Mastering the Art of Storytelling in Enrolments

Just take a moment and recollect your favorite advertisement that you saw on TV. Try recollecting an article that you have recently read or try to reminisce the recent speech that you have heard in recent times.

7 out of the 10 times the things you recall would have some narrative aspect, rather than just straight to the point content, isn’t it?

People really like stories. Whether you are reading a book, watching a movie, listening to a speech or talking to a friend, stories grab your attention and help you understand and connect.

We like to live in a story. We can relate to stories. We love to listen to stories. And, we can see ourselves in a story. Storytelling is an art. As a business, when you tell a story about your core values, products or services, it paints a picture and allows your audience to connect with your business. When your audience hears a relatable story or similar tale to their real-life experiences, they are engaged and they can establish a connection with your brand.

Research from a content marketing platform, OneSpot, shows that 92% of the consumers want the content to be incorporated in the form of a story.

So, how can universities use this to their advantage when recruiting new students?

The way a student chooses colleges and courses has changed for a good. Discovery of different options and not herd mentality is the change where the prospect students are moving to. 

Students want to understand how they will fit into an institute.

In today’s age, they do have a large number of options to choose from than ever before. They are also technically strong and hence can use a number of tools to assess an institute and to find different alternatives. 

So it becomes increasingly important for an institute to be on the toes and battle these challenges in order to get good prospects admitted to their institutes.

Fig. 2:Statistics showing the different age group to the genre of story preferred

Source: Headstream

Storytelling marketing can be an effective weapon to tackle these challenges

Fig 3: Statistics showing the preferences of people about listening to a story

Source: Headstream

Benefits of using storytelling:

• A natural motivator to act

Stories are a natural fit for marketing because it serves the purpose of getting prospective students to act upon the desired call to action. By having a good story, it can motivate your reader, (the prospect student searching for alternatives or may it be the parents of the prospect, retrospecting an institute to make a decision) much more naturally than an institute would with a more forced sales pitch/cold message.

• Hit the emotional quotient

Storytelling is a strategy that could be utilized by institutes in order to form an emotional connection with prospects making them want to engage with more of your content. A good story can also inspire word of mouth. A result of all such activities ultimately leads to conversions.

Fig 4: General trivia about effectiveness of storytelling

Source: OneSpot

• Increase brand recognition & build relationships

Time & again researchers have seen that when storytelling is executed well, it can strike a chord with the audience and therefore help them recall your brand. Also, it is a key contributor to build relationships. Relationships are gold as far as any institute is concerned. An individual or an alumnus who feels a connection with your institute is likely to act as an influencer and thereby increase your brand value.

• Makes the content exciting

Storytelling which is mostly used in content can be used in making the content exciting. A study by Beutler Ink states that in every 60 seconds – 60 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube and 168 million emails are sent. So making content exciting becomes crucial, since the competition has increased tremendously, such an exciting content can be achieved using the art of storytelling. It can propel your content to even go viral. In an age where social media is widespread, making viral content can help your institute in a number of ways.

Now that you know the importance of storytelling, What are you waiting for?

Dig Deep

Create an appealing story

Hook your audience

And 

See the results for yourself!!

About the author:

Neelotpal Gadre is Product Marketing Specialist at ExtraaEdge. He has done his MBA in Marketing & is a certified digital marketing individual. He is one of the major contributors to content creation & content marketing at ExtraaEdge. His other core expertise lies in Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, PPC & other digital marketing activities.