How To Story-Tell As A Brand [P2S Podcast]

This week we’ll be talking about how to story-tell as a brand.

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Now brand storytelling isn’t some new concept that’s comeout of nowhere. In fact it has workedhistorically for leading brands such as Apple, the only difference is back thenyou had a choice whether or not to use this tactic but now it has become anecessity.

Today, 90% of brands have gone digital in order to reach a much wider audience with their products or services. Whilst some are able to generate millions in revenue using channels such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and more, there are those businesses who struggle to grab the attention of the consumer in the first place. The difference isn’t the product, but it’s how the brand position themselves in the eye of itsconsumer.

Brand storytelling is a strategy used by businesses to increase their brand awareness. The tactic focuses on the business telling a story that reflects on what the brand does and how it relates to the consumer on a deeper level, therefore peaking their interest. This particular brand strategy uses consumer engagement to drive more conversions.

Now why is brand storytelling important we hear you ask. Telling a story stimulates the brain in such a way that it allows the listener to turn the story into their very own, unique experience. What this leads to is the brain of the listener mirroring effects and identifies similarities with the speaker, meaning that your stories can help consumers connect with your brand!

On average, a tech-savvy internet user consumes more than 100,500 words a day, all thanks to different brands trying to reach out to them through social media and other alternative marketing tactics. There’s a constantly expanding volume of content available on the digital landscape which has made it more difficult for businesses to grab their consumers attention, but this is where storytelling comes in.

Consumers remember things that are fun or something that they can relate to or believe in so you need to make sure that you relate to your customers, if you don’t then they aren’t even going to consider buying from you. Once they become interested in what your brand does, it automatically becomes easier to move them down the funnel towards eventually converting.

Next is that using a brand story helps sell better. Now stories don’t just get your brand a bigger following, by winning the consumers’ interest you’re encouraging greater word of mouth promotion, which thereforewill boost the number of purchases made.

Customers nowadays do more than just a simple pro’s and con’s comparison, they see what other, similar customers like them perceived of the brand and the experience that the brand was able to deliver. In fact, in a recent study, it was proven that customers are much more likely to purchasefrom brands that they feel an emotional connection with.

Now you want your brand story to set yourself apart from the rest. You want to be different from everyone else so that consumers know that if they see something, it’s your brand. But thanks to brands going digital, it’s become a lot harder for brands to create campaigns that stand out. No matter the industry you’re in, there’s at least 10 other brands that are offering a similar product or service to the same audience.

What can make things even worse is when brands with biggerbudgets on advertising step into the fray. Even though they might have absolutely nothing interesting to say, they’re able to capture the customer’s attention by pushing their brand at them on a consistent basis.

Although you may have a similar product or service to a number of other companies, the thing that makes the difference is your story, which is why you need to make your story different so you can stand apart fromthe rest.

Not only does your brand story create interest, it creates engagement. For example, if you’re talking to someone who is constantly bragging about how good their product is, and someone else comes over to share their story about how they started making a certain product, the second conversation is much more interesting and more likely to pull you in and stop you from walking away.

The same is true through digital platforms. Every consumer wants to be part of something interesting or, even better, they want to be the hero of your story. You have to create a story that keeps your customers attention and really pulls them in.

Now that we’ve got out of the way why brand storytelling isperfect for your business, we’re going to be looking at how you can create stories that turn potential customers into paying customers.

Firstly, you should drive it through your personality. You need to create your very own personality that separates you from the rest in your industry. You need to craft the perfect story for your brand. Consumers connect with people, not with things and as difficult as it might sound, it is important for you to focus on driving your branding through your very own personality. The closer you are to sounding like yourself, the more likely you’re able to connect with consumers. For this you should take note of the values that your brand stands for and stick close to them.

You need to make it simple, one of the biggest mistakes that most brands make is complicating their own story. You might have had a thousand ideas before creating the product or service you have today, but the customer doesn’t need to know all of that. The parts they only need to know are the parts that are relevant to them or the ones that position them as a driving force.

A great example of this is Airbnb. The brand itself has always focused on people and that’s why they share stories from the hosts and travellers.

To tell your story to your audience right, you need a content publishing platform that sees through your vision. The platform should enable you to post stories on your channel where your audience is most active.

If Apple didn’t position themselves as one of the masters of technology, as the brand for people who think differently, would you be willing to spend so much on their products when there are other brands who offer similar products? The answer is no.

Your brand story needs to resonate with what you do. It should advocate your existence and take the consumers through almost half the funnel in convincing them to engage with your brand.

You have to evoke consumer emotions. We spoke about emotions in more depth in last weeks podcast but if your story just speaks about yourself and what you offer and none of the targets your customers resonate with, then your brand story has already failed.

Successful brand storytelling is when you’re able to form a connection with your customers through words and visuals. Not only that, but it should be able to evoke emotions and positive ones at that and be able to nudge them closer to interact with your brand.

Going back to the Airbnb example, the stories you can read from real people is what appeals to most of the customers. It lets them see new places through the eyes of someone who is just like them.

A simple ground rule you can use here is to focus on adding some value to the customer.

Finally, you need to follow the trends and when we say trends, we mean sometimes speaking as your typical customer would or choosing a content format that they are engaging within the most. Remember, when content marketing first began it was all about using blog posts to convey your brand’s story, then it moved to more visual formats such as infographics, videos, gifs etc.

Even big brands like Cadbury went from using graphical postsfor their social accounts to creating interesting videos that made customers smile.

You need to look at the trends and see what the current curve is, once you understand what it is, try and put your own spin on things so you’re able to stand out from the rest so you can appeal and attract towards the right audience.