A good story simplifies complex information and improves understanding. That’s a good reason to incorporate storytelling in your marketing campaigns. We remember a good story.
In the vast sea of information we are exposed to daily, it’s easy to see how certain details fade from memory while others remain firmly rooted. Have you ever found yourself forgetting a statistic but recalling a personal anecdote someone shared with you?
Or perhaps you remember the plot of a novel you read years ago more clearly than the specifics of a textbook from last month. The link between memory and stories is tightly woven. You can’t understand the story without understanding memory. Our evolution has given us some interesting memory quirks, including a natural preference for a complete story over one with essential parts missing.
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Related: The Story of Storytelling in Marketing
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Anyone who’s cried at a movie or who has stayed up way too late reading because they just had to find out what happened next could testify to the power of storytelling. This phenomenon isn’t accidental — it’s deeply rooted in the way our brains are wired. While facts speak to our logic, stories speak to our emotions, and emotion is the glue that binds information to memory.
If it seems as though you’re seeing more customer stories than ever, you are. And not just the age-old customer testimonial, but actual stories of how a product, service, or organization solved a problem. Pick up just about any magazine, turn on the TV, sort through your mail, or surf online, and you’ll see examples of organizations of every type telling the stories of their happiest, most-satisfied customers, members, or other beneficiaries. Increasingly, they find that true stories not only communicate credibility and results but also increase sales, shorten the sales cycle, help sell more to existing customers, land media coverage, and grow support for causes and ideas.
In sales, experience shows that the best way to share information with prospects is through storytelling. We can guess anecdotally why that is, or we can look to science! Numerous studies have shown that conveying information through stories keeps people more engaged and improves their retention and memory.
I have survived as a storyteller for over 50 years. In my recent book, I tell you how. Since I assume you have finished reading this article, you are among the people interested in this topic. I’m offering you a free digital copy of my book. Order it for free here. Just write your name and e-mail address, and write “book” in the subject line.
We Remember a Good Story, written by Tor Kjolberg