Great stories whether coming in the form of movie, book or even as a marketing campaign remain a powerful way of resonating with audiences. However, as the consumer is increasingly becoming social and mobile, he or she wants to interact with that story and not just to be exposed to it.
For consumer and marketers, continued innovations have made it possible for the audience to have a say and influence in its outcome as the story unfolds. The new, in-the-moment kind of relationship between audience and brand stories is the foundation of the emerging new tactic called story building.
This is essentially just an active method of telling stories. It puts social, mobile and big data to task and gets the customer involved as it goes along.
The new approach may feel quite daunting as it introduces whole set of new variables which are at the whim of the customer or consumer. Luckily, it is not just a matter of you, crossing the fingers, waiting and hoping the best development. It is the outcome of strategic development aimed at maximizing the chances that the audience will get in-touch with the emerging story and emerging opportunities for useful engagement irrespective of where or when the audience encounters it.
How do you ensure their participation?
Rather than just retrofitting one story for the different available channels, storybuilding is better achieved by allocating each medium a different role in enacting, developing and the actual telling of a much larger, more detailed comprehensive tale. The point is to actually let technology do what it does best without you, after telling it to work in the way, you think is best or should be done.
From past experience with audience, marketers should be able to trigger in real time the different components of the ongoing narrative appropriately and in real-time. Critical is that the mobile technology lets the audience to jump into the ongoing story instantly through interactive calls to action which are also captivating.
Advertising platforms, commercials on billboards can easily be brought to active life by the right call to action. The magic is simple: You desire your audience to act on something, and in return to their action, you are in fact offering or giving them something beneficial.
To be able to know what to give or offer depends on both the context and also about what are the expected outcomes for both parties.
Social media was built to spreading information quickly to a huge and massive audience which leads to the success of different campaigns. Integrating the social media functionalities into campaigns is really a great method not just to reach a varied and large audience but also to let them genuinely immerse themselves into that campaign.
Creating an idea which drives immediate customer response, while at the same time, strengthening consumer’s engagement with your brand is the key to achieving success in storybuilding strategy. It will amplify brand name to all the participating audience for mutual benefits.
Apart from all these aspects, what is the most important in any marketing campaign, is the overall message and its concept. Great marketing strategies in world will not cover a poor or bad story. Each day new and improved technologies are being introduced that do allow the marketers to communicate the message and also engage with the audiences, like it has never been done before.
Deploying the proper mobile marketing strategy with some creativity, will enable marketers to maximize on the potential that is being offered by these technologies and be able to tell dynamic stories which are interactive and ultimately benefit both the consumer and the company brand.
Chintan is the Founder and Editor of Loyalty & Customers.
