From PowerPoint presentations to cold emails – your end audience is bombarded with a lot of business communication every single day. Adding storytelling to your business content can help you stand out from the crowd. Here’s how…
A product or service that merely resolves a problem is no longer sufficient in today’s market. Consumers, investors, clients, and even employees, now wish to connect with the business, resonate with its values, and be a part of the brand story. To go above and beyond for connecting with these cohorts, organizations can use storytelling – something humans do as part of their daily communication and hence respond to it better.
When done effectively, storytelling can turn a brand into a legacy, build a strong marketing plan, gain audience loyalty, and more importantly consumer love.
According to Forbes, ‘Business or brand storytelling is the cohesive narrative that weaves together the facts and emotions that your brand evokes. In addition to giving your customers reasons why they should buy a product or service, businesses need to start sharing the story behind their brand, why it exists, and why this matters, consistently across all communication.’
A Nielsen study revealed that our brains are far more engaged by storytelling than by facts. Instead of running the risk of losing the audience’s attention with a deluge of numbers and analytics, a story with a clear beginning and end can help keep them engaged throughout.
A majority of successful organizations have deliberate, in-depth backstories that give their work a greater meaning and purpose. According to statistics, a brand is more likely to succeed if it has a vision that the audiences embrace and empathize with. The Global Empathy Index highlighted that the top 10 companies on the index earned 50% more than others simply because they felt more humane.
Storytelling serves as a framework for organizing content that might otherwise feel fragmented and haphazard or even drab.
Business communication has a lot of elements to it. Be it the good old Cold Emails or Annual Reports or an Investor Pitch – each piece of communication conveys who the brand is and what it stands for. Adding storytelling to these content formats, can not only enable them to stand out but also make them more memorable.
Now, the question remains, how to effectively apply business storytelling to business communication? Let’s find out…
Storytelling for PowerPoint Presentations
Find genuine stories
People have a way to sense reality. Keep your stories real, genuine, and preferably from your own or your team member’s experience. The idea is to share a verified story. If at all, you do have to narrate a fictional story, give a disclaimer in the very beginning.
For example, if the PowerPoint Presentation talks about an IT solution for one of your clients, you could add a story about how a certain employee has been facing this challenge. Give a little background about the employee and their struggles and frustrations with the problem. Once they have a context, move on to the IT solution you have created.
Use the people involved as characters
Stories require characters to progress and whereas objects and data points lack a backstory, the people who created and maintain them do not. Your audience will naturally start to follow a narrative if you simply refocus your presentation on the people engaged in your story (who they are, what they are doing, etc.), even if only briefly.
For example, while working on a PPT presentation, how the content writer had an epiphany and came up with an amazing copy or tagline. Similarly, let’s say the PPT has a data point that says 30 pc of senior citizens are not comfortable using an ATM card. This statistic in itself doesn’t stick, but if you follow it up with a story about how your own grandparents have been struggling with ATM cards, the presentees are more likely to respond and remember.
Describe where you are & where you want to be
The shift and transformation that take place in your story will be what draws the audience in. This transformation story usually arises from unfulfilled needs, wants, or desires (anything that is not as it should be), which then triggers some sort of action or series of events that leads to addressing those needs (potentially your product or service).
Continuing with the same example as above – now that you have established that a huge chunk of senior citizens does not know how to use an ATM card, you can propose the solution you have to correct this. How your services will solve this problem for a large sect of the society – this is your story.
Emphasize the crucial points only
The effectiveness of any presentation depends on vivid and intriguing details, yet too much information (or irrelevant facts) will overwhelm and confuse your audience. Look for the significant aspects of the story and emphasize only those points throughout the presentation.
Make sure to rehearse it
Having a good story is not enough, you need to understand how to narrate it. Practice your presentation in advance; understand which parts of the story need to be emphasized, and even think about tone modulation. Don’t leave anything to chance – you have a good brand story and your presentation reflects it, so, present it with the vigor it demands.
Storytelling for Funding Pitches
Adapt Your Story to Your Audience
Every time you present your pitch, you must make changes according to who are you presenting it to. You must be able to read the audience, in this case the investors, each time you begin to tell your story anew.
For example, if this round of funding is going to help your company create a stronger supply chain, make sure that your story narrates that aspect of your brand’s journey. How you started off with a few couriers a day, but now have a whopping 2000 orders going out daily, and hope to take it to 20,000 with this new round of funding.
Have faith in your story
Everyone has a story to tell and every business stems from a story. The challenge however that most startup owners face is that they feel their story is not worth narrating. Unless you have faith in your story, no one else will.
Talk about your brand story in your pitches, with immense pride. Say it how it happened and make sure to highlight all the highs and lows, and how the organization made it so far.
Use Visual Aids
Information can be communicated visually five times more effectively than verbally. The listeners absorb information considerably more quickly as a result of the charts, graphs, pictures, and now even memes that capture your dreams in a more tangible and real way. When delivering the story, make reference to images.
Storytelling for Cold E-mails
An interesting subject line
The key that opens doors could be compared to the subject line of a cold email. While it might not be possible to add storytelling per se to the subject line, it is integral to keep it conversational. Customize the subject line to the receiver as and when possible.
A clever introduction
This is where storytelling can begin. Instead of introducing your services – start with who you are, what you do, and what you stand for. Something like, ‘This is John, you might not know me, so let me quickly introduce myself. I run XYZ business, I am a paw-parent to a labrador named Ollie, and I love french fries.’ Now that you have their attention, move on to the pitch.
However, this style of writing is more suited when the email is going to people closer to your own designation. For a super senior, you can decide on how your tone should be.
A strong pitch
The need we feel to cram in as much data, selling points, and information as we can, in one email, is universal. Resist the temptation. Resist it hard! Instead of listing all the brands you have worked with, pick two-three best examples and transform them into a story.
For example, ‘when we took XYZ on board as a client they were dealing with so and so problems. But since we took over their account, this is where they stand.’
Business communication holds a lot of responsibility on its shoulders – be it conveying the company’s performance through an elaborate presentation or trying to find new investors. Adding a layer of business storytelling can not only make it more effective but also reduces the chances of the communication going unnoticed or underperforming. Your brand story deserves to reach as many people as possible – and storytelling certainly makes this possible.
If you liked this blog on business storytelling, check out our blog for more amazing content from the world of storytelling.
