Storytelling: What is it and Why is it Important?
It would feel morally wrong to write an article about storytelling and not tell you how our company came to be… Digital Storyteller starts with our Founder and Chief Creative Officer, Amanda Rogers.
In 1997, when the actors union was on strike, Amanda taught herself how to code from a book. (Yes, these were the days before WordPress, Squarespace, and WIX—scary times…)
Anyway, Amanda’s martial arts teacher was an 8th degree blackbelt teaching amazing Tang Soo Do in New York City—and had only five students. Amanda knew he needed a website—so she taught herself to write HTML, CSS, and Javascript to try to help him build a studio.
A year later when Amanda moved to Los Angeles, the studio was thriving. In fact, 80% of the students came to him through the website. She was hooked.
After a few twists and turns, Digital Storyteller was born—an organic digital marketing agency in Encinitas, California.
Today, the team has grown from one to nearly 15. On our team, we’ve got content specialists, social media experts, a client success manager, SEO team, as well as a website and graphic design team to continue what Amanda started.
That’s our story.
If you haven’t already recognized the importance of storytelling within a business, we’ll continue on for you. Better yet, we snagged the CEO and Owner of Digital Storyteller to chat about storytelling on camera, Andrew Marr.
What is Storytelling?
At its core, storytelling is (you guessed it!) about telling stories. Yoast tells us that storytelling is “about using stories to engage your audience, or to make something more clear.”
As humans, we’re wired for story. From each of our early days, it’s likely we recall our parents and the people around us sharing and telling stories. We love to read books and see movies and musicals—why? Because people are addicted to stories.
But what does storytelling look like when it comes to marketing for your business? When it comes to marketing for financial services companies, we see storytelling as making what you do and the services you provide:
- Relatable
- Easy to understand by your audience
Why is Storytelling Important in Marketing?
Storytelling builds trust. Here are some of the stories you can share in your marketing strategy as well as how you can share them:
- Share your stories on your website
- Share your origin story
- Share how you’ve grown
- Share the challenges your business has faced (How did you overcome these challenges? Did any positives come out?)
- Share how you help your clients (A lot of companies don’t share how they help their clients. Come on, boast a little!)
As the old adage goes, sharing is caring… Communicating your story with your audience.
A Word of Advice from Our CEO and Owner
So, how important is it to share your company story with your digital followers? (i.e. prospects, people in similar industries, current clients, etc.)
According to Andrew, it’s extremely important if you want to build trust and if you want to build a following. We believe in the power of storytelling. In fact, we start all of our partnerships with a Brand Storytelling Session.
Picture this: You go onto a website. For ease, let’s say it’s a digital marketing agency. You’re looking at their services, considering partnering with this company but you don’t find anything about their story.
There’s nothing about their employees or how the company came to be. Does that make you want to partner with that company even more? No, of course it doesn’t. That’s not the way things go.
For those who feel like it’s weird to talk about yourself or what you bring to the table as a business, for fear of coming off as arrogant or boastful, think about it… It’s your website. That’s kind of the point!
Let go of the taboo you were taught in grade school, that it’s bad to talk about yourself.
In business, it’s important that you share your success stories and tell people how you help them.
Lastly, share your company culture. People want to know what it’s like to work with you. People wanna know if your employees are happy. Are they going to do a great job for them if they decide to partner with you? Share stories, story after story.
Interested in learning how to build more trust with your prospects and clients? Check out this article on how pricing transparency builds trust.
