Storytelling in Content Marketing

If you have something to tell, you turn to storytelling. Or content marketing. Or even better: a combination of both. Storytelling in content marketing is the perfect symbiosis of emotional content and rational information. Because stories enrich our lives, encourage us to listen and, ideally, captivate us completely. Although content marketing is generally less exciting and engaging, it is highly informative and rich in content. Those who skillfully combine the two have a powerful marketing tool at their disposal.

Rory Spelling resorts to storytelling

This is the story of Rory Spelling. Rory heads up the marketing department of a medium-sized company in Borington. Nothingtotell GmbH (N2T for short), for which Rory works, manufactures high-quality ceramic drinking fountains for cats. Existing customers are happy with the N2T products (and so are their cats, apparently). This is clear from the range of accessories: special filters, more powerful water pumps and items to enhance the appearance of the cat drinking fountains are selling like hotcakes. However, sales of the fountain starter kits are stagnating and new leads are largely failing to materialize.

Now it's Rory's turn: his job is to boost sales of the basic products. He is familiar with the storytelling method and believes it is a good approach to boosting business. But he lacks the basis for a captivating story. Borington is simply boring and Nothingtotell GmbH doesn't really have anything to tell.

Rory thinks about how to emotionally engage the target group and at some point thinks about himself. Among other things, his love of cats contributed to the fact that he now works for Nothingtotell GmbH. He uses the N2T products himself, because his cat Flip is totally enthusiastic about them. Flip has a lot on his mind and is always up to mischief, so you could fill whole books with stories about him. Rory has an idea: Flip should become the new hero of Nothingtotell GmbH's storytelling.

Conny wants content

Excited and confident, Rory presents the new idea to his boss Conny Catzenlieb. She is the founder and Managing Director of N2T. She hadn't heard of storytelling before, but Rory should also do this content marketing that everyone is currently talking about. "Storytelling in content marketing? Does that make sense? Isn't that a contradiction in terms?" asks Rory. "Content should be informative and provide real added value, so what's my cat Flip doing in it?"

How storytelling can enrich content marketing

After thinking about it for a while, Rory no longer finds the idea of enriching rational content with emotional stories so bad. On the contrary:

Storytelling actually helps in many ways to...

• attracting attention to the product and arousing interest.
• Conveying substantial and "dry" information in a playful and entertaining way.
• Createanchor points that enable mental links between the content of the story and the most important rational information (keyword: mnemonic).
• always find new hooks and approaches for the content to be communicated.
• not to lose the common thread in content marketing, even across measures.

In all of this, it is important that a story is well thought out, credible and consistent. In addition, it should of course be entertaining and always provide new material for all kinds of content marketing measures.

A hangover makes theater

Flip is now the new star of N2T's content marketing. But how exactly does it work?

There is a blog on the N2T company website. This has been providing information for some time now on how to keep cats properly and on appropriate nutrition and healthy drinking habits for house pets. Up to now, the content has been communicated in a rather matter-of-fact way. But Flip now tells everything from his perspective and is taking the hearts of cat lovers by storm.

Flip has his own profiles on social networks with lots of likes and followers. Of course, Flip writes all his posts himself. He regularly uploads selfies to Instagram, often together with his favorite drinking fountain. On YouTube, he posts tutorials for his peers on how the N2T fountain can also enrich their lives. There is also a video diary about his experiences as a real sly dog. In general, the use of images and video marketing are particularly effective tools for storytelling in content marketing.

More examples of storytelling and content marketing...

... are not needed at this point. Although the measures mentioned above are purely fictitious and admittedly also very colorful, this blog post is extremely real. Whether you have consciously realized it or not: If you have read this far, you have just fallen victim to storytelling within content marketing - in a positive sense, of course.

Because this article was only supposed to inform you about storytelling in content marketing. But it does much more than that: it tells you a story about N2T, Rory Spelling, Conny Catzenlieb and Flip and puts you in exactly the situation we're talking about here. Rational content has just been conveyed to you on an emotional level.

"Storytelling in content marketing" or "content marketing in storytelling"?

A perfectly legitimate question. What was more there? Which has more weight? Let's start with this blog article as an example: You are on Mark Lotse's blog. Mark Lotse is first and foremost a content marketing agency. This article is just one of countless informative posts on the entire Mark Lotse blog. The storytelling about Rory Spelling and his cat Flip is limited to this one article and it is unlikely that this story will ever be revisited. So this is storytelling in the context of content marketing.

Traditional and long-established companies often find themselves in a slightly different situation. There are many such companies that have been practicing storytelling for years or even decades, even before the term became a buzzword in marketing. One of the oldest and most popular examples is probably Coca-Cola's Santa Claus. He is highly visible every year at Christmas time and there are a number of marketing measures that pay into his account. This example is an excellent example of how content marketing can also be subordinate to storytelling .

And the moral of the story...

Storytelling is a good fit for content marketing. And vice versa. Used correctly and cleverly combined, storytelling and content marketing are by no means a contradiction in terms, but rather form a perfect symbiosis. The combination of rational information and emotional content simply works.

PS: Nothingtotell GmbH has since changed its name and is now Muchtotell GmbH (M2T).