Marketing, A Love Story | Brand Storytelling to Build Genuine Relationships
I’m back! Had to take a hiatus from the podcast due to workload. And so as I get back into the swing of things, I wanted to begin with first principles, and stress the whole purpose of why we’re brand storytellers in the first place:
Our job is to form a meaningful, real relationship with out audience.
Why? Because marketing is relationship building, and the value exchange that we hope our customers eventually make, happens well before the point of purchase. Before they pay in dollars, our job is to get them to pay attention.
Therefore, the stories we tell, and content we create, are gifts that we provide our audience in exchange for that attention.
You’ll Learn:
The power of parasocial relationships
The social blunders to avoid, and how your brand should show up
How the relationship changes at each stage of the funnel, and what that means for your content and materials
Key Terms:
Parasocial Relationship - The kind of relationship we form with celebrities, media personalities, or brands. Think: fans. It’s a one-sided relationship formed through regular media exposure where it’s very meaningful and important to the fan, they feel as if they know them, establish a significant level of emotional involvement to the point of defining themselves by that relationship, but the other party, the media figure, has no idea the relationship has been formed.
These relationships are easier to form than inter-personal relationships, but are also more fragile. because they lack the emotional baggage and ties that are inherent to inter-personal relationships.
Episode Transcript
How's it going, Brand storyteller? All right. So welcome back. I guess I just welcomed myself back to my own podcast. That was ridiculous. So I took a little bit of a break from the podcast. The podcast ended up working a bit too well. Got a little overwhelmed with work. I'm now exited out of that, overwhelmed season designing things, so hopefully that doesn't happen to me again so I can continue to bring these episodes regularly to you.
And I've got a lot in store for you guys in the upcoming weeks as we get back started into a regular production of these episodes. And but before I get to those episodes, touching on things like visual storytelling, how to, how to structure and and find, how to find and then structure an authentic testimonial customer testimonial for your company.
And then even just like how to design a storytelling campaign. I want us to get back to first principles. So with this episode, we're talking about marketing as a love story. And the goal of this episode is to help you just kind of like before you run into thinking about what stories you're going to tell and how to structure a story and what content your audience would love.
We need to get back to kind of like, Why are we doing this in the first place? What is our role? What is our purpose? And in order to understand all of that, we have to understand that marketing itself is a love story.
As the brand storyteller, you are the communicator. And much like within sales, great salespeople, they know that selling is relationship building. They're you're moving your prospect through this funnel of trying to get them to know who you are like you, and then trust, you know, like trust. That's where you're trying to move them through your role is a communicator, and communication is the foundational ingredient to forming strong relationships and genuine relationships.
And since our tools of our trade are communication, whether through words, whether audio, whether visual, we are communicating, and since those are the tools of our trade, is ultimately communicate. And then the end goal of that tool is to build an actual relationship. We're not communicating just to throw a message out there and hope that it sticks. The whole purpose of communicating is to create messages that connect with someone on a deep level.
So that way we can form a genuine, real relationship with them.
We are not necessarily creating a interpersonal relationship with our audience that doesn't happen until you're actually in person with them, until you're actually interpersonal with them. Prior to that, you're creating a a distant relationship. It is a real relationship, but it's one that's called a parasocial relationship. I've mentioned this before often because it's it's the core foundation of what we do.
It's very important for us to understand it, because if we don't understand this and we don't get this point, we can make a ton of mistakes. All right. Well, before I get ahead of myself, let's just focus on the actual relationship we're forming with them. Is a parasocial relationship. It is the type of relationship that you form with celebrities.
Okay. And I'm assuming that you actually don't know any celebrities if you actually know who they are, like you've got their number in your phone. Well, now we're into interpersonal relationship territory. And again, that's not what I'm talking about. A Parasocial relationship is a one sided relationship where the relationship is actually real to you, but the other person has no idea that you actually exist.
