Marketing Plan Presentation: How to Create & Deliver Your Strategy
Stories are everywhere!
The scroll-stopping ad you see, the enticing trailer that catches your eye, or even the viral tweet shared hundreds of times all contain storytelling elements.
In "Your Brain Is Almost Perfect," Professor Read Montague explains that our brains release dopamine when we hear stories, giving us a feeling of satisfaction. This attraction to stories stems from our innate survival instincts rooted in early human history.
Today, stories have moved beyond mere survival tactics; they now lie at the very foundation of marketing.
With powerful storytelling, brands can create emotional connections with their audiences, differentiate themselves from competitors and share their values and mission like never before.
Such connections build brand awareness and eventually result in increased sales.
In this article, we define storytelling marketing, its importance and types, how to use storytelling in marketing, and real-life examples to inspire you.
Storytelling is the process of utilizing narrative techniques in our marketing efforts to create an emotional, relatable and human experience for the audience.
As David Ogilvy said, “You cannot bore people into buying your product; you can only interest them in buying it.”
Using storytelling in marketing is more than just selling your product or service. It's about connecting with customers in a manner that resonates with their lives, experiences and desires.
When done right, storytelling gives your products or services character and context, making them stick in your audience's memory.
To make visual storytelling a breeze, Visme gives you access to thousands of ready-to-edit templates across 40+ categories. With thousands of icons, stock photos and videos at your fingertips and a drag-and-drop editor, anyone—regardless of their skill level—can create stunning sales and marketing materials.
And the best part? With Visme’s collaborative feature, teams of all sizes can edit templates together in real-time, leave feedback and resolve comments. This tool streamlines the brainstorming, revisions and feedback process for a more unified and productive workflow.
Storytelling plays a critical role in marketing due to the memorable, engaging and relatable nature of stories.
Let's explore why you should deploy it in your marketing strategy.
Stories have the ability to create emotional connections, which may be difficult to achieve with facts and figures alone. For example, Nike's “Find Your Greatness" ad campaign didn't dwell on shoe features. Instead, it shared an inspiring story of ordinary people achieving extraordinary feats.
Consumers connect more deeply when they see themselves reflected in the narrative. They're inspired to act and be part of the brand's story, such as striving for their greatness.
Stories can help businesses stand out by creating a sense of authenticity linked to the brand's essence.
For example, McDonald's "Our Food. Your Questions" campaign utilized the power of user-generated content, urging customers to ask questions about the company's food quality.
This transparent approach helped the brand significantly boost its credibility and authenticity.
Showing transparency and openness builds trust among consumers. It humanizes the brand, casts off corporate shrouds, and shows a willingness to engage honestly with the audience.
Stories humanize brands, inviting consumers to trust and connect personally with your brand.
For example, Warby Parker's home try-on program shows customers the company's dedication to customer satisfaction and trust.
First-hand experiences and personal touches make a company seem more reliable and trustworthy, encouraging brand loyalty and repeat business.
With a powerful narrative, your brand becomes more recognizable and penetrative in the consumer’s mental space. This improves brand recall, which can drive repeat purchases and a stronger emotional connection with the brand.
For example, Aflac's simple yet humorous duck mascot has effortlessly imparted brand recognition, making it memorable for consumers.
The duck constantly reminds the public about Aflac’s identity, ensuring it stands out in a crowded insurance market.
Using characters or mascots can become synonymous with your brand, often evoking particular emotions or values, such as reliability or a sense of fun.
Visme's brand wizard simplifies brand consistency by automatically applying your fonts, colors, and logo to all your marketing materials. Simply enter your URL and Visme will extract these elements directly from your website and save them in your brand kit.
Product features or services can only take on new meanings or significance when tied to a story.
For example, MasterCard's "Priceless" campaign showcased emotional and memorable experiences that could be bought with their card, emphasizing purchasing power and speaking to deeper values.
Customers aren't just sold on what the product does, but what it represents in their lives—an enriched lifestyle, in this case. This makes customers return not for the product but for the feeling or experience it provides.
Interactive and immersive storytelling can improve the chances of turning a potential customer into a customer.
For example, Oreo's innovative 'Oreo Eclipse' campaign showed a real-time 'lunar eclipse' using an Oreo cookie. They engaged their audiences with current and topical storytelling based on trending events.
Cashing in on trending events while infusing the art of storytelling will not only increase engagement but also enhance the customer’s association with both the event and product.
Through entrancing stories, customers can develop a fondness and loyalty that bind them to a brand.
For example, Starbucks' ethically sourced coffee journey tells a story about its commitment to fairness and quality, attracting socially conscious consumers.
Consistent storytelling reinforces the brand's values and mission, building a community of customers who share those values and are more likely to advocate on behalf of the brand.
Information coated in a compelling narrative tends to remain embedded in consumers’ minds far longer.
For example, TOMS' "One for One" campaign used storytelling to drive its message of social responsibility.
Consumers are more likely to remember and understand social issues when they see the tangible impact of their purchases. Telling the real stories of individuals who’ve benefited imprints the company’s ethical values and mission in the consumer’s memory.
