Making Your Audience Care: How to Market Dull/Boring Brands

We now have merely a few hundred years of data and experience to assist us in evaluating the most effective and useful marketing methods. That includes marketing for brands that are less than exciting.

One thing we’ve learned in all that time is that using a variety of techniques and methods is always a good idea.

From self-help content to information loaded marketing strategies, every type of marketing content can have its place and purpose.

That includes storytelling, arguably one of the oldest methods of communication and marketing. Storytelling is also a great vehicle to get you past the hurdle of working in a dull industry.

Marketing with Storytelling Works

Understanding how storytelling can power your content marketing will allow your campaign the ability to develop thought leadership, attract potential clients and engage an audience.

Get your customers thinking, attract people and engage your audience – that sounds like a plan to combat boredom, doesn’t it?

All of that equals results, stronger customer relationships and a better business brand.

Storytelling is a powerful and effective marketing tool, but how does that work for a company?

Before getting too far into the employment of storytelling in your marketing campaign, it is important to understand the storytelling concept.

Intimate Communication

Beyond the details and some level of reveal is a form of communication that goes farther than statistics and summaries – this is called storytelling.

Your date of birth, height, weight and address are details about you, but it in no way tells me about who you are – this is raw communication and it too can be dreadfully boring.

I am a forty-something hopeless romantic, from a small town (population 134!), who has a beautiful daughter and an amazing family. Maybe you could even feel that? Do you feel like you know me, just a little?

That is communication that goes deeper and farther than numbers – that is storytelling.

The idea here is to create a connection, literally anything that will resonate with your audience. Are they parents, do they also hail from a small town? This is finding a connection.

It may be impossible to find anything more enduring and powerful than a human bond.

This is the secret behind the effectiveness and power of storytelling. The right story can invite, engage and connect with the humanity that is within everyone.

From this point, the possibilities and opportunities for this newly forged connection are endless.

Mind and Hearts

Every company has a story.

Behind that company are ideals and dreams. When a story reaches someone, the chance to promote thought leadership and plant the seeds of those ideas are availed. Nothing about that sounds boring.

This is the beauty of utilizing long form content – while sharing your story and dreams, the process will delight, excite or in some way engage the customer.

This may be a connection of a cognitive nature, a meeting of the minds upon your company’s vision. This could be a heart-string tug, where a detail of your story touches the heart of a client.

Storytelling is the only marketing content that holds the keys to reaching a customer’s mind and heart, and doing that will help you get over the boring hurdle.

Delivering the Story

Another great advantage afforded by storytelling content is the flexibility of use.

A story can be delivered as a welcome message on the company landing page, as an email marketing concept or even with video.

In many instances, the combination of a good story and the advantages of video communication create the most powerful of communications mediums. Getting creative with how the story is being told is another opportunity to erase the boring problem.

A great orator, incredible graphics or moving images are a few of the creative methods that can be used to package a video story.

The possibilities of how to wrap and deliver a video message may only be limited by the imagination.

It Really is About the Story

In today’s world of high-tech, the value and power of storytelling can easily be lost.

So much attention is placed on speed, convenience and visual engagement that it is often forgotten just how much people want to feel, want to be entertained and want an experience.

Want some real evidence?

PayPal works in a money management type of industry, maybe not the most boring industry but certainly not all that exciting either.

Move money, save money and manage your funds digitally; even buying and getting paid via digital means. Are you sleeping yet?

That is about the excitement level of the industry PayPal works in. Then PayPal did something about that problem, in a big way.

Using storytelling, PayPal increased customer engagement by 327%. Big enough?

How much would your company welcome a more than 300 percent increase in customer engagement? Storytelling has that kind of power.

Simply put, people want to hear your story.

Prospective customers want to be engaged. Customers desire to know more about your company, its story. People are created for community, and nothing creates community like that perfect story.

It really is all about the story, and therein is your path to success and overcoming the issue of being dull or boring.

The Unexpected Answer

Storytelling probably wasn’t the answer you were thinking of when contemplating how to market your brand or business if it happens to be a little less than exciting.

Maybe loud, bright, active tactics were on your radar? Videos, shocking imagery and other strategies can be beneficial, but combined with great storytelling they can be powerful.

Storytelling may not be loud, but it is deep.

It may not be full of imagery, but it can reach and move the imagination. It may not connect with the visual senses, but it will connect with people.

Storytelling is the unexpected answer to the problem and the key to making your audience care.