In the real world, not a great deal gets done in the average minute. In the online world, 1 minute is no less than a spectacular amount of time. Each and every minute, the various search engines process more than four million queries. During this same 60 seconds, Facebook users share more than three million pieces of content and 205 million emails are sent worldwide. More than 55,000 new photos appear on Instagram, YouTube welcomes another 400 hours of video and close to 1,500 new blog posts are published.
Suffice to say therefore, a lot happens in a minute. And with such incredible activity and vast volumes of content out there, getting your own content and brand story in general to appeal to your target audience can be difficult.
Traditional approaches to marketing are pretty much wasted on millennials…something we’ve all come to know quite well as of late. By what does appeal to the millennial audiences is storytelling. The difference being that while the traditional approach to marketing is all about the hard sell, storytelling focuses on emotional influence. And given the fact that 90% of the purchase decisions we make are influenced by our emotions, it’s no wonder storytelling can be so incredibly effective.
It might sound like a difficult art to master, but there are in fact only three core components of effective storytelling you need to work with. These are character, drama and resolution – address these three points effectively and you might just find that the story writes itself.
Character
The first of the three components is character – writing a compelling story is 100% impossible without establishing a compelling character. The character is essential to the entire story – the story as a whole being based on the character you create. In this instance, the character is you – or your brand as a whole – which needs to be built in a manner that creates a direct connection between you and the audience your target. This means a character they can easily relate to, one that speaks to them and their values and a character they feel understands them.
Drama
It may sound a little overly dramatic, but you need an element of drama in there if you want your target audience to buy your story. Basically, drama refers to the needs, problems or way in which there is currently a gap in the market that is clearly not working for your target audience members. It might not necessarily be that their life is disastrous without whatever it is you do – it could just be that whatever you do could make things so much better for them. You don’t want to get carried away, but nonetheless need to ensure there is some kind of drama and emotion involved, in order to retain their interests.
Resolution
Last but not least, resolution is all about demonstrating how it is that what you do, who you are and what you are able to offer can rectify the problem/gap you establish the above. This is where you effectively move on to the ‘happy ever after’ scenario, showing how life and perhaps even the world in general becomes so much better thanks to you. If possible, some kind of surprise or any inclusion of the unexpected can be a great way of leaving your target audience members with something to think about, even after they log off.
