Storytelling is a marketing technique that helps to convey information through a story or story. It is used in advertising, social networks, personal and corporate blogs.

What tasks does storytelling solve?
To talk about the values of the brand. If you say: we care about customers, we value freedom of movement, it will be just a set of general phrases. A story helps to specify the wording and demonstrate that the mission and values are not an empty phrase for your employees.

Sell a product or service. Storytelling is used for selling and advertising materials. Stories attract attention and inspire more credibility than classic calls to buy.

Demonstrate a solution to the problem. A living story clearly shows the client's pains, dreams, problems, desires. Reading such a story, the client thinks: "It's me! I had it!"

Storytelling can be used at any stage of the sales funnel — to help the client realize the problem, find a solution, choose a product, or work out objections.

To tell about internal processes. Your customers and subscribers are interested in seeing the processes from the inside, tracking how the idea of the product was born or how an ordinary manager grew to the head of the department.

All this can be done as a kind of native advertising. Show how you comply with sanitary standards and clean your hands, what kind and friendly atmosphere reigns in offices, or what serious approach you demonstrate in your work.

Such stories will not only build more trust with customers, but will also help promote your brand as an employer in the eyes of employees and job seekers.

Promote a personal brand. The best way to reveal the personality of an expert from the right side is to tell a life story. To show how dedicated they are to their work or how important family values are to them.

Evoke vivid emotions. Storytelling is often used in social advertising. With the help of stories, you can draw attention to an acute problem and simply remind of eternal values.

Stories are an ideal scenario for videos. They are often used in display advertising. A colorful mini-film can reveal the personalities of the characters and evoke empathy.

Sometimes companies shoot not short 30-second videos, but full-fledged advertising shorts. This requires significant costs for the script, direction and work of actors. But such content often goes viral.

Elements of storytelling
Aim. The global goal of storytelling is to increase the company's profits. But for a good story, the goal must be concretized.

A clear goal will help you make the right plot and lead to the right conclusion.

Hero. It can be alone or in the company of other characters, be real or fictional. The main thing is that you place it in a context that is close to the audience. Then the story will resonate with your customers.

For example, to advertise a product that is designed for remote workers, it is better to choose some digital specialist who sits at the computer every day at home, then in a coworking space, or right on the beach.

Plot. These are the events that you describe in your story. What happened, why it happened, how the hero got out of the situation and how it all ended.

Morality (conclusion). At the end of the story, draw a conclusion, do not leave this work to the reader or viewer. And after the conclusion, you can add a call to action if it fits your goal.

How to Write a Story
In storytelling, any story should be easy and interesting to read. Even if you write about CNC machines or training at the cosmodrome. How to achieve this:

Explore the examples. Read a couple of business stories from the examples above. See how to build sentences and follow the rhythm of the narrative.

Determine the tone of voice. Will you address you or you? Are slang phrases and witty humor appropriate? It will be good if the story follows the rules of communication with your customers in newsletters or social networks.

Evoke emotions. Let the user read to the end, think about it, and share your content.

How to come up with the story itself:

Define goals and meanings. Any story begins with a goal. What do you want to say? What thoughts and emotions to evoke in the audience? What meanings of your business or significant values to convey?

It is better not just to scroll through these answers in your head, but to write them down. Keep them in front of your eyes as you work on the story. This will help you focus on what is important.

Find a hero. In commercial blogs, the hero is often a potential client or employee. In expert blogs, it is the expert himself or his entourage. 

Come up with a plot. To create a story, you need to answer a few classic journalistic questions: What happened? Where and to whom did it happen? How did the characters behave? How did it end?

This is how you will sketch out the plot. When you write the dialogues of the characters, remember that they should be lively and not stereotyped.

Do not forget about the meanings and goals that you described at the first stage. The characters and the plot should help solve your problems and transmit values.

Add details. To make the story bright and colorful, you need details. Immerse yourself in the topic, find out the problems and dreams of the audience. Communicate with people who can give you the most detailed description of characters and situations. These can be account managers, HR, salespeople, waiters of your restaurant. Let them tell about funny incidents, describe their emotions and customer reactions.

After such conversations, sometimes you don't have to invent anything. You will have a ready-made situation from life that needs to be presented correctly, add a conclusion, and emphasize the values of your company.

Choose a format. Sometimes you need to tell a real story, for example, describe the development of a business over the years. In this case, there is no need to come up with a chronology of events. Just tell us how it really was. Do it in a format that will be of interest to the target audience.

History does not have to be described only in text. Nowadays, visual storytelling is gaining more and more popularity. People respond well to comics, sketches, hand-drawn videos, timelines, and simple graphs.

Techniques for Presenting History
Monomyth. The audience, together with the hero, goes through the path in chronological order, from beginning to end. The hero overcomes difficulties, and the reader, viewer or listener observes his development. Classic examples are fairy tales and cartoons "Cinderella", "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". This technique is often used to promote a personal brand.

Frame. One storyline combines several separate stories. Each of the stories is independent and understandable to the audience.

Sitcom series or many commercials on the same topic are built on this principle.

Comparison. It is very often used in advertising. The main thing is to show a clear bright picture, how bad it was before and how cool it will be after using the product.

Start from the middle. The viewer is shown the culmination of the plot. This makes him want to watch and read the story to the end to find out how it happened and what the characters will do next.

Petals. You have the core of the flower — the key idea, and you have petals — the plots that reveal it. This approach helps to find triggers for influencing different audiences, to strengthen the key idea.

Any technique can be used to present the story. They are perfectly mastered by screenwriters. They write not only for films and TV shows, but also come up with scripts for stories, commercials, and corporate videos.