They have no physical or or or, or any sort of because now we can talk to people digitally very easily, but they've got no contact with you. You're not a part of their life. They have no idea that you actually exist to them. You might just be a number on their social account. Okay. But to you, they are a real person and you have a genuine, honest bond that is true to you.
So for, for instance, there are several podcasts that I subscribe to. None of these people know that I listen to their podcast, yet they from my perspective, are my digital mentors. They are my my sort of like catalog of the digital mentors guiding me through this current season in my life because, you know, this podcast hosts, they change as I, as I grow and I get interested in new things, I jump on to a new podcast.
Probably the same to you, right? So these people become your digital mentors. It's a parasocial relationship. They have no idea who I am, but yet to me their advice is extremely valuable. To the point where this often gets pretty frustrating between my, myself and my wife. There will be times where I have communicated an idea that I think is a pretty awesome, insightful idea, and I'm a bit impressed with my own wisdom in coming up with this idea.
I'll share that to my wife and she will go, Huh? Right. Like not impressed. But then I kid you not. It will be like one week or two weeks later she will come back to me all excited because she heard literally the exact idea. But now it came from a book or a podcast host, and now it's got a heck of a lot more weight and interest that she's giving it and credence that she's giving it because it came from a point of authority in her life and not just from, you know, me because I can't at that level.
Good luck, right? If you're married, good luck sitting at the point of authority in that relationship. Okay. Do you understand what I'm saying, though? Like, but those people have no idea who my wife is. They are not actively mentoring her. They're just putting out their show. That's a parasocial relationship. It's very real to us. And the importance we give it is in a sense disproportionate to the the actual reality of the situation.
But it is a real relationship to us. Okay? This is why you'll see a fanboy ism with brands, because people will make brands part of their identity. They will identify and relate so strongly to these brands that they become a part of who they are of their own personal narrative. These become artifacts of their own personal narrative, and they they will fight to the death.
People who will attack these brands that they have so strongly identified with. You go and check out any of my gear reviews, Right? Especially my my Page six review, where I kind of trashed that camera because I was really pissed. Even though I'm still a Panasonic user, the JH six, the people who bought that camera are really livid in the comments.
It's kind of interesting. So just as a social experiment. Check that stuff out. That's why that stuff exists. Okay? Because you literally form a very and it is a very strong relationship. Okay? It's real, It's strong. Kind of doesn't make sense when you when you actually say it out loud because it's almost like mildly embarrassing to admit it.
But you have to understand that that is exactly what you're doing. Your role is to is to create a relationship of that strength. It should be your ambition to to build a relationship that is so strong with your audience that they will fight any haters or any any critics to the death for criticizing that offer or your brand because because that relationship is so meaningful to them.
So your goal is to build a relationship that is so meaningful to them, to become so meaningful in their life that they would go out of their way to fight for you with the Parasocial relationship. As I've said, it is a real relationship, which means that it follows these same social codes and the same sort of relationship based rules that normal relationships follow.
The the one big difference between a parasocial relationship and an interpersonal relationship is with a parasocial relationship. I am free to close that relationship whenever I want to without any consequence. So your audience is free to end the relationship without any consequence whenever they want to. So what that means is these relationships are actually way more fragile than an interpersonal relationship.
They're about as difficult to form, or they might be a little easier to form as an interpersonal relationship because I don't have to drive out of my house to go meet somebody for lunch. I can just record a podcast and post that up. And so that's a lot less kind of like effort and time, right? So I can, in the time it would take me to drive out to lunch to meet one person, I can create a podcast and reach thousands.
Okay, So it's probably they're probably a little easier to form, but they're also far more fragile than an interpersonal relationship, because if I've gone out of my way to meet up with somebody for lunch and and I'm friends with that person, it's harder for them to just end the relationship. There's going to be that like awkward and that awkward phase where you're trying to, like, get out of a friendship, too, where you know, you're hurting their feelings by not answering their phone and not returning their text messages.
