Every brand has a story. All it needs to do is tell that well. Yet, the most common question that many professional brand marketing services providers get is “What is brand storytelling and how important is it for a brand?”
Brand storytelling is the way a brand communicates its values, captures the attention of its target audience, and builds emotional connections.
A Brand Storytelling Report, commissioned by UK-based digital marketing firm Headstream, revealed that 80 percent of its respondents want brands to tell stories. From this, we can understand how crucial brand stories are for brands.
Being a professional brand marketing company, we at PeddleWeb believe that every brand can tell its story to forge a deep connection with its target audience. In this blog post, we discuss the eight ways you can tell a brand story to connect with the target audience. Read on to know more.
- Identify a problem and relate it to the target audience
The very first step to creating a compelling brand story is to communicate a problem to the target audience and share the ways to address it. For that, you must strongly relate to the target audience and identify their problems. Ask questions such as:
- “What are the pain points of my target audience?”
- “How my brand can address their pain points?”
- “How do I resolve it in a humane and relatable way?”
Apart from that, create the persona of an ideal target audience. This will help in understanding what types of content the ideal target audience prefers. After knowing their favorite books, blogs, and authors, you can tailor the brand story to suit their tastes and preferences. Taking the help of professional brand marketing services can help you identify the problems as well as create the persona of the ideal target audience.
- Create a robust story foundation and have a clear vision
The next step is to create a strong story foundation. Without it, the message would be confusing, inconsistent, and contradictory. While creating a foundation, get very clear on your vision. The vision summarizes what you want to achieve and what you want to leave behind. A brand that has a vision also has core values. Core values humanize a brand. Identify some of the core values that you stand for and build your business around them. Ask questions such as:
- “What does the brand stand for?”
- “How does the brand intend to serve its customers?”
- “What value people are going to get from the brand?”
- “Who are the target customers?”
A professional brand marketing company will help in creating a strong story foundation and create the story as per the vision and core values of a brand.
- Craft a compelling story
After a clear vision and building a strong story foundation, craft a compelling story. Make it personal. Make the story resonate with the target audience. However, embarking on a journey path that all master storytellers take. Great stories have something that strikes a chord with the audience. They describe conflicts and challenges. But in the end, the protagonist rises beyond their circumstances and resolves the problem. You are the protagonist in the brand story. Tie your brand to the resolution.
- Write for the target audience
Whether it is a blog post, an article, or a newsletter, while drafting a piece of content you must write for the audience. Some brands commit the mistake of writing for the search engine, or worse, for the sake of publishing. But to tell stories that resonate with the target audience, ensure to write in a conversational tone. Create brand language, communication styles, and visuals to tell your brand story interestingly and engagingly.
- Share peoples’ stories
To connect with the target audience, tell stories about real people. Let them know how people like them have solved their problems by using your products or services. This will encourage them to follow suit. Craft the stories about real people—customers and loyal followers. The biggest advantage of creating this type of story is that they are emotional yet practical and relatable. This will let them know how a brand has the potential to change people’s lives for the better.
- Stir up the emotions of your audience
Emotion is an extremely powerful motivator. It can keep the target audience connected and engaged with the brand story as well as inspire them to take action. Telling emotional stories about your brand will make the target audience feel what you want them to feel. It can help them connect to the brand and its vision and core values.
- Make it visually appealing
Visual information elicits more attention and response compared to plain text. Did you know that social media posts with visual content have thrice the engagement than their nonvisual counterparts? And the same applies to all kinds of content. So, it is extremely crucial to try and make the content as visually appealing as you can. After creating the textual content, look for ways to include visual information. Try to include illustrations, images, infographics, charts, stats, and more.
- Consider alternate channels
In the digital age, think beyond text content and consider alternate channels. Use videos, gamification, simulations, and other virtual content that can enable the target audience to get the brand message from their preferred medium. Also, optimize for voice devices to help the target audience listen to the content using their voice speakers.
Taking everything into account,
Creating a brand story and telling it well is extremely crucial for all brands as it will enable them to grab the attention of their target audience and build strong connections with them. At PeddleWeb, we have helped many brands in scripting their stories and letting the world know them. If you want to tell yours, contact your team to know how we can help.