By 2027, there will be over six billion social media users worldwide. Brands can leverage compelling, shareable stories for word-of-mouth marketing.
For example, Dunkin' Donuts creates ads using the hashtag #DunkinMoments. This enhances reliability and encourages customers to share their everyday moments and experiences with the brand on social media.
This creates a hub of customer-generated content that heightens brand visibility and appeal, essentially turning satisfied customers into brand ambassadors.
Visme’s social media scheduler can help businesses automate their storytelling campaigns and ensure a consistent online presence, which is key to engaging an audience at scale.
A company's story can deepen customers' investment in your products by illuminating shared values and experiences.
For example, Dove’s Real Beauty campaign stories resonated with millions of women and kids by aligning company values with their desire for authentic representation of beauty. This deepened their connection with the company.
Inclusivity, self-acceptance and realism within brand stories can lead to a powerful sense of community among consumers, establishing bonds beyond a product's superficial aspects.
Good storytelling does not solely entertain; it also instills ideals and morals that align with the consumer's self-concept.
Generally, there are four types of storytelling: oral, written, visual, and digital. Each type has its own unique strengths and can lend a distinct voice to your brand. Let's take a look at what they look like.
Oral storytelling involves sharing narratives through spoken words, sound acting, music, or direct conversation. Its key strength is its inherent intimacy and spontaneity.
Think live product demonstrations, podcasts, or audio advertisements.
This type of storytelling in business can humanize the brand and instill a sense of excitement or urgency. It is highly effective in capturing audiences during live events or interactive sessions.
When creating visual content in Visme, you can add an element of oral storytelling by recording a voiceover or adding audio or background music to your content. Visme has an extensive audio library you can tap into or simply upload your audio file to your project.
Here's a video showing how to record your audio voiceover in Visme.
This technique involves skilled writing to project ideas, information and narratives. In today’s context, it often appears in formats like articles, blogs, advertisements, long-form content and social media posts.
With the introduction of AI writing tools, storytelling in written form has taken on whole new dimensions. Take your written storytelling marketing to the next level with Visme’s AI writer.
The tool allows you to produce initial drafts for any kind of text or copy, discover creative ideas, or overcome writer’s block. You can also select the tone of voice—be it informal, creative, formal, simple, confident and business.
Research has shown that 65% of individuals are visual learners.
Visuals can take your storytelling a notch higher. It’s a powerful way to engage your audience while inspiring them to take action.
Visual storytelling can hook your audience in and evoke emotions. The best part is that visuals increase information retention.
You can use different types of visuals for storytelling, such as images, videos, infographics, presentations, reports, plans, charts and graphs, whitepapers and ebooks. In the Visme library, you’ll find templates for creating all of the visuals we’ve mentioned and much more.
But when working on visuals for storytelling marketing, you can easily collaborate with your team to bring your vision to life. Visme's workflow feature helps you easily assign different sections to team members, set deadlines and develop a review and approval process.
Like visual storytelling, digital storytelling also leans on multimedia content but with advanced interactivity.
It explores narratives using features like animations, data widgets, motion graphics, interactive infographics, or AR/VR for an immersive experience.
In digital storytelling, content is dynamic—it adjusts to users' responses or preferences, creating personally tailored stories that enable a deeper connection between consumers and brands.
Visme comes with smart interactivity and animation features, which include a wide range of characters, gestures and animation styles. You can also connect slides, pages, or content blocks to any object on your canvas—or turn images, text, or icons into clickable links.
In this section, we will look at key ways to incorporate storytelling into your marketing strategy to enhance brand engagement and connection with your audience.
According to Jay Acunzo, the golden rule of storytelling is to get them to the end.
We get so engrossed in getting the audience to look at our story that we often forget about keeping them to the last sentence.
The trick is to tease your audience from the start and create open loops. Give them a reason to explore, hint at a culmination, an answer, or an ultimate revelation. This can be accomplished with quizzes, polls and reactive infographics.
To make your content shareable, don't forget to add CTAs. Visme has premade content and CTA blocks that you can easily drag and drop into your design.
Nobody likes to listen to someone endlessly brag about their accomplishments or tell tales without substantial proof. The same holds true for brands.
Imagine claiming that your product is the best in the market without showing any evidence—it doesn’t bode well with savvy consumers.
Instead, demonstrate the value of your product or service. You can use Visme’s case study templates, testimonial templates, or product demo templates. Through these, you're not just saying your product is effective but showing it.
Furthermore, relate them to real-life situations in which your audience might find themselves. This helps form a connection, as they can envision benefiting from what you’re offering.
Pro Tip: To make your brand storytelling pop out, Visme’s data visualization tools can help you convert complex data sets into visually appealing formats like infographics, charts or maps. You can sync Visme with your live data source, making the tool quickly render real-time data into visuals.
Visme's dynamic fields feature lets you design one template and input custom fields that can be easily changed with a few clicks. This can help you tweak your message for each set of audiences without spending a lot of time.
Marketing to everyone is marketing to no one.
You can make use of customer persona templates to gain insight into your specific target audience's preferences, challenges and goals. This helps shape the narrative, style, tone and even the platforms where the story should be told for maximum impact.
