Storytelling in marketing: why should anyone care about you?

I recently did an initial review of a new client’s online marketing–they’d made an effort in the past and had actually been fairly consistent about sharing content. They’d even done some collaborator posts and co-promotions. 

Still, they’d noticed those efforts weren’t as nearly as effective as they’d hoped, and when I took a look at what they’d shared, I knew why. 

I'll be covering quite a few things with that client in the coming months, but the major thing I’ll be coaching them on? Using storytelling in their marketing.

Storytelling in marketing means sharing context

Whether I’m reviewing websites or social feeds or email marketing, I almost always want to ask: WHY is this content here?

Whether it’s a photo gallery with no intro, or a post that’s been shared as an afterthought, so many attempts at online marketing fail, simply because they haven’t given any context to help the audience understand it.

One post I noticed was a reel of the owner doing a morning workout routine at a park. Not a bad idea, in itself!... but the caption didn’t have much else to share.

"Nothing like a morning exercise. Health is wealth!"

Putting aside the glaring lack of a call-to-action, we don’t come away understanding why morning workouts are relevant to us or to what they do.

If you do some digging, however, you’ll find it’s actually important to their story. For one, health and wellness is a core component of their approach to equity. Their workshops and content explore issues from work-life balance to destigmatizing mental health care for men of color.

And, there’s an even deeper opportunity for storytelling: the owner is going through their own health journey after receiving a serious medical diagnosis–something they share about quite openly in their newsletter. 

Their lived experience is something that many of us can relate to, and it speaks to their most deeply-held values. If that was reflected in their social media, they’d be much more likely to reach and engage with the people they most want to help.

Storytelling in marketing tells your audience the Why

With the way humans are constantly pelted with information they didn’t ask for, it’s just not enough to know that your offering exists. We need to know why it matters.

One of that aforementioned client’s past social posts was to promote an upcoming wellness retreat. The date was included in the graphic, and the caption was this:

"Sign up today for the 4th annual men’s retreat at [ location ]!"

The call-to-action is there… but that’s about it. They could certainly include more details about what’s included in the event, but there’s no real detail here about why it’s relevant to their audience, or even who their audience is, aside from “men.”

Why should their readers attend this retreat? Why is it relevant to them, in this moment? This event was specifically for men of color, but while there was a masc Black person shown in the graphic, nothing else there actually called out to that audience.

The reality is, most of us won’t pay with our time or our dollars to attend an event when we don’t know why it’s relevant or valuable to us. So, it’s your job to tell us why your work matters to us. Tell us the story that fuels what you do. Tell us what motivates you to serve the world in this particular way. 

You might feel weird about taking up that space, especially in a culture where everything feels like too much. But, it does matter, and it’s how you reach someone on a deeper level, instead of letting them scroll by.