02/07/2022
Remember the story of the three orange men?
It was the first marketing campaign used by Pepsi to launch Miranda into the market.
The story was about three tall, bald men dressed in black and painted in orange color.
They were first spotted parading popular streets, marketplaces, and cities whispering to each other with silent gestures and mimics, looking for any object with an orange color and holding a bottle of Miranda.
Onlookers were fascinated by their appearance that some thought they were aliens.
The three orange men became an obsession among spectators that it quadrupled the sales of Miranda in Nigeria and around the world in the mid 90s.
They were also featured in tv commercials, billboards, and major newspapers which scaled the popularity of Pepsi above its competitors.
It is common knowledge that marketing is key for creating traction.
But sometimes, we pay much attention to the technicalities and logistics behind our marketing strategies or campaign.
And pay less attention to the message or story our marketing structure needs to stimulate people's emotions towards our product or business.
You can spend time and money printing flyers about your product or service, decorating the entire town with it, or spend a huge budget running back-to-back advert on both digital and traditional platforms. If you don't have an interesting story or emotion-provoking message behind your marketing campaigns, then your costly efforts and resources could end in vain.
Storyselling, should be the length and breadth of your marketing strategy and campaigns because people buy with emotions not logic. And stories trigger emotions faster than the speed of a bullet.
There are three effective ways you can start implementing stories in promoting your product or service in the online space.
But before we dive in, it's important to understand that anyone can write or create a social media content
But not everyone can create a social media content that tells a good story and stimulate the right emotions which causes people to buy or at the very least, become prospects.
In storyselling,
First,
Create an origin story. People love a good origin story.
Before displaying pictures and flyers about your product telling people to contact you or send you a dm, throw in a little origin story about your brand or business.
let your followers or spectators know how you started; what motivated you in starting; and the problems your business intends to solve.
Secondly,
Share stories of customers or clients that have benefited from using your product or service.
Don't feel uncomfortable asking a satisfied customer for a review or feedback after they've purchased your product or hired your services.
Their reviews and feedback make a good story for your prospects to become convinced that your business is the real deal.
Finally,
Use what is called the broad-spectrum appeal. This is a powerful story technique used by Eric Edmeades, a reputable public speaker.
The trick is to tell stories about a famous person, or about a popular event that everyone can relate to, to pass a central message.
But in this case, you can use this technique to establish a premise about your business or product.
For example, if you sell skincare products, you can tell a story about a celebrity with an amazing skin tone and how women can achieve such skin tone using your product.
Don't neglect the story factor in your social media marketing strategy.
And remember that if a story is memorable and stimulating to you, chances are that it would affect your audiences and followers the same way when you share it as a content.
However, in telling a story ensure it relates to the call to action you want your audience or readers to take
Most entrepreneurs (or soloprenuers), tell stories that bore or confuse their readers because the story has nothing to do with the central message.
If you implement these three ways of storyselling your messaging and content would have more direction and impact on your readers.
If you have more ideas on storyselling or your experience using this technique in getting more conversion or leads, please share in the comments.
