“Story telling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world” — Robert Mckee
The content marketing scenario today is more or less like a Hollywood bet than it was before. Writing a copy or blog is as good as writing a high grossing script. The best content strategy takes home the best market share. If you think I’m blowing up the importance of content out of proportion, think again. You will notice that all the leading brands have an incredible messaging strategy that strikes a chord or two with their audience. The reason why movies sell. The reason art of narration can earn big bucks.
As much as the product itself, the content has to be concrete, full of purpose and well grounded for consumption. No loose ends; no tepid language or pompous proclaim. The era of self proclaimed ‘best in class’ is a not so classy anymore!
Especially in B2B marketing, where the purchase happens after a considerable cognitive trial period, extravagant claims aren’t going to help with brand building and reputation.In business, story telling is a confluence of art and science. A resplendently written blog can fail to garner attention and traffic to the website, while a simple blog with straightforward content can generate the desired results! Business writing should be an amalgamation of both fancy plus facts, but no fictions, whatsoever! You wouldn’t want to make things up for the sake of attention and then fail hard to keep up with the false manifesto.
Own your messaging
Be true to the context in your own flavor. People buy experiences and anecdotes, not turgid announcements. While bragging is a no no, underplaying also doesn’t help. Feeble, dicey content can tarnish brand image and trust. The simple rule is to tell the facts in an interesting and inspiring way.
Don’t tell people how good you are. Tell them how good your product can make them! (and their lives)
Give them a good picture.
However big your brand is, you aren’t the protagonist of the story. Make sure the customer is the protagonist in your all your stories; even if it’s a one phrase advertisement copy. If your vision is to be the best in market, weave your messaging around how you can help your customer be the best.
I’d like to refer to a narrative suggested by Andy Raskin on Elon Musk’s simple, yet effective pitch. The pitch is a neat and straightforward account of identifying problems and suggestion for solution. The pitch touches upon the promise land with enough evidence to back up the claim. You can check out the pitch here. However, don’t create exaggerated version of the promise land.
Create valuable narrative, that instigates value proposition in the minds of the target audience; genuine and empathetic to resonate with customer challenges.
Be consistent with Consistency
Story telling needs to be consistent. Ever wondered why a movie director has a particular style of making films? Because they’d like to be known for a way of story telling and stick to it. Audience naturally associate the director to a style and that’s how the niche is created. It’s the same for authors and many other creators.
As content marketers it’s pretty much the same scenario. We get to choose a style, not your style but a style for your brand. Brand is the ‘Director’. You get to choose how your brand is communicating with the audience. What sort of a story it intends to tell and how. Make the brand sound genuine, eager to help and reasonably superior. Again your brand need not scream attention with gimmicks. In this 21st century marketing, where especially when you’re selling to B2B audience, you know the gimmicks which you are trying might have been tried by your customer too. They know how it works. So avoid gimmicks and foster genuineness.
It’s simple. Stay consistent and say only what you mean!
Simplify to simplify
Keep it simple. Know your audience and fashion the messaging accordingly. It’s true, marketing gets a bit tricky while catering to different set of audience with the same style of narrative. Create your stories to optimize the results accordingly.
Here’s an example of a marketer trying to sell a B2B enterprise software to multiple stakeholders. The same message delivered in two different ways. Both are valid and make sense. However, the level of comprehension would vary depending on the audience.
Narrative A “ With an incredible market competition and innate need to serve customers better, there is a need for improving efficiency, quality and time management. XYZ software can alleviate inefficiencies and create profitable margins for your business. The software can transform data from your enterprise into valuable insights and help you run the business with a competitive edge.”
Narrative B “ Everyday mike finds it tough to analyze never ending spreadsheets and always finds himself in a pickle when answerable to the management. He later discovers XYZ software that can give granular data for tactical and operational outcomes. Mike realizes the potential of XYZ software and the transformation it could bring to engineering as well as business teams”.
I leave it to your judgement to decipher which one is targeted at which stakeholder.
Its up to the judgement of marketer to understand the kind of narrative that will get across in an effective manner.
The phrase ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket’ holds good here. Don’t package your messaging to the brim that it fails to kindle the interest of any of the target!
I, for now do not want to package this write up with too much of information.
Hope you liked this article. If you have counter thoughts, do mail me at sangeeta043@gmail.com and we can discuss.