News

The Art of Brand Storytelling

In order to facilitate enhanced customer engagement levels, develop brand loyalty and advocacy, businesses need to build a strong, unshakeable relationship with their customers. And they do this by telling their story effectively so that it resonates with consumers.

What is brand storytelling?

Brand storytelling is a powerful tool that helps organisations stay connected with their user base and expand it exponentially. It is so much more than just a portrayal of your business’ trajectory. It is your brand’s unique selling point (USP), that special something which makes your business stand apart from the competition and includes a wide variety of stimuli. From users’ perceptions and experience with your brand to its history to how you market your business across several social media platforms, all go into developing a solid brand character.

What defines your brand?

The easiest way to build your brand’s narrative is to get clarity on why you established your business in the first place. When you have the answers to the following questions, you will be well on your way to writing a story that connects with your target demographic:

• What is important to you?
• Why are your products or services unique?
• What are your goals?

Brand positioning statement and creating an emotional connection

If you want your brand’s story to resonate with your customers, you have to effectively position your offering and image in a niche market by asking yourself who is your target audience and does the statement appeal to them directly. Then design a statement that comprehensively summarises your brand’s USP and explains to your demographic why you are the best ‘buy.’ In addition, you will also need to consider the emotion/s that the story will spark because it will help humanize your brand’s story and give your audience something to remember it by.

Important requisites of storytelling

Once you have created your brand positioning statement and have pinpointed the emotion you want to trigger, the next step is to commence building that memorable story. And imperative to the success of brand storytelling is to combine dynamic written content with audiovisual material such as videos, music, animations, imagery, infographics, and 3D graphics. In addition, your logo and website typography also constitute important elements of your brand’s narrative.

Here are five brand storytelling alternatives that have proved successful time and time again:  

• Before and After – Show your target audience what specific problem your brand intends to solve and how their lives will be enhanced once you deliver optimized solutions that will adequately address those problems.
• Characteristics and Advantages – Employing facts and solid data prove the main features of your brand. Explain to customers how these characteristics will personally benefit them so that it ignites a spark of curiosity in your products or services.
• Problem and Solution – Present your audience with a common problem they are faced with. Stress on the problem and how it affects their lives so that you play on their emotions. Finally, demonstrate how your brand can solve that problem effectively.
• Incident and Benefit – Make your target demographic relate on an emotional level to a genuine story. Present them with actionable steps that can be taken to resolve that problem and tell them why they should take action with the help of your brand alone. Last but not least, show them how they can benefit from taking the necessary steps.
• Brand Hero – One of the most vital elements of good brand storytelling is that you have a person or something that will best represent your business. For example – a hero goes on a journey, stumbles across a roadblock, scales it against all odds and finally becomes a better person for it and someone to look up to.

Today, successful inbound marketing is incomplete without the use of effective brand storytelling. In addition to helping you position your brand dramatically, it will also help you design brilliant marketing programs to enhance conversion rates while reducing costs and growing your reach and visibility substantially.