Author and blogger Seth Godin says “Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories that you tell.”
Storytelling is a proven method to transform a brand’s presence and identity. It can assist you in shaping how people view your brand, allowing you to connect with your target audience in better ways. Stories play a crucial role in building customer loyalty and encouraging engagement. They can help you to personify your brand and get people to notice you.
Storytelling can prove to be an effective tool to improve conversions. As per a research, if people like a brand story, 55% are more likely to buy the product in the future, 44% will share the story, and 15% will buy the product immediately.
Your stories should be focused on delivering enhanced content experience along with subtly promoting your business. They should be appealing to the emotions of your prospects and clients. They should have a surprise element or delight customers, force them to think and feel, and motivate them to act in a certain way.
Use the below five ideas to get started and leverage brand storytelling to increase awareness, fuel engagement and drive sales to your business.
1) Keep your story simple
It is preferable to keep your story simple with a clear beginning, middle, and end. Your story should be understandable to your target audience. If you include twists and turns or mysteries in your story, it will lose its charm and impetus.
Your story should explain the problem you are trying to solve and give a description of how you solved it and achieved success. This will give you recognition and help you to differentiate from your competitors.
2) Humanize your story
To ensure success, you should not stick to professionalism but humanize your story to connect to your audience. Give your brand a face, share behind-the-scenes footage and show the interviews of your employees. By humanizing your brand voice, you will be able to create a reliable image among consumers.
For this, figure out what your target audience likes, what they are likely to share, what do they believe in, etc. Come out with brand stories that are relatable, human, and helps your audience bring changes in their lives.
By giving a human touch to your story, you will be able to build a strong brand voice that represents your brand’s personality, allowing you to make an emotional connection with people.
3) Share your origin story
To make your brand story effective, you need to show your beginning. You can share your origin story with your followers on social media, which will garner likes and shares.
Through your origin story, you will be able to communicate your brand values, helping your followers understand who you are and how you started from scratch. Your customers will get an idea about your business’ motivations and what distinguishes you from others.
Beardbrand, for example, has showcased its origin story of how it became the company that fosters style for the urban beardsmen.
To create a perfect brand origin story, map the milestones of your company, share what drove you towards starting a business, how much success you have achieved and what your future goals are.
4) Involve customers in your story
You should encourage your customers to tell their own stories related to your brand to create user-generated content. Video is one of the effective ways of creating user-generated content and sharing your brand’s stories to create an emotional impact.
Stories shared by your customers will assist you in crafting your overall brand story. They can talk about how your products or services made a difference in their lives. For example, if your customer was facing some problem and your product resolved it, your story can throw light on the same.
Tesla has a separate page for the customer stories on its website, which includes how the brand’s electric cars have been helpful to improve customers’ lives.
By asking customers to be a part of your brand story, you can make them feel valued and win their trust.
5) Use multiple marketing mediums
Once you have created an engaging brand story, you have to ensure that it is properly promoted on different marketing platforms. You can use various mediums like blogs, websites, social media, etc. to increase the awareness of your story. You can use e-mails to put across your brand’s story especially your welcome e-mails, sent to the new e-mail subscribers.
Social media platforms can be used to share your brand stories about your mission, vision, founders, team, products, etc. through text, images or videos. For offline marketing, collaterals with attractive images and visuals can be used to showcase your brand story.
Conclusion
It is important that you tell your brand story in ways, which customers can connect to and assist you in establishing credibility among them. With an emotional appeal, your brand stories can guide your target audience to buy from you.
You can even show the causes you support to your customers through your stories and how that is benefiting people’s lives. This will help you to uplift the reputation of your business and solidify your brand image.
So, follow the above tips to come up with brand stories that can touch the hearts of your customers to get a competitive edge and drive sales.
