Are you interested in using storytelling in your marketing to build a highly-engaged following?
Well, 1 of the best ways to do that is actually to tell stories and entertain inside your videos.
Storytelling In Marketing Video Training
The Content Marketing Storytelling Approach
So in my previous business, we had millions of YouTube views.
And I think we’re pretty darn good teachers.
But that was not the secret sauce.
The secret sauce is this…
We figured out that eventually we have to be entertaining our viewers as they watch our content.
Yes, we want to educate them.
But we also have to make sure that they’re having fun and enjoying the art of learning.
If you think about it, people want to relax.
What do they do in order to relax?
- Enjoy movies
- Read books
- Watch television
Those are story-based elements.
What if your content began to include story-based elements as well?
Entertain Your Audience With Storytelling
So I’m going to give you an example.
Let’s say you want to communicate the following message:
If you want to increase your subscription business, you need to make your product more sticky.
This is the lesson of the story. It’s abrupt and very short.
You can see it’s kind of dry and cookie cutter.
I summed it up in 15 seconds.
I could have made a 47 minute talking head video and showed exactly how you lower your churn.
But check this out.
I’m now going to tell a story that’s going to help you understand that same process in a much more engaging way.
This is how you can fix your talking head videos and teach the same lesson with a story instead…
The Craziest Story In My Consulting Career:
This is probably the craziest thing that I have ever done on a consulting call.
I do get excited to teach.
But this was probably next level beyond out of control.
Alright, so the year was 2017 and I was working with a consulting client in the software industry.
We were trying to figure out how to grow his business.
And he was totally crushing it in terms of paid acquisition.
It was basically a 6-to-1 ratio in terms of return on ad spend.
He was on the major platforms:
- Facebook Ads
- YouTube Ads
- Google Search
- GDN
When it came to his content multiplication, he was crushing it there as well.
But he’s like, “Man I have stalled out. I just cannot figure out how grow. I’m basically spending as much as I can in paid ads.”
You have to saturate the market.
So we’re going through his numbers.
I’m like, ‘Hey man, yeah, you’re right. You’re looking pretty good here.”
Until we get to the column where we start talking about churn rate.
Captivate & Engage Your Audience With Storytelling
The number of customers he’s losing per month.
I looked down.
And I’ve never seen something so ugly in my life.
It was 17% loss per month.
He was totally crushing it terms of the paid acquisition.
But he was losing customers like crazy.
This is why he stalled out.
You can’t grow when you are losing customers at 17% per month.
I don’t care how great of a customer acquisition specialist you are.
It’s almost going to be impossible to grow once you get to a certain ad spend.
I said to him, “Dude, this is your problem right here.”
Deliver Information With Stories
Because he is such a great paid media acquisition specialist…
His solution was to add another marketing funnel or spend more money on ads.
He was focusing entirely on just trying to get more customers.
But no matter how much water you put into a bucket…
It doesn’t matter…
If the bucket is leaking from the bottom.
I said, “No dude. It’s the churn problem. You’re just basically lighting your money on fire.”
We even went back to the spreadsheet to show the loss, and I couldn’t get through to him.
Finally I just said enough is enough.
- I pulled $300 in cash out of my right pocket
- I pulled a lighter out of the left
Boom! I lit the money on fire and threw it down on the table.
This even shocked me when I did this!
I cannot believe I actually did it.
But I needed him to understand that he is lighting money on fire.
That’s what churn is.
Your customers are not sticking around if your product is not sticky enough.
You need to lower your churn and your product needs to be more sticky.
The Storytelling Solution In Marketing
So the solution is not to put more money into acquiring more new customers.
You already have customers.
Put an equal amount of time into making them more excited and happier.
Make your product more useful so they stick around more.
What did I do there?
Storytelling In Marketing Checklist
I said the same information I said very earlier, right?
Hey, you got to make your product stickier because customer churn is a problem.
But I told the story and I put drama in there.
- I emphasize things
- Use colloquial language
- Did things with my tonality
I had a dramatic effect with me actually lighting money on fire to illustrate the point, right?
What was more entertaining for you?
How Storytelling Can Lengthen View Duration
This also works for increasing your view duration on YouTube.
As we all know, a big part of the algorithm is how long people watch your videos for.
When you engage your audience and use high retention video editing techniques…
This will help show the algorithm that people are enjoying your content.
Because they are consuming it for a longer length in time.
Keep that in mind with the next videos you release.
Grow Your Brand With Storytelling In Marketing
When you’re making your content don’t just do the talking head.
Or the “Here’s how you do XYZ” cookie cutter dry type information.
You have to remember that content needs to educate.
But more importantly it also has to entertain and enlighten as well.
And story is one of the best ways of doing it.
If you enjoyed today’s article…
And you’re interested in more topics on:
- Entrepreneur mindset
- Business growth
- Direct response marketing
Check out our Strategy Samurai YouTube Channel.
It’s full of great content you’ll really enjoy.
My name is Steve Nixon.
Thanks again for reading.