Top 10 digital marketing tools in Stories

Marketing goals are simple: to drive customers to buy more (in all meanings), and thereby increase the company's profits. However the path to achieve this can be complex and sophisticated. Higher profit margins is a result of the successful implementation of specific marketing actions (= use of marketing tools). In this publication we would like to present the stories as a universal tool to achieve digital marketing goals.

There are a countless number of techniques applied in marketing - from advertising with stars to organizing scientific research, from sponsoring a hockey team to giveaways on social networks, and from creating stunning landing pages to mailing campaigns with the holidays congratulations. As a rule, each of them requires a certain budget but addresses only a narrow specific problem.

Digital marketing tools available in stories provide broad opportunities for communicating with the customers, and blend media, SMM and advertising instruments all in one. Most of them are zero cost, but can generate fundamental value for your business in the short and long terms. And most importantly, there are a variety of marketing tools and cases you can find by using stories.

1. Gamification

A popular trend that is successfully used in the campaign promotion, and not only commercial ones. Game mechanics have the most native immerse effect for the users. The main marketing objective of gamification is to boost customer engagement.

The InAppStory platform provides a variety of interactive and gamification formats available in stories. It can be simple mechanics such as quiz or test, as well as more complex and universal like online mobile games - clicker, runner, slots, similar to PAC-MAN and others. It is easy to integrate the drawing mechanics in any of the interactive formats to boost motivation to play.

Mobile games create extra value to use the app not only to solve the core user problem, but also to have fun. This uplifts the average time spent in the app, but also, and what is more important, creates the emotional connection with the customers. In many ways, this is a way to significantly improve customer relations and move it to the new level of trust.

Marketing Value: Increase in customer engagement, longer in-app sessions.

2. Generating leads
 

It’s not that simple to inform customers about the product or service value in a nonintrusive and clear manner. Stories provide a tool to describe your proposal in full on the one hand and present it clearly and the most immersively on the other. From any slide of the story the users can be directed to the relevant app section or the landing page by clicking on the button with a link. With the proper content creation in stories, this brings results: according to the Content Marketing Institute, stories give three times more leads vs. banners.

Marketing Value: Lead generation, positioning flexibility.

3. Tutorials
 

Another use of stories is the creation of visual guides and tutorials. Your service or product should be clearly communicated to the customers to be used. Stories allow you to create native guides and tours on how to use the product, its new feature, the application itself, or anything else. The full screen format of the stories blends text and images and can easily explain both the nuances of using the product or the customer journey milestones within the app. The animation and video tours are especially efficient while creating tutorials.

Marketing Value: Increase in app usage

4. Onboarding

The value of mobile app onboarding is fundamental to any company: it creates the first impression of your product. According to a 2020 study, 25% of users do not open an app after the first use. Considering this you need to try hard to welcome the new customers in the most native and remarkable way. And stories are the most powerful marketing tool for achieve that.
 

The first impression could be maximized due to the unique features of stories such as full-screen format, user familiar interfaces, support of video and interactive widgets. In several slides you can clearly present the story you want to tell in the most engaging manner and drive the users to take actions.     

The onboarding Story could be applied to welcome the newcomers but also used as in-app messaging (= activated by the action the users make in the app). For example, if you launched a new app section and want to guide the users, you can show the tutorial story opened on the top of other screens by clicking on this section. This story could be commercially oriented, consist of ad placement, guide through the new feature or something else.

This opportunity is also of particular importance to provide bulk messages - for example, about changes in the terms or the recommendation to update the application.

Marketing Value: Increase in engagement, app awareness.

5. Personalization

The ability to personalize the messages for a specific customer is incredibly valuable in marketing. It’s especially solid when it comes to market research: 80% of respondents say they would prefer making a purchase from a personalized offer, 71% of respondents feel "some disappointment" with services without personalization, and the profit from email newsletters demonstrates an increase of 760% by applying personalization in communication ... Customers today take personalized approaches for granted.

Stories is a flexible marketing tool for personalization. Firstly, in stories, the company could address the customer by name. Secondly, it’s possible to give an individual offer tailored for a specific user. Thirdly, content of the same story could be personalized for different users. Together, this flexibility allow you to entirely customize content and message for specific customers.

Marketing Value: Increase in brand credibility, personalized offers.

6. Feedback

Through collecting feedback mechanics the company can actively interact with the users and evaluate their readiness to make purchases (NPS) as well as the quality of provided products or services. There are a bunch of the widgets available in stories to collect feedback - surveys, sliders with a bar, and tests. Also in stories you can boost your average rating in app stores by redirecting positive customers directly to the stores and collecting valuable comments from those who rate the app below 5 stars. According to statistics, 70% of users leave a review after being asked for. Also the customers are keen to provide other type of feedback which is valuable for marketing. 

Marketing value: increase in customer engagement, ability to identify the weak points.
 

7. Push notifications

Push notifications are one of the most effective tools to keep your customers engaged with the app and the service. The stories support the ability to be activated and opened via push notifications.

It is a very effective technique both in terms of content distribution and user engagement. The opened story can be edited and targeted to address your specific case - a personal gift (for a birthday, for example), a promotion offer, or urgent notifications. As a result, this allows you to establish a more solid relationship with the user on the one hand and make your push notifications more effective on the other.

Marketing value: Improve in user flow, increase in customer engagement.
 

8. Social sharing

Stories allow you to repost publications on social networks. This boosts company awareness on the one hand and provides an additional channel to distribute content on the other. The shared story could be opened in any web browser, regardless of whether the user has the company's application downloaded or not. To maximize the usage and impressions, sharing can be blended with gamification mechanics and rewards. Ideally, this should go viral.

Sharing of stories demonstrates the customer engagement with the company’s app to his friend zone, which can be perceived as his recommendation. And it can be very effective: 84% of people trust recommendations on social media as much as those made in real life.

Marketing Value: Increase in brand awareness.
 

9. Brand promotion

Stories can be used not only as the channel to promote a product or give useful lifestyle content, but also to communicate about the company itself. For example, Stories can effectively provide information about the brand history or present the management in less official and more friendly way. You can also hilight important achievements and events in the life of the company through stories.

Marketing value: brand promotion

10. Content marketing

This is the most powerful marketing tool available in stories. Launching the stories feed is one of the simple and effective ways to start your own media, and probably the only one to do it in the app. Creating a communication channel in which customers can reach useful and personalized content is a great opportunity to engage with users on a constant base, promote the company’s products and services, and build trusting relationships.

Marketing Value: Increase in user loyalty, engagement, sales.

The digital services market is one of the most rapidly changing today. It comes from the non-stop development of innovations and the highest market competition. Successful user interaction is one of the core factors in the conquest for user attention. The winners are those who will apply the most effective and modern digital marketing tools in this battle.

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