzsumo = 3X Ad CTR, via WordStream.

Keep it short and sweet, but make sure you have a hook. The headline is crucial, but most times a DKI or bland “Best Product Ever Start Today!” won’t stand out.

Storytelling in Organic Search (SEO)

This one is fairly easy, but it requires a shift in the way many people view search traffic.

Inbound Marketing and long tail SEO often include the principles of storytelling, but ecommerce and/or purchase intent SEO rarely does.

Joshua Glenn, a writer and analyst, teamed up with journalist Rob Walker to study storytelling and its effects on—of all things—eBay knickknacks.

They bought 200 objects for about $1.25 each. They then wrote stories about each object, and re-listed the objects.

After spending $250 to buy the objects, they sold them—with fictional stories attached…

And made $8,000.

eBay crap + storytelling = $$$$$

That’s a 3,200% increase in dollars-and-cents material value by changing nothing other than a story to attach some meaning to each knickknack.

The system works.

Storytelling in Paid Social (FB, IG, et al.)

This one is well-documented.

Source for both of those screenshots came from AdEspresso.

Social media marketing is social. It doesn’t work if you try to treat it like PPC or search ads. People are passively consuming social content. The ads that work will fit that model.

Gary Vee wrote about this way back in 2013, and his words are only truer today, 5 years later.

This slide is from Gary’s Storytelling in 2014 slide deck and presentation.

Storytelling in Organic Social (groups, etc)

This one tends to be a little easier. In most cases, storytelling fits fairly well into most people’s everyday use of social media platforms.

Cinderella Data Visualization, via Visage.

See that giant dropoff? That’s how stories go from good to great. Conflict and triumph are the oldest archetypes in the book.

Yes, this approach makes your job harder. But it also makes your marketing efforts much more effective. And isn’t that the goal?

Too many marketers are willing to invest more money than time. That’s cool and all. Good marketing requires investment.

But stop looking for shortcuts. Do the work, spend the time, and make your product better.