Storytelling & inspiration are powerful marketing tools
In 2013 I gave away all my furniture and moved out of my house.
I put two pairs of underpants, a t-shirt and a laptop in a bag and set out to hitchhike my way around the world.
As I travelled, I started blogging. It helped me make sense of the deluge of amazing, challenging and confronting experiences that came at me every day.
At first, I only wrote an article every few weeks, but people started to read what I’d written and send me messages asking questions and talking about their own travel dreams. Pretty soon I was writing every chance I got.
I travelled alone a lot, so in blogging, I’d found a way to share my journey with friends, even when I was on my own. I was hooked.
I fly instead of hitchhiking now, and I have more than two pairs of underpants, but I’m still travelling, and I’m still blogging.
Storytelling can sell ideas… and beer
When I began blogging it didn’t make me much money. I was writing about my hitchhiking adventures as a hobby and earning a small income from doing odd ghostwriting jobs.
Then, in 2016 I got a sponsorship deal with a brewing company to write about their beer as I hitchhiked across Europe and India. Innis & Gunn wanted their new IPA beer to be part of my adventure narrative. They saw that the story I was telling could connect with and inspire the people they wanted as customers.
The experience of working with Innis & Gunn was inspiring for me too. I gained new confidence that blogging had the potential to be a real job. I wanted to go pro.
The business of informative marketing
Since 2016 I’ve started to specialise in technology and business articles; writing freelance blog posts for companies that do cybersecurity, Blockchain, industrial design and AI.
The demand for content writing has never been greater because there’s a realisation amongst innovative businesspeople that traditional advertising is losing its impact.
People hate advertising, but they love to read stories. The internet is a place where people go to be inspired, entertained and get useful information that can help them achieve their goals. Nobody wants it to be a parade of intrusive, flickering adverts that suck up their bandwidth and clog up their news feeds.
Don’t advertise. Tell your story.
In the contemporary marketplace, good marketing means giving people something they really want, with your message folded around it. It should be like getting a gift; they open it delightedly and then notice your message printed on the inside of the wrapping paper.
Have you considered doing some content marketing for your company?
The online customer is increasingly hard to reach with traditional in-your-face advertising. But storytelling and informative content creates relationships and earns followers for your brand.
The idea is to give your audience something useful and thought-provoking that they enjoy reading. That way, when you present your product, they already have a positive relationship with you.
Research by marketing firms shows that the online audience, particularly millennials, respond positively to content marketing but make negative associations with brands that deploy intrusive advertising.
A study conducted by Demand Metric found that content marketing generates three times as many leads as outbound marketing and it actually costs 62% less.
Hi, I’m Emmanuel Marshall.
I write marketing content for my clients that delivers useful information to their target demographics. I help businesses build communities around their brands that promote SEO and generate qualified leads. The digital marketing work I’ve done for clients like MailGuard, Uncloak and Innis & Gunn has earned them international press coverage, enhanced their SEO and increased their web traffic.
Let’s talk about how I can help grow your business.
You can read some of my recent articles, here: www.storymarshall.com
Connect with me on Telegram: @polydigm
Follow me on Twitter: @raw_safari
