When launching a new digital marketing campaign, having a clear plan and process in place is crucial for success. Storyboarding is an effective technique used by marketers, and other visual storytellers, to map out the narrative and major elements of a campaign before beginning production. Utilizing a storyboard allows marketers to align stakeholders, identify potential issues early, and ensure the campaign aligns to business goals.

The Benefits of Storyboarding

Creating a storyboard, or a visual outline of your narrative and content mapped sequentially, provides significant advantages when developing digital marketing campaigns. Some key benefits include:

• Alignment – Storyboarding early on allows all stakeholders involved to get aligned on the purpose and flow of the campaign. Rather than starting with execution, storyboarding facilitates upfront agreement.
• Preparation – Mapping out your content visually forces you to prepare your assets and resources proactively. This helps reduce wasted efforts.
• Optimization – Seeing your ideas visually allows you to identify redundancies or ineffective sequences early when adjustments are easier to make.
• Simplicity – A storyboard simplifies narrative elements into bite-sized pieces spread logically into frames and sequences. This constraint establishes components essential for the user.

Templates Streamline Creation

Rather than starting with a blank page, using a storyboard template accelerates the drafting process. Effective templates simplify sequences into visual buckets clearly highlighting frames, transitions and continuity from one sequenced element to the next. Streamlined and purpose-built, a storyboard template provides prompting visual placeholders enabling rapid staging.

Bringing Your Storyboard to Life

With your storyboard frames established, choosing assets and media to populate the sequence is next. Pulling photography, illustrations, videos, and written content into the frames visualizes how components engage users by sequence.

This translation process enables analysis of effectiveness and continuity in a real context versus theoretical placeholders. Gaining this perspective allows creators to evaluate if assets fit, flow, and compel as intended. Built out in this method, transitioning from storyboard to production becomes clear.

Best Practices for Success

To maximize effectiveness, consider these storyboarding best practices:

• Focus sequencing around a singular goal, avoiding unnecessary tangents. Be ruthless when editing ideas that serve little purpose.
• Leave space between composite frames ensuring there is breathing room for important moments. Clutter distracts.
• Use supporting annotations to indicate interactive elements, motion sequences, timing and continuity calls to action enhancing frames.
• Maintain style and tone consistency across illustrations/photography through color palettes, composition, and graphic treatments.
• Export individual frames when collecting asset approvals allowing granular feedback.
• Print your board large for immersive analysis and team presentations. Digitally is secondary.
• Create one master board then segment sequences for detailed review. Don’t overwhelm stakeholders initially.

By starting digital marketing campaigns with a well-developed storyboard, marketers gain alignment while identifying optimization early when adjustments are simpler. Using templates accelerates this process, establishing frames along with continuity and flow. With these foundations anchored in place, campaigns can progress smoothly from concept to creation driving engagement more effectively. Keep storyboarding top of mind prior to launching your next marketing effort.