The importance of Storytelling

How stories turn listeners into consumers

When it comes to brands and businesses, launching a podcast can seem like a simple task when it is, in fact, much more complicated than it looks. Investing in professional recording equipment and hiring audio production specialists isn’t enough to successfully market your business and reach out to consumers.

In a recent interview, Airborne’s co-founder and creative director, Marvin Jacobs, explained that when it comes to engaging with a target audience, the narrative and its narration are crucial. 

Here’s why. 

Covered in this article

Storytelling creates an immersive experience 

Way before people learned how to write, they would tell each other stories. Stories bring the actual events to life, and engage your audience in a powerful and natural way.

The way you tell a story can either make or break your branded podcast. As Marvin said, nobody wants to listen to an “infomercial” type of podcast.

People usually listen to podcasts in order to escape the place where they physically are, to immerse themselves into an exciting and meaningful experience and to broaden their knowledge on a specific topic. 

Storytelling is a way to communicate with your audience, and introduces them to an interesting side of your brand or business that they can connect with. 

Loyalty goes a long way

Consistently connecting with your audience should be your number one priority. Once your listeners are routinely listening to your show, they are indirectly creating a new and improved relationship with your brand.

Airborne helps brands create new associations by finding an interesting domain to tackle when they want to create a podcast.

For example, The Journey, an original podcast produced for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, follows some of their travelers as they tell true stories about how their lives were changed by a journey.The episodes’ meticulous sound design leads the listeners to different countries (Alaska, India or Kenya), where the speakers have experienced exciting and unique adventures. 

It’s quite a creative move from KLM. The audio community is growing bigger by the second, and KLM are marketing their airline by narrating different experiences in their very own customers’ words. Listeners everywhere will start associating the airline with unique encounters, increasing their loyalty to this specific airline because they think that they will live similar experiences because of it. 

Summary

As mentioned earlier, a brand should take its time while creating something that is as long lasting as a podcast. Podcasts are not there to sell products or services but to improve and reinforce an identity and image in the minds of consumers.

It’s important to keep up with marketing trends to know how and where to reach your audience, and it is equally important, if not more, to produce great content that can differentiate your brand from its competitors. 

The unattainable is no longer in style; people want brands to have a voice that they can relate to and trust.

Make sure to listen to the full episode!