We recently had the privilege of helping Levey Day School with a messaging campaign. This amazing little school has a powerful parent network that came together as brand ambassadors. Their unique stories are at the heart of why word-of-mouth-marketing will never die. It’s because we TRUST our friends. They are real. We see something of ourselves in each of them. They’re relatable, honest and trustworthy. What better way to raise this school’s visibility?
What makes this simple, no-frills video campaign so powerful? Storytelling. It reminded me of a blog post I wrote many years ago about the power of the human brain and how we process and recall stories. As I read through it, very little needed to be updated, other than the fact that today, video content is by far the most engaging form of social media content.
As you prep your next campaign, remember that your story doesn’t need to be elaborate — just real.
Below are my take-aways from Neuro Web Design by Weinschenk:
People love hearing stories. Think about it. Children grow up hearing stories. Weinschenk explains that we naturally communicate the events of our daily life in the form of stories. You may not consider yourself to be a story-teller, but most of our communication tells a series of events in the form of a story. She also explains that we recall more of the information if the content is broken into digestible chunks.
People are visual. Did you know that the visual part of your brain takes up half of its processing power? Weinschenk explains that this is why most of us remember things we see visually. This is a powerful statistic for marketers. When it’s tempting to create a text-heavy piece to get as much information in front of your audience as possible, remember that people will recall the information if it’s presented in shorter chunks with heavy use of imagery.
People are attracted and respond to stories + pictures. Try incorporating a story-telling tone to your web or marketing content and add more photos. Together, the appeal of a photo coupled with an interesting story will draw your reader in and help them recall (and hopefully retell the story to others – word of mouth advertising isn’t dead!) the information for a longer period of time.
Weinschenk’s book is targeted toward web designers, but the concepts can be applied to video, printed marketing collateral, proposals or presentations.
Think about your company’s work and your successes over the past year. Can you tell a story about how your services helped your client or improved your community? Did you use a novel process to take a project from start to finish? A great first step for developing marketing concepts is to spend the time identifying potential stories and think about how the story might help solve your customer’s business challenges.