Today’s consumers and corporate decision makers pay little attention to sales promises and banner advertising messages. Instead, they gravitate towards companies that use storytelling to sell their products and services. A recent report indicated that by concisely telling a brand’s story, companies could increase the value of their services or product by over 20 times. 92% of consumers want companies to make ads that feel like a story rather than a standard pitch. Here are five ways companies can leverage digital technology to boost their storytelling.
Use of Mini-Ads
It is no secret that most of the traditional advertising strategies are now ineffective in convincing prospects to make a purchase. Companies, therefore, need to come up with new ways of connecting with consumers. Most successful digital marketers use videos to convey the story of a product to potential customers. According to an article posted on Digital Marketing Institute, companies that use this visual media get 41% more website traffic than their counterparts do.
However, attention spans are getting smaller by the day, and so the video needs to be short and straight to the point. Facebook, one of the largest social networking sites, has already announced its plans to launch six-second ads that will allow marketers to tell their story quickly and spot-on. One of the advantages of using these mini-ads is that they have the power to lure the already content overwhelmed audience and spur engagement.
Consumer-Based Storytelling
Digital technology provides customers and consumers with numerous open platforms that they can use to share their opinions and thoughts about products. 92% of people trust honest reviews from peers than the traditional ads. You can successfully expand your reach, and hugely build your credibility if you allow your customers to tell their experience with your product or service.
For example, you can request your influential customers to write a guest post about your brand using first persona narrative and publish it on their blog in return for commissions or discounts on their next purchases. Airbnb is a good example of a company that has mastered the art of using this strategy to get more customers.
Data-Driven Storytelling
There exists a wealth of digital data online on virtually any topic. Scientific studies have proved that we human beings process images 60,000 times faster than blocks of text. Based on this statistic, you can engage better with potential customers if you use data to create visually stunning stories about your products or brand in general. By doing so, you will cut through the raft of noise online and offer detailed solutions to the problems our customers are facing.
Google Trends used this strategy in Lookback Campaign – the company collected the most valuable and relevant search data from the year before and used it to come up with an appealing video. The data gave millions of digital marketers’ viable ideas on how to create better and customer-centric campaigns.
Dark Social
Contrary to popular belief, dark social media is not as sinister as you might think. For starters, Dark Social is a form of social sharing that cannot be monitored or tracked accurately. That is, the data cannot be netted by various web analytics tools. Whenever you click on a link posted on any social media sites such as Twitter or Facebook, the respective analytics tool can reveal the exact source of the referral.
However, with the sharp increase in the use of private messaging apps such as WhatsApp and SMS, we are now presented with more referral sources. You cannot afford to ignore the impact that such referrals can have on your business. On a global scale, 70% of most online referrals now emanate from dark social. Therefore, companies can leverage these channels to tell their story engagingly and excitingly. The story should be crafted in such a way that it elicits positive emotions of the target audience for it to be effective in spurring engagement and sales.
Immersive Storytelling
Experts are of the idea that more than 200 million virtual reality headsets will be sold to consumers across the globe by 2020. With augmented reality increasingly becoming a powerful tool for business to get in touch with potential customers, VR can help brands to connect with prospects at a personal level.
Soon after the success of Pokemon Go, an augmented reality mobile application that was downloaded by more than 65 million people in the U.S alone last year, IBM plans to follow suit by collaborating with The New York Times to launch a VR app that will give users an opportunity to get access to a virtual museum. This virtual museum will have information about lesser-known people from history whose success influenced the current world in one way or another.
Indeed, digital technology can help companies to enhance their storytelling and get the most results. Try out each of these technologies and monitor the results to know which one suits your business.