This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
How can you use storytelling to market a side hustle? You might have heard how storytelling is so important. It's a very important feature of marketing, of sales, of kind of getting people involved, getting people invested in a narrative, especially for the right product. It doesn't actually apply to everything. If you're selling something very basic, some kind of commodity, then you might not need to have a great story about your product.
But it's also usually not the greatest idea to sell something that is very basic in a commodity because then everybody can compete on price. So how do you use storytelling to market a side hustle? If you have a unique product or service or you're just selling something that requires people to kind of make an emotional commitment and think about it for a bit, perhaps before purchasing. Today's question comes from Ella in Boulder, Colorado. She has started a new project, wants to use storytelling as a marketing differentiator.
So what does she need to do? Let's consider some innovative storytelling strategies or at least some simple ones you can apply right away to help you connect with your audience and build your brand. That's today's episode. Ella's question coming right up. Hi Chris and team.
This is Ella from Boulder, Colorado. I'm starting a new business soon and I've been hearing a lot about the power of storytelling and marketing. I'm looking for some innovative ways to use storytelling to market and differentiate my business. So, how can I do this? Any specific tips or examples would be greatly appreciated.
Alright Ella, a few days ago we talked about market demand. How do you assess market demand? I went through and gave our listener, Josh, a few different simple ways to do it. So let's try to apply the same kind of framework to talk about storytelling here because storytelling could be this big broad concept. You got Pixar, Disney, these kinds of billion dollar companies that are built around storytelling in essence.
Yet, it's also something that a side hustler or small business owner, just a single person who doesn't have a whole lot of time, not a big company, can use. We can all use storytelling in our marketing. So what are those simple ways? Well, step one, origin story. People love to hear the why behind a business.
This is why lots of businesses, if you go to the grocery store, you look at lots of products on the shelves, you turn it around and you're like, "Oh, here's the founder's story of how he or she or they made this in their home as a kid," and then it turned out other people loved it. And now it's this big global corporation. Maybe it's not always quite like that, but there is a little bit of a formula to it. So an origin story, tell that story of how your side hustle started, what inspired you to start the business, the challenges you faced, the lessons you learned along the way. Maybe highlight your mission as part of this.
What makes your side hustle a little bit unique and what do you stand for? If your business is driven by a desire to solve a particular problem, let that shine through in your story. Next approach, so that's all about you. Next approach is customer stories, all about customers. Turn your customers into the heroes of your story, showcase testimonials, case studies, share stories from customers who have benefited from your product or service.
This provides some social proof, but it also shows potential customers the tangible impact that your business can have on their lives. And then as another bonus, you've got user-generated content because they're actually making content and instead of you writing blog posts. So a lot can be done with that. A couple more ideas here, at least one big one, visual storytelling. So visual content can make your stories more engaging and memorable.
Create behind the scenes content, some videos or photos to give your audience a glimpse behind the scenes of your hustle. Show them how your products are made, introduce your team, share a day in your life. This can humanize your brand, make it more relatable. Now, there's lots more we could say about how you leverage the power of social media in stories, how you create a compelling brand narrative, more about emotional storytelling, but this kind of gets you going. So think about your own origin story and think about customer's stories.
There's two different approaches. You can use both of them. You can kind of go back and forth and some cases for some topics or some businesses, one will be more effective than the other, but that is, as I said, something to get you going. And of course, there's room for a lot of creativity in this process. So think about what is best for you as well.
Listeners, thank you for being out there. Thank you for listening. Thank you so much. If you have a question, sidehustleschool.com, new stories out every day, new episodes out every day, seven days a week, always free on all the platforms, wherever you like to listen or the entire archive is free on the website. That's it for today.
I'll be back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project.
