5 Benefits of Storytelling Content Marketing

Sandra struggled for years with her acne. She tried dozens of products on the market as a teen and young adult, but couldn’t find any that worked well without irritating her skin. She decided she would create her own company, prioritizing all-natural ingredients that targeted issues like acne, oily skin and redness without causing unpleasant irritation. 

Sandra experimented in her own kitchen for months until she came up with her very first product — a non-toxic acne cream. Five years later, she was the proud owner of an amazing skincare company. Her product lineup had expanded to include more than 10 items designed to promote healthy skin without harsh ingredients. And, her dedication and success didn’t go unnoticed — her business had been featured in top lifestyle magazines and was named a beauty brand to watch. 

Intrigued to know more about Sandra? Maybe buy one of her products to battle your pesky breakouts? We hope so—that’s the goal. 

This is an example of storytelling content marketing. Inspired by journalism and storytelling techniques, it presents content as a narrative with a greater focus on connecting with customers and highlighting authenticity than simply advertising a product. 

Here, the focus is on Sandra’s personal journey rather than a simple directive to buy her acne cream. At Tigar, we believe in the power and the effectiveness of storytelling content marketing. It’s why our clients choose us over other agencies. Here, a guide on this tactic, why it works — and how to get started with us today.

What is Storytelling Content Marketing?

Content marketing is one of the most effective modern marketing strategies there is, but it can be difficult to get started with. Since it can involve so many different types of media and forms of content, it can be tough to know how to effectively tailor this strategy to your brand. To begin with, there are multiple kinds of content that fall under the category of content marketing to choose from. For example, there are blog articles, social media posts, emails, testimonials, podcasts, videos and infographics. 

Deciding which types of content marketing are right for your brand is only the first step towards developing a successful marketing plan. Once you’ve determined which forms of content you want to create, you’ll have to choose what approach to take with your content — taking into consideration factors like the tone, length, intended audience, topic and message with each piece. 

These are all essential ingredients for making sure your brand’s identity, voice and core values come through in every piece of content you post. Storytelling content marketing is one unique way of approaching content creation that can help you achieve this goal while creating quality content for SEO. 

Every piece of content is presented as a story with a beginning, middle and end. This engaging structure is designed to take the reader on a journey instead of simply telling them to buy a product or use your company’s services.

Engage Your Ideal Customer

Storytelling content marketing is an excellent way to reach your ideal customer faster and hold their attention better than you could with other approaches. Grabbing the attention of your intended audience and keeping them hooked is the true goal of content marketing, and storytelling is the best way to achieve it. 

A narrative format that starts off with a unique lead in the beginning, followed by a clear middle and end, is a surefire way to get your audience to pay attention. 

Consider a brand that wants to promote their plant-based protein supplement. What’s more engaging — an article that starts off with a definition of plant-based protein, or one that begins with a story about a woman who needed to maintain a vegan lifestyle for health reasons but couldn’t find a dairy-free protein supplement to support her exercise journey? 

The first take is just providing information — the second is presenting a problem. 

The rest of the article will go on to describe a solution to the problem (the brand’s supplement) and finish by encouraging the reader to try it for themselves.

Storytelling content marketing also allows you to showcase your brand’s personality in the copy and pieces you create. This forges connections between your company and your audience as they learn about the causes and values that are most important to you. 

Storytelling creates content that resonates with customers on an emotional level, whether that’s by showcasing a common problem and how your company has a product that can solve it in a unique way or by describing a global cause and the steps your business is taking to address it.

Create Natural, Quality Content for SEO

Creating quality content for SEO is often one of the main reasons brands seek out content marketing strategies in the first place. Not all SEO-optimized content is effective. If a piece is created solely with the goal of stuffing as many SEO keywords in as possible or adding a record number of backlinks, it won’t rank well. And yes, you can ask an AI machine to write a post for you —but when it doesn’t know an answer, it makes it up. 

Customers and clients can tell when a piece of content is authentic and when it’s purely for sales.  It’s becoming increasingly clear that there’s more to creating quality content for SEO than meeting quotas for keywords and links.

Search engines are becoming smart enough to see beyond how many keywords are in a given piece of content when completing their ranking. The quality of the content is much more important for SEO than the quantity of any particular optimization strategy. Pieces that rank well are ones that address the audience’s needs in a clear, well-written format. 

Storytelling content marketing is the perfect vehicle for this kind of writing. When you write content with customer’s questions or concerns in mind, it will feel much more natural and native and be received better by your audience while still fitting under the category of quality content for SEO.

Improve Retention with Value-Added Content

Storytelling content marketing doesn’t just help you create quality content for SEO — it also helps you add value to that content. Value-added content refers to the kind of pieces that can only be found on your website or social media pages, and that customers will want to actively search out. 

This content should be a creative or insightful take on a topic, issue or need that is unique to your brand. 

When storytelling content marketing is paired with value-added content, it can help improve retention rates. Once customers associate your company with the useful information and helpful solutions you create through value-added content, they’ll be more likely to trust and rely on your brand, products and services. 

This builds customer loyalty and helps maintain connections between your brand and customer base for years to come. 

Not only that, but storytelling content marketing lets you meet customers where they are in their journey. Take the example of a female health company that sells products targeted to periods, pregnancy, postpartum and menopause products. 

Content about each of these life stages could be created with storytelling content marketing. This approach lets you appeal to your customers no matter where their life journey is taking them.

Be Seen As A Trusted Industry Expert

When you’re seen as an expert in your industry, customers are more likely to trust your brand and stay customers. Your brand is also more likely to get media appearances and have more clout. 

Storytelling content marketing is all about authenticity and telling meaningful stories from a unique perspective. With this strategy, you can present informative, accurate content in a compelling way. Over time, this helps solidify your status as an industry expert who knows what they’re talking about. 

With storytelling content marketing, the pieces you publish will help people get the information they’re searching for and associate both your products and overall brand with meeting needs and providing solutions to common problems. This builds trust between your company and your audience and takes your brand identity to new heights, allowing you to become a trusted expert within your industry.  

It also helps you become a leader because people will actually want to read the content you’re producing — meaning that they’ll continue to seek you out. 

Become Your Own Media Destination

With storytelling content marketing, you can become your own media destination. Once you’ve built up a significant catalog of blog articles on your website, people will have a place to go to search through articles and learn about your products and your opinions on relevant issues. 

Think about big brands with blogs that are a true destination — HerMoney, Peloton’s The Output, Sunday Riley’s Sunday Edit, Glossier’s Into the Gloss. As you build a content engine, you can also start to syndicate with large media platforms and increase traffic with affiliate marketing. 

Choose Tigar for Effective Storytelling Content Marketing

What is your brand’s story? Did you start your own company from the ground up in your kitchen like Sandra, or do you have a product that meets a niche need like a vegan protein powder? What message do you want to send to the world?

At the end of the day, the best part of storytelling content marketing is that your brand’s story can be whatever you want it to be. You can focus on the origins of your company, the applications of your products or on causes related to the mission of your brand. 

Tigar Agency can help you decide which direction you want to take with storytelling content marketing and create compelling stories to post on your blog. We’re a team of professional journalists who tell stories for a living. Helping brands present their products and messages in unique, creative ways is our passion.  

To make effective storytelling content marketing a part of your brand’s marketing plan, reach out today.