How to Tie ROI, KPIs and Other Metrics to Storytelling

October 4, 2016

by Carla Johnson

We hear about storytelling a lot, but what does it mean? And does branded storytelling actually work? And can you measure it?

That was the topic of last week’s Content Marketing Institute twitter chat with Jacob Warwick, marketing strategist at Blast Analytics. Here were the top takeaways from the chat…

Question 1: What’s the difference between content marketing and brand storytelling?

Question 2: Why the increase in brand storytelling? How does it fit into a brand’s marketing mix?

Increase in storytelling 1

Increase in storytelling 2

Question 3: Do agencies and content marketers have the same definition of branded storytelling? If no, which is right?

Definition of branded storytelling

Question 4: How can you measure the ROI of storytelling? What are the KPIs we should be tracking?

ROI of storytelling

Question 5: Stories are emotional. Numbers are not. How can you quantify emotional impact of a story?

Emotional impact of a story

Question 6: Storytelling has a natural home on social media. What metrics are best to track from social?

Storytelling Social Media

Question 7: Is there a point when trying to continually measure ROI of a story actually hurts the story?

ROI Story

ROI Story 2

Question 8: What tools or technology help in measuring branded storytelling?

More Reading on Brand Storytelling –

If you’re wanting to up your storytelling game, here’s some additional resources on branded storytelling…

– Brand Your Company: How to Tell Your Organization’s Story (read)
– Digital Storytelling: Powerful insights from 14 Top Experts (read)
– 102 of the Most Inspiring Storytelling Quotes of All Time (read)
– How a Content Marketing Mission Statement Supports the Brand Story (read)
– REI’s #OptOutside Brand Story Proves Marketing Should Drive Operations (read)
– Lincoln Electric Changes Perception of Industry with Brand Storytelling (read)
– 6 Elements of Remarkable B2B Storytelling (read)
– How Emerson Made Science Sexy with Storytelling (read)

Download our latest whitepaper: From Ideas to Action: Why Marketing Will Evolve Great Brand Stories into Stellar Customer Experiences.

Are you interested in creating a stronger brand story that you can turn into stellar customer experiences? Contact me and let’s talk about how we can help. Or follow me on LinkedIn, and Twitter, and if you like what you see, Subscribe here for regular updates.

Photo credit: Flickr user Adityo Sastromuljono

About Carla

Carla Johnson Innovation Creativity Speaker Author

Carla Johnson helps leaders who are often paralyzed by traditional thinking. They suffer from slow growth, an eroding competitive advantage, low employee engagement, and depleted investor confidence. Their teams lack purpose and progress and constantly battle a resistance to change and new ideas.

As the world’s leading innovation architect, Carla’s spent 20 years helping leaders shatter limits and discover undiscovered possibilities. Through years of research, she’s developed a simple, scalable 5-step process that teaches people how to consistently produce inspired ideas that lead to uncommon outcomes.