"I feel my eyes gravitating towards the clock on the bottom right hand of my screen. Tick. One minute has passed. Tick. Two minutes has passed. Tick. Tick. Tick. The pressure to complete a project weighs on my shoulders as if an elephant has hoisted itself up to perform a balancing act for an invisible crowd. The mundane noise of clicking exuberates the thoughts in my mind with each keystroke composing a symphony of different feelings and expressions."
Now THAT is a story I would read... I think?
What in the above paragraph is an important take away? Was it the use of imagery? How about the use of noise familiarity? Let me tell you. Nothing. Nothing about the above paragraph is useful in content marketing. Sure, each of those are important for any professional writer. But the goal is to become a savvy content marketer ready to capture an audience, not a short story author. Knowing the difference is one of the most important skills I have obtained while practicing my B2B / B2C copywriting.
Storytelling
Some traits found in creative writing however, have proven to be very useful for capturing audience attention and retaining them for the entire article. An important writing technique that can be blended into ANY style of writing is storytelling. Why? Because stories are emotional. Emotion is what drives us as humans. It is one of the leading contributors to how we evaluate thoughts and perform decision making. If you are able to write relatable, understandable, and thoughtfully curated content that tells a story true to what you are marketing that connects with the customer on an emotional level, you have hit the jackpot.
Think of every single movie you have ever watched that includes a hero. The hero is tasked with a quest to perform some sort of triumphant feat. The hero accepts the quest, begins the adventure, and soon realizes that many obstacles lie before them. After completing the quest and conquering the obstacles, they then reap the benefits to which they were working towards. Now, let's break this down a little bit.
A content marketing story does not need to be some sort of fairy tale. Actually, you should simplify it as much as possible while still retaining pertinent information to capture the customers attention. I'll give you a quick example:
"12 billion dollars is the projected pool of revenue in email marketing for 2024 - What does your email marketing strategy look like?
If your in the group of brands that does not use an email marketing campaign strategy, you could potentially be missing a large portion of the 4 billion email users who open emails daily (with 99% of those opening emails more than 20 times a day).
Taking the right steps towards creating a strong email marketing strategy has the ability to generate a significantly higher ROI.
Find out how these 10 steps can generate proven lead generation while simultaneously retaining the large percentage of already loyal customers through the use of multiple email marketing techniques:"
I utilized a basic three step hero mentality method to achieve a strong article introduction.
What is the main idea of the article? Email marketing
What is the obstacle? Not utilizing an email marketing strategy
What is the solution? Reading the article to find out how you can use multiple email marketing techniques to generate proven lead generation while retaining your already loyal customer database.
Notice how I gave just enough generalized information to capture the customers attention, and specifically targeted a transition that provides solutions to the problems listed prior. To reiterate, storytelling does not necessarily need to be a "story", shocking I know, but a use of tools to paint a picture that generates a map from an idea, to identifying a problem, and eventually providing a solution. My main goal with the above example was to do just that, explain the idea, identify the problem, and provide a solution.
Audience Survey & Segmentation
Now, let's say I am a company that utilizes surveys to capture audience feedback. Surveying your audience enables the use of hyper specific targeting methods to create a customized experience for the returning customer so they will eventually have some sort of engagement with your content. For example:
A customer is surveyed based on the experience they had with my store. I can drop them into one of three segments based on where they land on the NPS (Net Promotor Score) scale; Promotor, Passive, or Detractor. Knowing how they felt about their experience with my store gives me the ability to:
Generate ample content to the promotors to increase engagement
Provide solutions to the passives to increase likelihood of conversion
Turn a bad experience into a good one for the detractors
All of these combined with the use of storytelling in the copy you generate creates a healthy audience segmentation strategy.
The key point I want to emphasize from the example above is the power of segmentation. Segmenting your customer database gives you the ability to tailor specific content which gives the customer a unique experience from point A to B that targets the goal you want to achieve. Having a strong email marketing strategy includes figuring out how you want to segment your audience based on the needs of your company combined with the needs of the customer. At the end of the day, your audience plays a significant role in driving your business.
SurveyMonkey vs Typeform
The survey tool I have the most experience with is SurveyMonkey. I found that it was not entirely UX friendly, a bit slow and clunky, and didn't offer much for organizational tools (for example, grouping together shared links or listing filters in order of importance). However, starting at $25 a month per user on a team plan which can store up to 50,000 responses a year, it deserves some praise for being relatively cost efficient. You can view more pricing options for SurveyMonkey here.
The second option I would shed some light on is Typeform. Also starting at only $25 for a one user plan, this option is honestly not as plentiful as the SurveyMonkey plan. The one user plan only offers 100 responses a month plus no redirect after the survey has been completed. Um, hello? Yes, we want to drive people back to your website once they have finished a survey. But, the one user plan is not the MVP at Typeform. If you spend $83 a month for the business plan, you are looking at; 5 system users, 10,000 responses a month, survey redirect, Facebook Pixel, GTM, auto-end collections, and so much more. With a modernized look and an abundance of integrations, its clear who the winner in my eyes is. But again, this is strictly my opinion. You can view more about Typeform here.
With all of that being said, Audience segmentation in combination with a survey tool is a strong content marketing technique that helps paint the picture of who the customer is, and what they expect as a standard from you.
These techniques can be used in your companies blog, email newsletter, or any other form of content marketing you are utilizing. While there are many other forms of creative content strategies to generate powerful copywriting, the use of storytelling, audience segmentation, and survey tools can be some of the strongest.
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