Repost from: https://digitalagencynetwork.com/how-technology-and-storytelling-create-growth-driven-digital-marketing/
Throughout time, new technologies have ever posed a threat to storytelling but rather augment its capabilities to capacitate creatives and intellectuals to explore and innovate.
Today’s creative marketing agencies live in a renaissance of technology where user data, AI, creative talent and automation coalesce to construct storytelling for marketers.
Today’s best digital marketing agencies combine the inbound marketing methodology with automation and storytelling to mesmerize potential buyers, nurture them, and educate them through the buyer’s journey.
At its heart, marketing is all about storytelling; it’s just that not many agencies incorporate its fabric into their blogs, email copy, web pages, and messaging.
The best marketers can create compelling narrative around a client’s brand that churns emotional resonance throughout buyer audiences.
Today’s Platforms
Storytelling and technology isn’t new either. This traditional medium existed in television where romance and adventure projected the emotion of storytelling to life.
For example, in 1971 for Earth Day the organizations Keep America Beautiful and the Advertising Council hired Marsteller Advertising to create the “Crying Indian” commercial in which a Native American paddles a canoe through polluted waters crying at the spectacle.
A second commercial featuring the same Native America witnesses someone toss trash form a moving vehicle onto the roadside, and the camera zooms in on his tears.
Although it became a joke in pop culture, the story resonated with audiences because recycling across the country went up with specific credit made to the power of the said advertisement.
The power of storytelling now lives in the creative advertising process of social media and inbound marketing strategies. Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram allow marketers to tell stories to distinct audiences. If a business has a healthy list of contacts, emails are also great platforms for storytelling through automation.
Because TV stands out as such an obvious platform for storytelling, many of us tend to separate marketing copy from the power of the narrative.
Is there a Storytelling Framework to Follow?
Donald Miller’s ‘Building a Story Brand’ is creating a lot of buzz. The book has sold millions of copies, and the best digital marketing agencies in Los Angeles, including WEBITMD, uses its framework for crafting strong narratives.
Miller took the concept of the hero’s journey from Joseph Campbell’s ‘The Hero with 1000 Faces’, and spun it away from an academic platform to one of business marketing.
Known as the SB7 framework, Miller’s spin looks at the seven story brand stages that showcase an organization’s customer as the hero while showing how the buyer fits into the brand’s story to build resonance. It works.
Remember that every buyer has a need or pain when they actively search for a product or service.
When people find themselves immersed in the product or brand’s story and can identify with the hero (themselves) they have a better sense for what it feels like to use that product, and this deep connection buyers form with a branded story turns readers into paying customers.
How Technology Helps Marketing Agencies Tell a Branded Story
Marketing automation software like HubSpot helps certified agencies effectively share their client’s stories with targeted audiences.
Once the right messaging is created to hit people at various stages of the buyer’s journey, potential customers are nurtured with precise messaging until they are educated enough to make a purchasing decision.
Digital marketers are able to trace every step the potential buyer makes, where they converted to the next phase, and can determine what their intimate needs are based on how they interacted with various messaging.
