Digital marketing is a multi-faceted industry and while everything in the digital marketing funnel is focused on the final sale, a lot of the initial work, such as content creation and social media, is really about customer engagement, customer experience and brand awareness.

The same principles apply to digital storytelling as traditional marketing: you want to find something meaningful to your audience and incorporate it into your strategy.

In this blog, we'll explore techniques you can use to improve digital storytelling to increase sales.

What is a story?

Every great story consists of the same simple structure: a beginning, middle, and end. This is called a story arc. In the world of digital media, you have the opportunity every day to tell many stories about your brand in the form of Facebook posts, blogs, and occasional content like Instagram Stories. But unlike epic novels, you only have a split second to engage readers with the story your business is trying to tell.

One of the keys to doing this, as any contributor can tell you, is to name a person's 'pain points' or weaknesses - you need to pique their interest early, usually via Tap on the emotional resonance and resolve.

It's also something you can think of as conflict or tension, which is evident in any great story or ad. Once you've shown how to resolve a problem or conflict with your audience's UK phone number list, they're likely to continue liking your page, sharing your post, or heading to your website to buy a product.

This general formula applies to any type of storytelling, but the trick with digital media is that you have less time to "capture" them.

Emotional Ads For the most part, the best stories do make you react: they make you think, they make you feel, and they make you take action.

Here are some examples of recent ads or ad campaigns that have successfully used emotional storytelling.

List of UK phone numbers This Procter & Gamble ad, "My Black Man is Beautiful," shows Black families discussing what it's like to grow up with prejudice due to one's skin color under the hashtag #TalkAboutBias.

Burger King launched an ad for an anti-bullying campaign called "Bullying Jr." During National Bullying Prevention Month, they told stories of what children actually heard and felt when they were "bullied," and used hidden cameras to act out scenes from Burger King and bystander reactions.

The emotional appeal to protect bees is expressed through a video that highlights the grief of climate change. These are just a number of examples of how marketers are using visual advertising to appeal to emotion through storytelling, touch on general social issues, not just their products or brands.

Show Don't Tell If you've ever taken a writing class, you've probably heard this piece of advice: Show but don't tell. No matter what field of storytelling you're in, this is good advice that's been tested by facts.

In writing, it's important to build characters, set scenes, and use techniques such as metaphor to convey the deep meaning of the story to the reader in a unique way. They want to think, they want to feel, they want to interpret. In advertising, it’s best to keep things simple and straightforward, but since the digital world relies so heavily on actual visuals, this creates limitless opportunities to show word-for-word in your telling.

Use narrative devices, Narrative devices can work wonders, grab people's attention, stir up emotions, and often just stand out especially in advertising spaces. Incorporating fear or suspense into a "live" setting (think, Blair Witch Project) is one way to create an unforgettable story.