You have to go through this almost like period of I'm a jerk because I'm avoiding you thing. But I also don't want to be such a jerk that I have to now explain to you why I'm avoiding you. It's so much easier to avoid you than to explain why you're a loser. Does that make sense? I know that was, like, super harsh, but, like, come on, just roll with me here for a second, all right?
You know what I'm talking about, right? Like that with a parasocial relationship that whole awkwardness of having to explain to them why you're ending the relationship that doesn't exist. So the it's almost like at the drop of a hat at the first offense, that relationship can immediately end. Going back to the six review, that is kind of why I was a pissed off in that review is because I felt offended by Panasonic for having failed with that camera from my perspective.
Okay, so. So you can see how like, yes, there's this this whole drama is playing out in the comments, but that drama was initiated by me getting first offended by a company based off of a product that they designed. Okay. And and since that, I am now looking for putting my loyalty in a new brand. Okay. So that's what I mean.
They can break off. They're very fragile, so they're a little easier to build, but they are a little fragile. However, they follow the same sort of social codes and expectations that normal relationships follow. So what I mean by that is you have to have this sense that you're actually building a real relationship, that your role as a communicator, as a marketer, your role as a marketer is the communicator of your brand.
And the purpose of communication is to form a relationship with your audience, that the relationship you're forming is real. Therefore, you need to approach your marketing and your strategy for marketing on. We're building a relationship here and think about it from that perspective. What does that mean? Well, that means that you need to avoid creating a socially repellant personality and you need to avoid engaging in socially repellant communication techniques.
What I mean by this is what are some socially repellent personalities or communication techniques? I've kind of got like three categories of social repellents. One is having no sense of social codes, so being very robotic. All right, Someone who just doesn't understand social situations and and is kind of off and isn't personable, they're they're not showing that they have a personality.
They're not they're not like really engaging in conversation. They're very standoffish. They're very, like laconic in their in their answers. They're very short. They're frozen, they're tense. You can tell they're like super uncomfortable in a social situation that is socially repellent, speaking robotically, not not presenting yourself as a human being that is socially repellent. So so being robotic and being socially awkward.
The other way of social awkwardness is, is when you are trying too hard. So it's this sense of of overexertion. So it's kind of like you've got this pendulum on like one one end of the pendulum or one end of the spectrum is somebody who is extremely robotic and just completely socially clueless. And then on the complete other end of that spectrum is someone who is completely socially awkward and has no sense of getting a feel for the situation.
They're incapable of of sensing the emotional tone of that situation. They're incapable of of reacting to the personalities present. They don't have a sense of what the vibe is. And so they just are like super awkward and, and are trying too hard, right? Or they're just like, completely misinterpreting the situation. Right. So this would be a sense of like, it's a black tie affair and you show up in jeans.
Okay, that's socially awkward. You're kind of going to be ostracized there because you clearly don't fit in, right. Or you're laughing too loud in at a cocktail party. All right. That's also super socially awkward because why the heck are you laughing too loud? Stop laughing so loud. Everybody is now looking at us having this conversation. I kind of want to walk away because you're weird, right?
So being weird. Being being too weird to where it's it's. It's rob repellent and it's not actually, like, intriguing. And then the other thing of social awkwardness is being arrogant and self-centered, where everything is about you. This is an extreme social repellent because all you do is just talk about yourself all the time. And then you're you're in this very annoying one upmanship.
So. So if the conversation ever gets pulled away from you and someone else tries to tell, tell their story, you have to come back. And one up them with a better story. Those people suck, right? Like all you can talk about is them. They're always the topic. Everything is just centered around around them. They can't actually talk about an idea with you because it has to.
It has to be about about them. And they don't really care about you. And that's very obvious because all they care about is damning, communicating their ideas, communicating, getting their point across, and they don't ever listen to you and understand who you are.
