15 powerful storyboard examples for mapping your next marketing or product project

Every great idea needs a roadmap, and storyboarding is one of the most powerful ways to build one. Whether you’re launching a new marketing campaign, designing a product, or mapping out your customer journey, a storyboard lets you see the vision unfold visually. With the right storyboard examples and templates, you can clarify your ideas, align your team, and bring creative concepts to life—all before the real work begins.

In this guide, we’ll explore the essentials of storyboarding, practical applications across different areas, and 15 inspiring storyboard examples tailored for Miro’s innovation workspace.

Storyboarding basics: building blocks for your visual story

A storyboard is more than a series of frames; it’s a tool that transforms ideas into visuals, step by step. Imagine you’re developing a new product or marketing campaign: each frame captures a key action, user emotion, or critical step in the journey. But what are the core components that make a storyboard effective?

1. Scenes and actions: Each frame or “scene” is a visual representation of a moment in the customer journey or project. Scenes often capture actions, like a customer discovering your product for the first time, which connect to the big picture and clarify important touchpoints.

2. Key characters or personas: Storyboards often include people—whether real customers, team members, or user personas—who interact with each part of your story. Mapping out these characters helps you see how they might engage with your brand, product, or content at each step.

3. Narrative arcs and flow: Just like a storyline, a storyboard should flow logically. Consider the beginning, middle, and end of your story. For a customer journey, this might mean awareness, engagement, and conversion. Mapping these phases visually allows you to align each scene with the journey’s overall goals.

4. Visual cues and notes: Elements like icons, images, and sticky notes help add detail and context. Miro’s storyboard templates let you add images and integrate visuals from Google Images or Unsplash, making it easy to enrich each frame.

With these components, storyboards bridge the gap between vision and action. They bring cohesion to creative projects, customer journey maps, and experiences, allowing teams to envision the big picture clearly while zooming in on the finer details.

Storyboarding examples in Miro

Ready to dive into the world of storyboarding? Miro’s innovation workspace has you covered. Here’s a look at some of the versatile storyboard templates Miro offers, along with tips for making the most of each one.

Storyboard template

The basic storyboard template is a great starting point for any project. It’s structured but flexible, allowing you to plot key steps and arrange visuals. Customize each frame with images, text, or notes, and build your story out frame by frame.

Storyboard for animation template

For animation projects, the storyboard for animation template is a lifesaver. It helps you lay out each scene, detail transitions, and clarify the visual flow. You can even bring in visuals from Unsplash or Google Images directly, giving your animation a visual jumpstart.

Storyboard for video production template

Creating a video? This storyboard template is tailored to video production workflows. From scene setting to shot lists, you can visualize each part of your video’s narrative, making it easy to keep production on track.

Storyboard for user experience template

User experience is all about how people interact with your product. The UX storyboard template allows you to break down each stage of interaction, ensuring a seamless user flow. Add images, notes, and customer feedback to create a storyboard that reflects real user insights.

Storyboard for marketing campaign template

For marketers planning out campaign flows, this storyboard template for marketing campaigns is a perfect fit. It lets you map out campaign steps, messaging themes, and content timelines, helping you see how each part of your campaign connects.

Product storyboard template

When launching a new product or feature, the product storyboard template helps align your team and clarify the narrative. Use Miro’s infinite canvas to explore ideas in-depth and set up each step of the product lifecycle visually.

Storyboard for product development

This storyboard for product development template allows product teams to visualize development stages. Each frame can capture features, user stories, or steps in the product roadmap, giving everyone on the team a clear path from concept to launch.

Storyboard for customer journey template

Map out your customer’s journey from their first interaction with your brand through to conversion and beyond. With this storyboard template for customer journeys, you can capture touchpoints, emotions, and actions, turning customer journeys into a visual narrative.

Agile storyboard template

Agile teams will appreciate the agile storyboard template, designed to track sprints and visualize workflows. With Miro’s real-time collaboration, your team can adjust and update workflows, ensuring everyone is aligned on priorities and progress.

Other frameworks to help you craft your storyboard

If you want to explore beyond traditional storyboarding, Miro has additional frameworks that might just be the spark you need.

Storyboard toolkit template

The storyboard toolkit offers a range of tools to tailor your storyboard to any project. With Miro’s drag-and-drop capabilities, you can quickly pull in assets, notes, and visuals, customizing your storyboard in real time.

Storyboarding workshop template

For teams looking to run a storyboarding session, this workshop template provides a structured way to brainstorm and build narratives. Miro’s collaborative tools make this especially useful for remote or hybrid teams who want to align on project vision.

Tell a great story template

Every project has a story to tell, and this storytelling template is here to help you shape it. Whether you’re developing a product or crafting a marketing campaign, this template breaks down storytelling essentials, helping you structure a compelling narrative.

Mood board template

Sometimes, it’s about finding the right inspiration. Miro’s mood board template allows you to collect images, ideas, and themes in one place. It’s a fantastic starting point for any creative project, helping you establish the mood and direction visually.

Using storyboards for marketing: crafting a compelling journey from start to finish

Storyboards can be transformative for marketers, offering a way to plan campaigns visually, anticipate audience responses, and break down complex initiatives into clear, actionable steps. Here’s how storyboarding enhances the marketing process:

• Visualizing the customer journey: Storyboards help map each touchpoint in a campaign, allowing marketers to see how a customer might progress from initial awareness to conversion. By plotting key moments, you can spot gaps in your messaging or opportunities to strengthen connections.