Once you know who you're talking to, consider their perspective.
Next, create stories that reflect these aspects and speak directly to them.
Analyze your content to understand which parts of your story are most engaging and where you might be losing your audience's attention.
Visme's analytics feature allows you to monitor your audience's engagement with your content by providing detailed metrics such as visit and view counts and the time they spend interacting with your stories. This will help refine marketing campaigns and let you understand what works best for your target demographic.
Make sure your content is accessible, regardless of how your audience wants to consume it.
When you create visual content, you can share it with your audience using an online link. You can also generate an embed code to publish the content on your website or landing page. There’s an option to download them as a PNG, JPG, PDF, MP4 and GIF file.
Harness the power of storytelling in business with this bright infographic template.
Now, let’s take a look at how brands have successfully used storytelling in their marketing strategies.
Red Bull took experiential storytelling to new heights with their "Stratos" campaign in 2012, where they sponsored Felix Baumgartner's record-breaking skydive from the edge of space. The live-streamed event captivated millions worldwide, who watched Felix free-fall and safely parachute back to Earth.
Redbull's daring promotional stunt was gripping, translating into a huge publicity win. Their storytelling transcended traditional marketing, offering a real-time, thrilling narrative directly tied back to the brand's mantra of pushing limits.
It showcased how experiential marketing can create shared excitement and brand affiliation among a global audience, leading to a significant bump in media exposure and consumer brand engagement.
Patagonia, an outdoor clothing brand, took a bold stance with its "Don't Buy This Jacket" campaign, which was featured in The New York Times on Black Friday in 2011. The ad encouraged consumers to consider the environmental impact of their purchases and to refrain from buying products they didn't need—even discouraging the jacket advertised.
The"Don't Buy This Jacket" campaign was a brilliant inversion of classic consumerist messaging. Their approach sparked a conversation about responsible consumption and highlighted the company's dedication to ethical business practices. This kind of reverse psychology engaged customers at a deeper level, reinforcing Patagonia's brand values and encouraging loyalty.
The "Worlds Apart" campaign involved pairs of strangers who held opposing views on various issues, working together to complete a task before their differences were revealed.
This social experiment culminated with the option to discuss their beliefs over a beer. Its video went viral, sparking social conversations about finding common ground.
Heineken demonstrated the power of social responsibility in advertising. The campaign positioned the brand as a facilitator of meaningful conversations by promoting open dialogue and connection amidst division. It effectively utilized emotional storytelling to resonate with a broad audience, stressing the importance of bridging societal gaps.
Back in 2022, Loom, a B2B screen recording software company, launched ‘canceled meeting candles.’
Loom capitalized on its existing VIP gifting shop to launch a unique brand campaign centered on a candle with the scent of canceled meetings—a playful nod to its core value proposition: saving time by replacing unnecessary meetings with its recording software.
Customers could win this candle by creating a Loom video, sharing it on social media and using the hashtag #CancelledMeetingsByLoom.
The campaign stood out by transforming the typically boring B2B space with its innovative storytelling approach. This resulted in organic testimonials through user-generated content, increased social media interaction and a memorable, quirky reinforcement of Loom's commitment to saving users time. This campaign serves as a great example of retention marketing storytelling.
Postmark, an email delivery platform for companies, launched a webcomic titled Postmark Express: Journey To The Inbox in 2021, which demystified the complexities of email deliverability.
Designed to make a typically dull yet crucial subject engaging, the comic features Jordan and Mary—two brave ‘delivery pups"—exploring the internet's Wild West to successfully dodge spam filters and ensure an essential email's delivery. The comic resonated well with audiences, garnering over 223 upvotes and receiving more than 50 positive comments on Product Hunt.
Postmark used illustrative storytelling in content marketing, turning a complicated technical subject into an adventurous, relatable narrative. This approach highlighted the brand's expertise in a fun, non-intimidating manner, appealing to both the technically minded audience and those just dipping their toes into the realm of email marketing.
Want to create one for your brand, too? Use Visme’s comic-style business presentation template.
Visme’s AI image generator can help you generate your own unique characters. Simply input your prompt and choose comic book as the output style. You can choose from other styles like paintings, pencil drawings, 3D graphics, icons and abstract art too.
To make sure your images are perfect, you can use AI edit tools to unblur and sharpen photo for better clarity or remove distracting backdrops, people and objects from your images.
Storytelling can breathe life into your brand like nothing else. It builds an emotional connection, instills trust and can turn a mundane message into a memorable narrative.
With Visme, you have everything necessary to create stunning, interactive and measurable storytelling experiences.
Whether your goal is educating, entertaining, persuading, or converting, Visme supports your storytelling from the first word to the final click.
Visme provides a suite of AI tools—AI-powered documents, text and image generators, and AI edit tools—to help you create captivating content in a fraction of the time.
But that’s the tip of the iceberg regarding what Visme offers.
You’ll have access to an extensive library of professionally designed templates, a vast library of icons, stock photos and videos, workflow management and collaboration tools, brand wizard, animation and interactive elements, data visualization tools and much more.
Create your team account today and unlock the full potential of your marketing team.
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