All three of those things you want to avoid looking like in your marketing, you don't want to sound robotic. Right. And unfortunately, the majority of B2B corporate marketing speak in marketing league lingo tends to fall under the robotic thing, right? Where it's just like it's just a bunch of nonsense words like iterate, optimize, all these words that we never say in normal conversation that only ever pop up in the mouth of a marketer, right.
Or in the mind of a marketer, right. These things don't make any sense, but for some reason we keep thinking that they are something that's going to get somebody like really excited to learn more about this system, right? It's just it's meaningless words. That stuff is really weird trying too hard. It's actually trying to trying to show up, but you're showing up inappropriately.
So if you're making content for a specific platform but you don't understand the culture or the social dynamics of that platform and you're trying to like you're trying to put put just throw out random content, it just doesn't make sense. Like, that's really awkward. For example, YouTube, there's a certain expectation in YouTube of a cadence of how things should be posted and and a look of how things should look.
And when you see a company post a video and it's very clearly that the title of that video is just the name of the file that's super obvious. Or if a company just dumps 50 videos in one day, that's another telltale sign that they have no idea what they're doing. And they're super they're super awkward. You would never follow them because you know that they aren't following the rules.
They're not going to reward you with content in a way that they should on that platform. So that's platform awkwardness. Like it's it's a sign that you don't know what you're doing and and they aren't they don't care about you, basically. And then the other thing is just self-centered talk, right? Where you never acknowledge your audience. They're their dreams and their desires and their problems and how you solve them.
You just talk about your features. And it's just you, you, you, you, you. Right? No one cares. That's another thing is going to materially tell them your goal is to seduce them. You need to court them. You need to get them to fall in love with you in the same way of Match.com, where you're you're trying to craft this this title to to put them to get them to stop.
Get them to look. Get them to imagine possibilities. Right. Like attract them in. Flirt with them a little bit and then slowly over time, not too slow. Right. But, you know, over time, build into an actual relationship with them, earn their trust, give them value, give them what they want, and then you're able to reveal your offer and details about how you can help them.
And what their life is going to look like now that they have your product or your service at their disposal or within their toolkit. Okay, That is what you're doing. You're bringing them through this process of getting to know you by exciting them with possibilities, getting to like you by showing them that you are genuinely interested in them, that you care about them, and then getting them to trust you.
All right. How do you do that?
So instead of repelling people, you want to be somebody that attracts people, which is to say you want your brand or your your marketing around your offer to be created in such a way that it entices people to want to form a relationship with your brand and with your offer. Okay. And so what does that mean? That means being the person that everybody likes.
Who is that person? That someone who's authentic, who knows who they are, who's comfortable in their own skin. But doesn't demand attention that they can just show up and be who they are and be confident in who they are. Knowing that that's enough. So authenticity and confidence. Interesting. Got to be interesting. Right. Like we like people who are interesting, who kind of have a new experience to share or a new idea they've been thinking about and then invite us into also thinking about that idea and engage us in that process of discovery with them.
So someone who's super interesting, who's always bringing something new, valuable novel to the table, who isn't just talking about the same old boring stuff over and over and over and over again. We want variety, we need variety and novelty. We like somebody who's interesting, who peaks our interest, okay? Who has us on the edge of our seats and can really, like, pull us in and draws in.
That's what we like. And then the other thing is someone who is generous. We love someone who is generous with their time, with their attention, and also with their with their gifts. Okay. With their money, I guess. Right. Like someone who gives you gifts, like giving gifts, right. Or spending time with people or giving gifts like that is a way of expressing a desire to really, like, connect with that person, to be close to that person that you are trying to win them over.
Right. As you give gifts to people that you are generous and and how can you as a as a company, give gifts, right. Or how can you as a company be generous? Well, you can be generous in the knowledge that you share. All right. You can be generous in in the gifts that you give in the sense of you are showing that you are actually investing in your audience.
