Achieve Your Public Relations Goals Through Effective Storytelling
Elevate Next caters to each client's needs by focusing on their goals, budget, market niche, and competitive landscape when designing a marketing plan. Some clients prefer to focus on paid advertising (e.g., pay-per-click, or PPC), while others choose to build their brand and reputation organically. Most of the time, a combination of both approaches is optimal. There is, however, a delicate balance between the two. A coherent public relations strategy, paired with the right agency, will yield the greatest impact on your bottom line.
A frequently repeated quote states, "Advertising is what you pay for; publicity is what you pray for." The graphic below outlines the main differences between advertising (shorter-term gain if done well) and public relations.
According to the Public Relations Society of America, Inc.,
"At its core, public relations is about influencing, engaging, and building a relationship with key stakeholders across numerous platforms in order to shape and frame the public perception of an organization."
One of the key strategies of public relations (PR) is storytelling. A great story evokes emotion and creates brand loyalty. Developing and communicating the story of a smaller, entrepreneurial company may focus on the founder(s). A larger organization may have a story that explains its development and growth over time, helping it more effectively solve its customers’ pain points.
Many organizations have a compelling story to tell about fulfilling their corporate social responsibility (CSR). Niche marketing with a focused story that targets a specific segment with its own preferences and demands is another effective way to gain a competitive advantage in a crowded marketplace.
Typical public relations services cover many digital platforms and include, but are not limited to:
Drafting press releases and networking with media contacts
Event management and promotion
Content marketing (i.e., website blogs, pitches, email marketing, and other forms of copy), and
Social media management.
Giving Your Story a Structure People Will Follow
A story only transforms an audience if it's actually built to do so. That means a beginning that establishes your characters and setting, a conflict that raises the stakes, a climax, and a resolution — the same arc that's worked in storytelling for centuries — applied to a press release, a case study, or a donor appeal.
The most common mistake that we see is that organizations write themselves into the role of the hero, which they are not. The hero of your story is whoever your organization exists to serve: a client, a patient, a student, a community member, a beneficiary, etc. Your organization's role is to guide that person in overcoming their conflict, not to be the protagonist. Centering a real person's story, told with specific, small details rather than generalities, is what makes it memorable rather than forgettable.
There's a physiological reason this works. Character-driven narratives with real stakes trigger measurable neurochemical responses. Research from Paul J. Zak at Claremont Graduate University found that emotionally engaging, character-driven stories increase oxytocin production, which drives empathy and a desire to help the people in the story. Zak’s lab measured this directly, linking oxytocin release to people's willingness to help after hearing a narrative (Harvard Business Review, 2014).
Attention plays a key role, too: the brain's dopamine-driven reward circuitry responds to anticipation and unresolved tension, which is part of why a well-placed hook holds interest better than a list of statistics.
Turning the Story into Action
A story is only useful to your organization if it moves the reader to do something. The calls to action that work share a few traits: they use direct action verbs, they create a real (not manufactured) sense of urgency, they ask for one thing at a time rather than a menu of options, and they're personalized: "you" and "your," not "supporters" and "the community."
Measuring Whether It Worked
Storytelling content should be held to the same accountability standard as any other KPI in your marketing plan (see above). Four metrics worth tracking for any story-driven campaign:
Open rate: Are people opening the email or text that contains your story?
Engagement rate: Are they clicking, liking, or sharing it?
Response rate: Are they calling, emailing, or reaching out after encountering it?
Conversion rate: Are they taking the specific action you asked for?
A story also doesn't have to end when the campaign does. The organizations that build the most loyalty keep their audience engaged in the story after the initial push — sharing updates, outcomes, and what happened next with the people they wrote about.
Turning Your Story Into a Strategy
With a diverse business background, Elevate Next is not your typical PR firm. We take a holistic view of each of our clients' businesses and industries. We then design a customized program that includes not only PR (and, as appropriate, paid advertising), but also business and financial analysis. That same measurement discipline, including the story metrics above, drives a baseline analysis of each client's business. From there, we can:
Assess the current health of the business
Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to track improvements, and
Develop streamlined processes to reach performance goals.
Effective storytelling isn't a one-time campaign; it's an ongoing discipline of structure, audience focus, and measurement. Elevate Next develops and implements client-focused marketing strategies to effectively communicate our clients' unique stories, boost brand awareness, and build trust by relating to the ideal audiences that matter most to their bottom line.
Contact us for a complimentary consultation to elevate your business — and brand — to the next level, and put a real structure behind your company's story.
The Story Map
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