3 Question To Ask When Using Story-Based Marketing

I’m a dad. I am a full midwestern dad who loves telling dad jokes. You know the ones that make you groan because they are so dry and terrible? I’m the dad that responds to his kids every time they say, “Dad, I’m hungry,” I say, “Hi hungry, I’m dad.” It’s kind of a right that is passed down from our dads before us.

But there is one question that my kids ask that I will always be obliged to answer. That is, “Dad, do you want to hear a joke?” My answer will always be yes! Even though my kids are still working on their humor, there is something behind the question that makes my heart warm as a father. They want to invoke an emotion of laughter with me. They want to share joy with me. Even if most of their jokes end with some sort of potty talk or body function...they are 4 and 6 after all.

But the intent of their questions remains the same, to convey like-mindedness in something to share that we both find funny and can experience together.

Silly, but Impactful 

As silly as it may seem, they want to connect with their dad on an emotional level. And we can learn a lot from kids. They can teach us a lot about story based marketing because the questions we need to ask in our own efforts are for the same reasons they asked their question...to connect emotionally with our audience.

Last week we introduced the ideas of story based marketing. We went over the pyramid of story based marketing. This week, we’re going to talk about the three questions we need to ask when crafting our story message that will help us find the emotion, belief, expectations, and action section of the Story-Based Pyramid. (PIC) These questions are like the dividers between the pyramid sections and help inform the sections what needs to be communicated.

The Questions We Need to Ask 

1. What do we want people to feel?

2. What do we want them to know?

3. What do we want them to do? 

Or if you want an easy way to remember, just remember, feel, know, do. Today we are going to discuss the importance of the first question. What do we want people to feel? This is the basis of all story based marketing.

Here is why getting our audience to feel something is important. When we feel something as a group of people whether we think something is funny, sad, compelling, whatever it is, it binds us together. For instance, when we hear a joke that we think is funny, we laugh. That laugh points to the idea that we believe the joke is funny and we are sharing a common experience with the joke teller. We are saying in our subconscious that we agree this is good and puts us all in a common experience together.

Now, that common experience, it’s important. If you establish that common experience, make your audience feel something, it points to that we all have an underlying belief. That underlying belief in the joke example is that we all know it is funny. You see, the joke just set us up for an expectation portion of the pyramid of story based marketing. If we believe the joke is funny, we have an expectation that we will laugh. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. We need to stay focused on the one question, what do we want people to feel?

What Common Emotion are You Going to Use? 

This question is mostly up to you. What common emotion are you going to use to point people to their own beliefs about something? Is it humor? Sadness? Joy? Compassion? Once you establish this, you are on your way to beginning to answer the question, what do you want people to feel?  

I want to leave you with a tool that will help you convey whatever emotion you are going for. It’s from a book called communicate to influence by Ben and Kelly Decker. It’s a tool that is called the SHARP’s tool. This is how we can communicate a feeling by using this simple tool. SHARP’s stands for Story, Humor, Analogy, Reference, Picture/Video. Do you want to use a story to convey your emotion? Do you want to use some sort of humor to convey what you want people to feel?

Do you want to use an analogy? A reference or statistic? How about a picture or a video? All of these things help you convey the feeling and the basis of the pyramid of story based marketing. It is what will make your brand, product, or service stick.

That’s all we have time for today, join us again next week as we dive into the second question….What do we want people to Know?