Stories are powerful. They fire people up and get them to care about the message in the story. Stories connect to how we think, how we decide what's true, and how we make sense of the world around us.
And we all have a story to tell. Whether we are marketing our business, our products, or our life's purpose, we have to connect with people & you do that by telling your story.
Take, for example, Patek Philippe. A Swiss clockmaker known for luxury watches and some of the world's most expensive timepieces has royal and noble patrons, such as Queen Victoria, Leo Tolstoy, Albert Einstein, Nelson Mandela, John F Kennedy, and Pablo Picasso. Their 'Generation' advertisements focus on the bond between a father and son using timeless black and white imagery.
Their slogan, "You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely take care of it for the next generation." is brought to life with this type of brand storytelling. The below video captures a tender moment between a father and son exploring a bookstore with the invitation, "Begin your own tradition with Patek Philippe."
Business stories are powerful tools for marketing and sales. There is more to business storytelling than simply creating a great character or an intriguing plot. The idea behind Brand Storytelling is to bring about a culture that encourages the narrative style of communication both internally and externally. A strong brand story, if told rightly, can help you build a strong customer and employee base.
Business storytelling is one of the most powerful tools to grow your business. This blog looks at the different aspects of this powerful tool that can turn your information into an engaging narrative that your audience can relate to and remember.
Business storytelling attracts and grows your audience
Business Storytelling means communicating with your existing and potential customers through a powerful story.
When businesses stand out with a meaningful story that connects emotionally with the audience, it makes the brand more personable and urges the customers to choose that brand. Let's check multiple ways how brand storytelling can grow your audience.
Engaging with customers & employees
Through stories, you can share your brand's values and mission to connect with your audience. It will help create an emotional connection with your brand and inspire loyalty and advocacy among your customers and employees.
Creating a memory
Stories will make your audience think about your brand and product. When stories resonate with people, they create a lasting memory for your audience. That memory attracts more buyers and maintains a powerful impression on your customers long after the purchase.
Connecting through emotions and feelings
Emotions trigger purchase decisions, not logic. Evoking the right kind of emotions and feelings through a story will connect with your audience on a deeper level and prompt action rather than passive appreciation.
Increasing customer loyalty
Stories make your customers feel like they are a part of your brand, history, and reputation. It makes your customers happy as they can connect on a personal level and helps them to develop a strong sense of loyalty which is essential for any brand.
Giving a competitive edge
When you create a compelling narrative around your business conveying who you are, what you stand for, and what makes you unique, it gives your business a competitive edge. It makes your brand more memorable, relatable, and trustworthy among the competitors.
Aligning storytelling with the customer journey to drive action
Intrigue for awareness: Build intrigue by focusing on shared values and interests to make the audience aware of your brand. Connect people with your message through relatable experiences, passions, market gaps, and common problems.
Educate for consideration: Share more about your brand and perspective by explaining how you built your business and why you did so. Inform your audience how you are helping others reach a goal or solve a problem.
Influence for conversion: Influence a purchase by clearly specifying how your brand or product helps solve a problem or create an advantage in the market. Use customer reviews and testimonials as social proof to increase credibility and trust.
Engage for Retention: Continue to engage your customers with community stories and memorable experiences. Build meaningful relationships and maximize your reach by connecting with your customers personally.
What makes a good story?
A few aspects can transform your story into an inspiring experience for you and your audience.
A Good Brand Story will be:
Entertaining to keep your audience interested and engaged in what's coming next
Educational to add to your audience's knowledge and spark curiosity
Organized to convey your brand's core message helping your audience understand better
Universal to tap into your audience's emotions and experiences making it relatable
Memorable through engaging and delightful content incorporating humor and inspiration
3 Main components for a good story
Character: If your audience can put themselves in a character's shoes, they are more likely to take action to purchase your brand. Feature at least one strong character that will connect your audience with your story. Ensure this character remains the bridge between you, your story, and your audience.
Challenge: The challenge is the conflict your main character faces in your story. Conflict elicits emotions and makes your audience eager to know how your character combats the challenge. Use relatable experiences to create riveting conflicts in your story.
Resolution: The resolution is the closing of your story. By now, you need to provide the key for the challenge through your central character and wrap up the story with a good ending. The closing should contain a call to action for your audience to react to the story.
Top techniques to create a compelling story for your business
Business storytelling can transform your business into a brand and your one-time shoppers into loyal customers. But, how can you craft a business story to inspire your audience and convert them into your brand advocates and loyal customers?
Simple
Keep your story simple and straightforward to quickly capture your audience's attention. A complex plot, though interesting to many, may not reach a larger audience. First, talk about the challenge you aim to solve, show how you solved it, and then showcase the success. Let your story closing create a sense of continuation and mark a new beginning rather than a closed-end.
