Why does content marketing work for others, but not your business?
If you find yourself wondering why does content marketing work for your competition but not you, it’s time to take a close look at your content. Facts, figures, and statistics are vital pieces of information for business purposes. But most of your potential customers would say it’s more important to feel a more personal connection with you. It’s hard to “make friends” with someone who focuses on numbers and pie charts.
Instead, think of how you could convey those facts and percentages by way of storytelling. Put a more personal angle on the data, and people will be more drawn to your content… and therefore your company. From the folks at Fast Company, here’s more helpful information about why content marketing works better when you tell stories with it.
Why Does Content Marketing Work? Because Our Brains Crave Storytelling
Our greedy little brains are hungry for a good story, so if you want to make the sale, forget the data and make a personal connection.
What grabs your attention more: a list full of ingredients like acacia gum, oligiosaccharide, and glutemate or a story about one company’s mission to bring the tangy sweetness of a blueberry and the warming power of a bowl of oatmeal to kitchen tables around the world?
While both speak to Kashi’s company mission of making healthy food available to everyone, the second choice seems far more compelling.
This makes sense, especially considering recent findings of a Nielsen study that show consumers want a more personal connection in the way they gather information.
Are we surprised, though?
Numerous studies over the years have proven that our brains are far more engaged by storytelling than the cold, hard facts.
When reading straight data, only the language parts of our brains work to decode the meaning. But when we read a story, not only do the language parts of our brains light up, but any other part of the brain that we would use if we were actually experiencing what we’re reading about becomes activated as well.
What this means is that it’s far easier for us to remember stories than the cold hard facts because our brains make little distinction between an experience we are reading about and one that is actually happening.
In addition to this, our brains are insanely greedy for stories. We spend about a third of our lives daydreaming—our minds are constantly looking for distractions—and the only time we stop flitting from daydream to daydream is when we have a good story in front of us.
Top brands like LinkedIn, Coca-Cola, Etsy—the list goes on—harness this science to their advantage through content marketing that focuses on the story.
While Americans consume more than 100,000 digital words every day according to this infographic from content marketing platform OneSpot, 92% of these consumers want to internalize those words in the form of a story.
There are a number of rules and guides out there for how to best tell a story; you should at least check out The 10 Commandments of Content.
Why does content marketing work so well when it’s story-driven?
If you think back to when you were a little kid, what were some of the most exciting words you ever heard? “Once upon a time” – right? It’s like those words flipped a switch in your mind that told you something good was coming. It’s the same now with your business, at least in principle. Your prospects want to hear stories from you. How you got into business, the battle you wage against your common enemy (the same problem that sends them looking for you in the first place), the success stories of your customers, and more.
If you’ve gotten sick of wasting money on marketing that’s not hitting the mark, why not set your sights on better storytelling? If you could use some help, just ask.