Marketing these days is all about content. Storytelling.
[inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””]Digital marketing is an iterative story.[/inlinetweet] Content may be final—published on website, posted on the blog and promoted through social media—but the story is in a constant draft state, a work in progress that is created and developed as much by the agency of the corporate author as the community for which it’s written.
In these stories, characters and plot lines are distributed through multiple online channels, each quite different, from purpose and audience intent to profile character limit. Our audience expects a different tone on our company Facebook page from what’s delivered in a standard news release.
(De)constructing the corporate narrative using five key attributes from the craft of fiction and storytelling provides a solid frame of reference for translating business goals into online content strategy.
Somehow it seems prudent to provide a disclaimer here that we should emulate not the imaginative nature of fiction in our marketing, but rather its structure and style. Storytelling is, after all, the oldest form of human communication.
1. Tight Lines
Good writers can produce tight lines of copy that are creative, compelling, and persuasive. They tend to have a healthy aversion to adverbs, hyperbole, and exclamation points.
These writers can use metaphor and analogy to convey complex, technical information, or to tease an emotional response from the reader that leads to an action or contributes to feelings of brand affinity. Here are a few tips for being more like them:
- Use active voice. It means the subject of the sentence is the agent, performing the action. Instead of writing donation was given by {company} to benefit… , write {company} donation benefits…. Not only does active voice eliminate unnecessary words (the be verbs of passive voice), it’s more engaging for readers because it emphasizes the action and clearly conveys the main idea.That said, there may be times when passive voice is useful for de-emphasizing the performer of the action or putting focus on the recipient.
- Show, don’t tell. This is Fiction 101, using setting, character, and tension instead of description to illustrate action and create sequence.
- Be grammatically correct. Always get your ideas out before worrying about copy editing a blog post or product marketing email, but do take the time to proofread the content. If you break the rules, do it for style, not by accident.
2. Character Drives Action
The process of identifying and understanding a target audience for marketing efforts is like developing characters for a work of fiction. You know who they are, what they make a year, their educational level, where they eat and shop.
The marketer needs to create content for the individual buyer and her needs. Audience isn’t a matter of B2B vs. B2C so much as a combination of persona, immediacy of need, complexity of product, and to some degree, price point.
For example, the simple B2B software sale may rely in part on emotional triggers related to time/labor savings, while the B2C buyer may be facing a more complicated decision-making process for a product or service (higher price point, status, longevity of product, its prominence in daily life).
The buyer persona is literally a profile, or character sketch. It’s all those demographic characteristics, habits, and behavior patterns scribbled on sticky notes across a fiction writer’s desk, color-coded to indicate role in the story or a specific scene.
The marketing lesson from fiction writing is to think like the characters do, and use that knowledge to focus editorial strategy and create content that attracts the most qualified sales prospects.
3. The Plot
Plot is what happens in a story—the sequence of events, conflict, cause of the action, the outcome. Writing workshops present a five-step formula: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution.
[inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””]The corporate storyteller can use these elements of plot to guide an audience along a conversion path[/inlinetweet], which is marketing babble for a reader or viewer taking the intended action, such as submitting a form or dialing a phone number.
This writer strives to lead prospects through a sales funnel by engaging and educating them with content. Information architecture and website copy function to drive a visitor along a certain navigational path that results in an action—the writer decides what information to provide at each decision point in order to move the plot and its audience forward.
Another plot development exercise in marketing is journey mapping–mapping communications, such as email campaigns, to where an audience is in their decision-making cycle.
Is that person in the discovery stage (exposition)? Is she being nurtured with informative and relevant content (rising action)? Has she identified a problem or need (climax)? Is she evaluating technical solutions (falling action)?
For most marketers, the plot lines are many. Following this dénouement of the sale, the story begins again with the customer relationship.
4. The Narrative
Narrative creates the reader’s experience of the plot, how the sequence of events, conflict, and resolution are presented. The narratives of effective marketing communications follow the same arch of explanation, rising action, and resolution—whether in a 500-word blog post or a 140-character Tweet.
Marketers can employ narrative technique to get the attention of their audience, tell a story, and elicit emotional response in the reader. Effective narrative vehicles include advertising campaigns, white papers, case studies, social spaces, blog posts, and videos.
In a crowded, always-on marketplace, it’s not enough to make a story stand out—it has to be relevant to the audience, too.
Don’t just present the plot, but create an experience of the plot for the reader. It’s the difference between using your website homepage as the destination page for a PPC campaign, versus a landing page that uses content specific to the reader’s search, a form to request more information, and a follow-up email campaign to keep the audience engaged.
5. Setting the Scene
“It was a dark and stormy night…”
That doesn’t work in business writing, either.
Threading together character, plot, storytelling, and copy is scene, the place where these other elements of the narrative interact.
Developing the themes that tie a digital corporate narrative together requires content to be organized and somewhat consistent.
The narrative is the combined content—the blog posts, status updates, news releases, website copy—that reflect the ethos of the business in order to appeal to the character/buyer persona.
Effective content strategy speaks to both humans and search engines in order to provide value, whether facilitating immediate purchase or bringing prospects into a months-long educational sales cycle.
The company’s culture, list of awards, digital footprint, and brand sentiment create a scene that tells an audience whether to trust or retreat.
These five lessons from fiction writing can string the thousands of words from our content marketing efforts into a relevant, personal experience for the audience, who alone can drive the action for the corporate narrative.
How’s your story coming along? Let’s talk.
This post was originally published on Business2Community.