Brand Storytelling
YOUR BRAND IS ESSENTIAL TO THE HEALTH OF YOUR BUSINESS
The brand you create affects how your customers perceive you. However, it is not enough to simply create a consistent and positive brand image. You need to communicate this image to your customers. This is where effective brand storytelling comes in. Read on to learn everything you need to know about brand storytelling
WHAT IS BRAND STORYTELLING?
Storytelling is an age-old tradition; a way of connecting with others and sharing ideals, values, and experiences. Brand storytelling is no different. It is the art of connecting the hearts and minds of potential and returning customers to shared values and ideals that define the truth behind your brand.
It is the story that explores why your brand exists and who benefits from its continued existence.
Your brand story is much more than just your website, or a page on how your company was founded. Brand storytelling needs to represent who you are and what you stand for. It sets the tone for what your customers can expect from you during any interaction, regardless of whether that communication is online, over the phone, or in person. Achieving this requires you to know why you exist and what your products are, as well as to understand your audience. To be effective, however, your brand story also needs to be consistent and authentic.
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1. The Power of Personas
Knowing your customer segment is an essential part of building your brand story; every excellent storyteller knows whom they are trying to reach. You can achieve this level of customer knowledge by creating a buyer persona; a semi-fictional depiction of your ideal customer. This persona should be based on current market research, combined with knowledge of your existing customers.
A detailed buyer persona helps you determine where to focus your time and efforts, guide product development, and achieve consistency across your organization. The power of the persona is in its ability to aid you in attracting the most valuable visitors and leads to your business and increase your customer conversion rates.
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2. Business Storytelling
Creating high-quality brand stories is not something that can be mastered immediately; it requires skill, insight, and ongoing effort. However, even with all the time in the world, your brand storytelling will not get any easier if you do not have the right strategic business plan in place first. Part of this project needs to be understanding how you can consistently apply your story across your platforms, both online and in the physical world.
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3. B2B Story Branding
Every business has a story to tell, and B2B stories are no less important. Your B2B marketing content, tells other companies about you, who you are, what you do, and how you do it, long before there is any actual contact between you. If your story does not adequately represent you, or it is not engaging and informative, then you lose the advantage that the right story gives you. B2B brand storytelling must robustly, consistently, and clearly communicate your brand.
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4. Brand Storytelling For Each Generation in Business
People change; innovation means that the needs of one generation are different to the previous. Social changes entail that with each generation come new interests, difficulties, and awareness of the world. Businesses that do not understand these changes and adapt their storytelling fail to reach new audiences. Of course, there also has to be a balance between reaching one generation and the next. Without balance you risk alienating existing customers. It is this need for the fluidity that creates opportunities for emerging brands and increases pressures on more established businesses to continue to evolve.
5. Using Storytelling in Sales
Sales are not just about finding and winning opportunities; it is about driving change and improving the lives of your customers. It is not possible to win customers by merely stating you need this and we have it; you have to create a story that enables them to see the need for themselves and to see you as the answer to that need.
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When listening to an engaging story, people put themselves into that world. Fear, worry, worthlessness, anger, acceptance, love, success, anticipation, validation, freedom, regret, and victory; these are emotions great storytellers elicit from their audience as a matter of course. When listening to a well-developed story, not only do people feel these emotions, but they create the images in their minds as well. When connected to powerful emotions, these images stick with them.