Real
Go in-depth with your story about your journey but do not focus much on the corporate or business aspect. Make your story real and sustainable so that people can relate to it. You need not have a perfect story, as sometimes imperfect stories are more real and cause a better emotional impact on your audience.
Personal
Tell your story through the eyes of a person rather than the company. Using a loyal customer or a faithful employee to narrate your story will connect with your audience better than using your company. Anchor your story with real people so that your audience can see themselves as a part of your story and brand.
Big picture
Include a social cause component in your story to advocate the bigger picture. Today's customers make choices based on the social issues they care deeply about and engage better with brands that care about such issues. Tell a story about your business mission and how it helps make society better to attract more customers.
Sell the story, not the product
If you have a great product, you don't have to do much to sell it if your story can connect emotionally with your customers. Always back your product with a captivating story and sell the story instead to make your customers feel that when they buy your product, they are buying your story as well.
Captivate your audience with your brand story
Business stories require vision, creativity, and skill to captivate your audience. The storytelling process plays a vital role while planning your content strategy. Let's consider the crucial steps of this process below.
Know your audience
Research your target market and define your buyer's person before planning your story. Know which audience will benefit most from your product and who would respond quickly to take action. Acquaint yourself with those who will listen, read, or view your story to know what type of story to create.
Include a core message
Establish a core message before starting your story. Define the point of your story with a message that spans your entire brand. Start by summarizing your story in less than ten words to create your brand's core message.
Determine the kind of story
All stories have a purpose. Determine the purpose and objective you want to pursue through your story. Is it to tell others about your brand, incite to action, impart knowledge, foster collaboration, or convey your values? Choose an objective and curate your story around it.
Choose a story medium
You can narrate your story in multiple forms. Stories can be written in blogs, books, and articles or spoken through a recorded format like audio stories and podcasts. You can tell your story in person through Ted talks, presentations, and panel discussions or share it in digital format via video ads, games, interactive narratives, and animation. Choose the medium that works best for your story.
Initiate a call-to-action
Establish the action you want your audience to take after consuming your story. Do you want people to buy your product, contact you, subscribe to your newsletter, or partner with you? Align your CTA with your objective to ensure action based on your story.
Share your story
Promote your story by sharing it on various mediums. Use social media, emails, guest posts, YouTube, and other digital mediums to share. Spoken stories like panel discussions, webinars, and talks work better when you record them to promote on your website and others.
Leverage a powerful narrative for your content strategy
The Accenture Global Pulse Research results highlight the aspects of a brand that attract more customers. Check some outstanding stats below about the brand audience.
These stats identify the causes why people opt for specific brands and remain loyal. You can use stories to highlight how your brand is faring in these categories. Leverage a strong narrative by using storytelling in all aspects of your business rather than just on the "About Us" page on your website.
- Connect emotionally with your customers across all content, from native ads to social posts.
- Review your content, website, marketing resources, and strategy to enhance them.
- Tell your audience that you are aware of their pain points and empathize with them.
- Allow your customers to narrate their personal stories and the community's stories.
- Engage regularly with your current and prospective customers on a personal level.
Powerful stories that made an impact
Manchester City
Manchester City, the English football club, showcased a story of their players and fans all over the globe to celebrate wins together. Their profile story of Georgia Stanway, top women's goalscorer, focused on her journey from an ordinary young girl to a global star. This emotional story hooked the audience and helped many relate to Stanway's struggle to the top, inspiring young girls to take up sports.
Doctors without Borders
The global medical charity, Doctors without Borders (MSF), always describes its activities via a compelling and emotional story. It summed up 2021 in the form of 54 photographs of both patients and staff taken around the world. The full-screen photos were powerful to make the viewers imagine the magnitude of the global charity work and immerse themselves in this humanitarian act.
Honda & Monster Energy
Honda motorcycles and Monster Energy drinks collaborated to narrate a story about the Dakar Rally off-road race. They included a behind-the-scenes story with photographs, multimedia, and quotes from racers, engineers, and technicians. The story also featured sections of 'a day' in the life of the race team. This powerful story made the readers imagine themselves in the driving seat to feel the thrilling experience of the race.
Powerful storytelling for the best brand recognition
So, let's recap. As we've considered, storytelling is a great way to promote your brand and reach a wider audience. You can connect with your audience and show them who you are as a company and what your mission is!
You can tell a story about the brand and products you are selling based on your audience's wants and needs and how your brand can fill that void. People will remember your product or brand more than a faceless name or logo. They will buy on emotion, but they will return for the brand.
We hope you've found this blog helpful, and if you have any questions about planning or executing a story, we'd love to hear from you! Leave your comments below.