Okay. Because what we have to understand as marketers is that this entire process of getting to know, like trust we're drawing the whole purpose, obviously, is to draw that prospect a draw. That draw our audience to the ultimate point of sale. And and if we've done our job properly, then when they're at that point of sale, they're actually going to commit.
They're going to say, yes, they're going to buy or us whatever, you know, like we want to bring them to that decision point and then get them to, without a doubt in their mind, make that decision. Okay? Okay. Now that for the most of us, we think that that is the only point of exchange, that that's where the value exchange truly happens, because it's at that moment when they exchange money for whatever that offer is.
That's the moment of exchange of value exchange. However, value exchange is happening the entire way through the funnel. Okay? Because before your customer actually pays in dollars, they are paying you in attention. And before they're actually obtaining your offer, they are consuming your content. You need to design content that is worthy of the attention that they are paying you.
That's worth the attention that they're paying you. Okay. You have to make them gifts. You have to give them things that are that you would actually want to watch. All right. You don't want to just like, make junk and then wonder, huh, why aren't we selling enough? Why isn't our company growing the way we want it to grow?
I don't know. Maybe because you're throwing out crap, expecting too much in return. You have to make sure that you're actually designing. It's almost like a series of gifts. Like, think about your funnel as as each stage of your funnel, the content you're putting out in the marketing that you're putting out throughout your entire funnel is you earning or you providing offers that are equivalent of the attention that you were expecting at each stage because you have to earn that purchase at the end.
It's not just we got to persuade them to buy. The persuading is in the earning. It's in the demonstrating. It's in coming up with the mindset and understanding. We're building a relationship here, so let's sweep them off their feet. All right. Now you're going to guarantee more effectively that they're going to buy at the end, because now they they know and and you have intentionally gone about this from the perspective of we're going to get them to like us.
We're going to get them to know who we are. We are definitely going to get them to like us and we are definitely going to earn their trust before we earn their dollars. Right. So remember, it is a constant value exchange as they go through that funnel.
What also is happening as they're transitioning through that funnel is that the relationship is shifting. The relationship changes and matures and develops and grows as your prospect is working through each phase of that funnel process. Okay. So at the end, because the relationship is changing, All right, this is very important. So I need to make sure that I expresses because the relationship is changing at each stage.
The roles that each of you play at each stage shift the expectations of what is required. Communication wise, information wise also shifts and the the topics that they are now interested in and the information that they're going to want changes as well. What I mean by this is that very much in the same way that of the process of dating, when you're first your first interaction with someone, you're trying to present yourself as fun and full of possibility because you're trying to to to really quickly attract them, get them interested and kind of get them thinking about what the what a future with you might look like.
All right. If that's what you're going for. Right. But but that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to like, get them thinking about possibilities. And and a lot of your your communication is fun. It's also very surface because it's way too soon right now to jump in, start talking about your problems with your dad and your mom and your family.
No, no, no. That's like an immediate like end of the conversation, right? Like no one. No one cares right there. Right. They just want to think about how fun it is to be with you because they have to know you first. They got to they got to like you first before they're going to then even care about your dynamics with your family.
All right. But if you're now considering whether or not to date this person, whether or not to fully commit to this person long term, and now you got a sense of who they are, you actually want to know that stuff because that type of information is pretty important. Like their relationship with their family is pretty critical to what might happen between you and that person.
It's a reflection on what your relationship might look like. So if it's bad, you kind of want to know why is it bad? And let me get an understanding of this. You're now trying to see, like, do they check all the boxes that I really need? Like can? And if you're thinking in terms of marriage, it's like, can they weather bad storms?
Do they have the mental and emotional capacity to support me through those? Can they provide Right. Like, can they hold a steady job? Why not? What is their kind of work history? You actually want all these details now because now you're trying to form trust. You're really trying to make sure. Can they actually can you trust them to be to be a good partner for you?
Okay. So you see how that is very different from the fun and and and sort of like endless possibilities at the top at the beginning of that relationship. Now you've gone down to limited possibilities because you know you're going to can commit to them. And now you want to know like, what does this person truly look like? Like, I want to know the details of their life and I want to see, like, how that's matched up with.
