Storytelling is the most effective form of marketing for eCommerce businesses. This is the most useful method for coming across as an authentic business, selling quality products. The art of storytelling converts into connecting with the consumers on a personal level.
Brand stories can be a way to provide useful information to prospects and help them with their requirements. Here are some tips for successfully promoting your eCommerce business through brand stories:
Sharing Values
Building a story around the values of the company can be really helpful in getting more followers. Sharing the goals and vision of the company helps the customers know about it more and helps build a relationship with them. Talking about the personal experiences of the founders add a human element to your brand.
Product Stories
Telling interesting stories about the products you are selling, can be be engaging for the customers. Talking about how many of the specific products have already been sold out or about their distinct quality, can be of great help. One can elaborate the story by talking about the manufacturing process and the quality standards.
Differentiate
Differentiating your brand and products with others, can be done with the help of an interesting story. You can talk about how the differentiation originated and how the product can be a prized possession. An interesting way that startups use, to craft a brand story, is by talking about how they started out and what were the initial challenges that were faced, while setting up the business.
Entertain
Besides buying products, at the back of their mind, customers are looking for entertainment. Showcasing your products with high quality images and visuals can leave a positive impact in the minds of the consumers. Giving away freebies and discounts with the help of engaging messages can be very helpful in pulling off conversions.
Promote High Selling Products
Understanding the business and the consumer is the key to the success of storytelling for an eCommerce brand. Analysing which products are the highest selling and then ensuring that these products are promoted well, through content marketing efforts can be really helpful in garnering more conversions for the business.
Understand The Target Audiences
Creating a persona of the target user group and understanding their aspirations will help you create the right stories to get their attention. If you are selling fashion accessories for women, then creating interesting content around the latest fashion for women, can help in promoting your products while engaging with your target group.
Use Visuals and Videos
Using inspirational visuals and videos can be useful in connecting with the target users on an emotional level. Catching the consumer’s attention and entertaining them will get them to share your content on social channels, helping in getting more traction for the brand. These stories can be used to promote the values that the brand stands for.
Use Powerful Headlines
Use of interesting and attention grabbing copy is one of the most preferred way to get more users to buy, on an eCommerce store. Headlines help in sending out messages that trigger customer action. They bring out the unique selling proposition of the product, communicating its aspirational value.
Work On The Overall Experience
An eCommerce store must tell an interesting story to its consumers throughout the the process of buying products on the site. This includes searching and browsing of products and categories, adding the products to shopping cart and finally making payment.
Adding User Stories
Getting the users to participate in the process of creating your brand story is a unique and engaging method of business promotion. Getting users to share comments, feedback and reviews of the products, adds to the trustworthiness of the store. The users can also be asked to create blog posts and videos talking about their personal experiences and stories. This can help create interesting content, cost effectively.
One of the key challenges faced by eCommerce stores is to break the clutter and get noticed. With lesser entry barriers and a larger number of players offering similar products, one has to provide high aspirational value to get ahead of the competition. The more interesting is the brand story of your business, the higher the chances of its success.
Ved Raj is a business enthusiast. He writes about startups, remote teams and outsourcing.
He is working as a Marketing Manager with ValueCoders, a leading provider of remote development teams. (Facebook | Twitter | Google+)