• Aligning on messaging and tone: With storyboarding, marketers can ensure a consistent tone and message across every campaign element. Each frame can depict different stages or messages, creating a coherent narrative that’s easier to understand at a glance.

• Planning multi-channel flows: Campaigns often span multiple channels—social media, email, blogs, and ads. A storyboard lays out each channel’s role, showing how they interconnect and how each touchpoint contributes to the overall journey.

• Identifying creative opportunities: Storyboards bring a campaign’s storyline to life, making it easy to see where creative elements, like visuals, storytelling, or interactivity, might add the most impact.

• Simplifying team collaboration: Storyboards provide a central visual roadmap, helping marketers, designers, and strategists align on goals and deadlines. This alignment reduces miscommunication, allowing everyone to see the vision and contribute effectively.

• Tracking campaign progress: By outlining each phase visually, storyboards offer a reference point for monitoring a campaign’s progress and adjusting strategies as needed, ensuring campaigns stay on track and are adaptable.

Using storyboards for product: bringing your product vision to life, frame by frame

Product development involves multiple teams and phases, and storyboards help keep the process streamlined and visually unified. Here’s how storyboards benefit the product development journey:

• Visualizing user flows: Storyboards allow product teams to map out how users will interact with each feature. Each frame can represent an action a user takes, providing a clear view of the flow and helping teams ensure a smooth experience.

• Breaking down complex features: When launching a new product or feature, storyboards help visualize the different functions, stages, or user interactions involved, turning a complex build into smaller, actionable steps.

• Clarifying team roles and stages: Product development involves diverse teams and phases—design, engineering, testing, and launch. Storyboards clarify what’s happening in each stage, outlining who is responsible and what needs to be completed before moving forward.

• Enhancing user empathy: Storyboarding user interactions allows teams to focus on the customer’s perspective, mapping how they might feel or respond at each stage. This empathetic approach ensures the product experience is designed with the user’s needs in mind.

• Aligning on launch vision: Each frame in a storyboard can depict a specific phase or feature, making it easier for all teams to align on the overall product vision and desired outcomes, creating a cohesive journey from start to finish.

Using storyboards for mapping customer journeys: seeing the world through your customer’s eyes

Mapping the customer journey with a storyboard allows brands to connect with their audience on a deeper level, identifying needs, pain points, and emotions that arise throughout the journey. Here’s how storyboarding enhances customer journey mapping:

• Highlighting each touchpoint: Storyboards break down the customer journey into distinct touchpoints, from initial awareness to advocacy. This helps teams visualize where and how customers interact with the brand at each stage.

• Identifying customer emotions and motivations: By focusing on the customer’s experience, storyboards help reveal what emotions or motivations may arise during each touchpoint, guiding teams to improve interactions based on these insights.

• Spotting friction points: A storyboard helps teams pinpoint where customers may encounter obstacles, allowing you to proactively address potential issues in your journey design.

• Connecting stages in the journey: Storyboards map out a logical progression, showing how each phase of the journey leads into the next. This helps ensure a smooth, coherent experience for the customer, encouraging positive engagement at each stage.

• Aligning teams on the customer experience: Storyboards serve as a visual guide, allowing everyone—from marketing and product to sales and support—to understand the customer’s path and align on how best to support and enhance the journey.

• Guiding data collection and analysis: With each step clearly outlined, storyboards can highlight areas for collecting user insights or feedback, making it easier to validate assumptions, adapt touchpoints, and improve the customer experience based on real data.

Tips on how to supercharge your project’s vision and streamline your creative flow with storyboard templates

Creating a great storyboard goes beyond just using the right tools. Here are some top tips for making your storyboard impactful, clear, and engaging:

1. Start with the end in mind: Define your goal for the storyboard first. What do you want your team to understand or feel by the end? Keeping the goal front and center will guide your choices on scenes, characters, and flow.

2. Keep it simple: Storyboards should be clear and digestible at a glance. Focus on key moments and cut anything that doesn’t move the story forward. Miro’s templates make it easy to keep your frames organized, so you’re not overwhelmed with too many details.

3. Encourage team feedback: Storyboards come to life with diverse input. Miro’s real-time collaboration allows your team to leave comments and make edits, so the storyboard evolves as you go, incorporating different perspectives and ideas.

4. Experiment with mood and tone: Storyboarding isn’t only about what happens; it’s also about how it feels. Miro’s mood board template is great for gathering images, colors, and themes that set the right tone. Experiment with these elements early on to create a cohesive visual story.

5. Iterate and adapt: A storyboard is a living document. Don’t be afraid to move scenes around, add notes, or replace visuals as your project progresses. Miro’s infinite canvas gives you the flexibility to adjust without limits, so the storyboard can evolve with your project.

With these strategies, you’ll create storyboards that bring your ideas to life, set a strong foundation for your team, and ultimately help you communicate your vision with clarity and creativity. Storyboarding is a process that brings purpose to your projects—and with Miro’s tools and storyboard templates, you’re fully equipped to create stories that inspire and connect.