Does that match up with who they say they are? And are there patterns of character that I can assess here? Okay. So now you're you're really trying to like, do your due diligence, the the content that you present within a funnel follows that same trajectory at the top of the funnel. It is it is fun and fantastical. You just want to entice people with entertaining content and and and just show them that you're the you're the source of that entertaining or educational content.
You're just trying to get them excited about, Man, this stuff is great, and this brand gave it to me. Awesome. All right. Think about Patagonia and their their documentaries that they're constantly putting out. Man, that stuff is great. And Patio puts Patagonia, puts the stuff out there. That's awesome. I love them. Okay. It's that level of stuff. And then as you draw that customer closer and closer and closer to close, you shift along the spectrum.
It's almost like, imagine the spectrum from from fun and fantasy over to facts and figures. By the end of the clothes and it literally is this transition, it's not just this immediate step where step one is fun and fantasy and immediate. Step two is facts and figures. There's this. There's this general process of then finally getting to facts and figures.
For instance, where if you're thinking about where a customer testimonial sits throughout this process, it's obviously not at the top of the funnel because no one is just going to go out of their way to watch a customer testimonial about this random company that they've never heard of before. No one's going to do that right before they buy again.
They're not going to watch a customer testimonial in hopes of getting the details and process overview or specs of a product. No, no. They're going to watch that customer testimonial in the middle of that buying process, in the middle of that funnel, because that's where it makes sense to be. You've already know what this company is like. You're still trying to imagine possibilities with them, but you're wanting to get more detail and more information about how this works.
That's when you're going to watch a customer testimonial, because that's what that thing answers. Case studies customers, testimonials, their mid funnel content because they're for people who are already warm to you already know, still want to now take this from it. Limit endless possibilities to how does how is this kind of actually going to work and then once they see that, then they're going to want more granular material from their.
That's it. As we continue on in telling stories and and providing stories for our audience and for our customers, it has to be with this understanding of why we're doing that in the first place. It's because the stories that we tell are designed for the whole purpose of forming a lasting relationship with our audience. We're doing this in order to win over their hearts and minds so that way they know us and they like us and they begin to trust us.
The stories that we tell are gifts that we're giving our audience in exchange for their attention. It is. It is what we have created for them out of generosity to to display our authentic self and not apologize for it. And also so that way we are interesting to them. We show up as being interesting and we provide interesting content for them to sink their teeth into.
However, also be mindful that as you're leading your audience down your content funnel, whether that be a actual funnel, a sales funnel, maybe even like a trade show thing that they're walking through, often it's an experiential thing or your global content strategy that at each level you kind of have to stratify this across, you're different, you're different funnel, you know, top of funnel, mid funnel, bottom funnel and understand that you are telling different stories and providing need to provide different types of content at each stage to satisfy the expectations of your audience.
Because as they go down that funnel, the relationship changes, the relationship develops, their expectations shift because what is required, the information that is required at the top is not information that is required at the bottom and vice versa. All right. So I hope that was helpful. And if it was, I would love to receive a rating, a review and send this episode off to your friends.
And if you are curious about, you know, what is your brand story or what is your product story, want to you want to figure out the strategy behind that and make sure that you're crafting the right messaging and the right look and feel. And then you want to make sure that you've got the right content strategy to bring that story to life.
You can reach out to me at McNabb Storytelling dot com. I would love to sit down with you and strategize that with you. Or if you are a creative yourself and you want to take your storytelling skills to the next level or you're working in an organization, you want to make sure that your whole team is equipped to take your company's storytelling skills to the next level.
Then we do company training. We can come in and do a workshop for you guys, or I can coach you one on one if that's what you're looking for as well. Again, you can reach me at McNabb Storytelling dot com. And until then, I'll see you guys in the next episode. Take care.