How to Turn Stories into Powerful Digital Marketing Content

Digital marketing is something that businesses rely on these days, mainly because it is deemed very effective and measurable. There is also the fact that digital marketing doesn’t require large investments, which means small and medium businesses can compete on the same playing field as larger corporations.

Digital marketing doesn’t always have to be about selling products and services; in fact, it shouldn’t. In today’s market, the primary objective of the best digital marketing campaigns is delivering value to the audience. That value comes from the stories you share and the knowledge you deliver. So, how can you turn stories into powerful digital marketing content?

Make It Personal

Gone are the days of using templates or writing content to be general. Today, digital marketing content is all about personal points of view. While your brand has its persona and you want that persona to shine, it is still important to add human touches to your digital marketing content.

Instead of sharing product features as a list, for instance, it is far more effective to tell a compelling story – or several stories – about how those features get added to the final product. You still touch on the features you want to market, but you are letting the audience know about them in a more compelling and relatable way.

Speaking of making your content relatable, you can also share personal experiences that the audience can relate to. A lot of business owners are sharing their ‘going back to school’ experience. Others focus on their day-to-day activities as a business owner and the challenges they come across along the way.

Be Genuine

Genuine content is the most appealing, even when it is used as part of a bigger marketing campaign. You will be surprised by how much the audience consumes genuine content compared to strictly promotional pieces, and it is easy to see why too.

Let’s say you are pursuing a masters in supply chain management by taking an online engineering course from Kettering University, and you want to share stories from that experience while keeping them relevant with your business. You can actually go the genuine route and focus on the experience of pursuing an online Master of Science Supply Chain Management degree first.

From that experience, you can add sentences or lines that reflect how you get to solve real problems using the knowledge and insights you acquire from the course. This means talking about the “Aha” moment and making the discovery more engaging.

Think About Engagement

Speaking of making your content more engaging, actively seeking user engagement is not a crime. The issue comes from doing it too blatantly or too frequently. You can ask the audience to leave a comment or ask questions. You can even ask the audience to try your product.

All you need is a strong and compelling call to action, and this too is easy to create. More importantly, you need to know where to place that call to action for maximum impact. The traditional way of placing a call to action at the end of the article isn’t always the most effective. You may get higher user engagement with a call to action in the middle.

Think about the kind of engagement you want in return and be sure to go into the specifics when writing your call to action. For example, you can describe the benefits of subscribing to your newsletter to get the audience exciting about actually filling out the opt-in form.

Invest in Your Content

Another big challenge to overcome when trying to convert stories into compelling digital marketing content is the effort required to complete that process. Yes, writing articles and producing videos – or making other types of content – is not only time consuming, but it can be relatively expensive.

A lot of business owners and digital marketers make the mistake of skimping on those investments, with the free nature of the content being the primary concern. The content is posted for the audience to consume for free, but that doesn’t mean you are not getting a return on your investment. Exposure, user engagement, and brand loyalty are among the returns to expect.

If you are serious about using stories for boosting your brand value, then you need to start investing in good content. Write articles that the audience actually wants to read, not one that is filled with keywords and plugs. Videos need to be as pleasant to consume as well.

Use Visuals

The last tip to keep in mind relates to the importance of visuals in storytelling. Online users tend to consume visual content better, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Since you can leverage the power of design and visual elements to tell your stories, there are more things you can do.

Infographics are particularly effective for telling compelling stories. You can use data as well as plots to make your infographics easier to consume. Paired with the visual elements added to the infographics, you can expect a higher user engagement. This type of content also incites higher excitement and user engagement, which translates to a higher return on investment (ROI).

Any digital marketer will tell you that visuals create a bigger impact. Good visual elements go a step further than that. They reinforce your brand image, make your content easier to consume and even bring specific, practical benefits like a boost in SEO performance.

There is one additional thing that you have to keep in mind when converting stories into compelling contents for digital marketing: it’s not easy. You have to be willing to put in the work, evaluate the results, and work towards continuous improvement in order to produce content that engages the audience on a more personal level.

Once you have completed one cycle of content creation, the rest will be easy from there. You can learn from the audience, find more stories to tell, and leverage visuals in a more effective way. It will not be long before you start getting audience groups that are looking forward to your next article or YouTube video. That’s when you know you have told your stories well.