9 Simple Steps to Become a Great Brand Storyteller
Connecting with your customers is the heart and soul of a successful business. Because after all, you are dealing with these people, subduing weak points, resolving their troubles, and providing excellent customer service. Profit is something you get as a byproduct of a prospect business and delightful customer experience.
The art of storytelling has been used for ages by brands/marketers to establish a solid relationship with their customers. This technique uses factual stories or improvised stories to communicate with the target audience. No matter where in the world you are located or how much funding your business has, good storytelling means excellent marketing. These two go hand in hand.
For instance, let’s say you are writing an informative blog or making impressive graphics or creating a catchy Facebook ad; all you need is your audience’s attention. The customers are bombarded with tons of advertising ads every day. So it is more likely that yours will get lost among the spammy ads pile.
So, what exactly can help your brand to stand out from this competition? That’s where storytelling comes into action.
What is Brand Storytelling?
Consider brand storytelling as an art. Like every art, this requires patience, skills, practice, creativity, and vision. This is not something that you can master at one shot. Many companies fall in the trap of thinking that brand storytelling is actually the story of their brand. No, it is not!
While storytelling, consider your potential customers in the main lead. You have to paint a picture using words. Storytelling is about your brand’s customers, and the ultimate value your services or products can bring in their lives. For a solid brand story, you must keep the customers as a priority. You don’t have to stress too much over delivering the perfect message; most of the time storytelling happens naturally. Sometimes, you won’t even recognize when and how you did it.
People who master this art of storytelling, often work as content writers, PRs, and marketers for other brands. The ultimate motive for storytelling is to engage, entertain, educate, and inspire customers. Powerful storytelling can give your brand a sound voice. Therefore, it is essential to make sure you do it right. Here are a few simple ways to become a great brand storyteller for marketing.
9 Simple Steps to Become a Great Brand Storyteller
- Know the target audience
Before you put your hands on your pen or keyboard, know the most important thing – your target audience. Who are you telling this story to? Who is going to hear, see, or read your story? Who is going to respond to it? You will be able to figure out the foundation of your story when you know the target audience.
- Craft your company’s fundamental message
Your story can be of fifteen minutes or fifty minutes, one page or ten pages, but it must have a fundamental message. The one that your readers, viewers, or listeners can derive from it. Set your company’s goals and priorities, and then define the message.
Know what this story is about exactly. Are you trying to inspire a sale? Are you educating consumers about your services or products? Are you trying to raise the retention rates? To know your fundamental message, wrap up your story in one line. If not, then you don’t have any message yet.
- Decide the nature of your story
Every story is different, and so is their goal. You can decide the nature of your story by understanding how you want your customers to react to it. In this way, you can determine how you will make up your story to get the required customer reaction. For instance, if you wish to tell about yourself through the story, you may want to keep it genuine. Share your life struggles, failures, setbacks, and wins. This way, your audience will feel connected. Customers want to connect with brands that have genuine marketing, and storytelling works wonder in this case.
- Forget Marketing
You might find this a little weird, after all, marketing is a crucial reason for storytelling, but it is indeed true. Do not think like a marketer. Your audience should not feel pressured to make a purchase. Instead, concentrate on developing a human-interest story. Otherwise, why would they bother to hear what your brand has got to say?
Try to be appealing and connect with your audience at an emotional level. Whatever you do, do not bore them. Try to share as much as possible rather than selling. Share your experiences, failures, struggles, and success; share your journey with them how you made this brand stand where it is now. People love authenticity.
- Be conversational but choose your words wisely
Being overly formal can make your content boring. Your story should be engaging and appealing to the audience. However, what you tell them is as crucial as how you tell them. When communicating, make sure you use the right tone and language. Accept it or not, but people can sense when you are being fake or making false promises. So it is always better to stay realistic.
Be polite, but don’t sugarcoat things. Instead, communicate with them like you are meeting a friend in a coffee shop. Not like you are giving a presentation. Be careful and playful with your words.
- Determine your CTA
The objective of your story also determines the call-to-action. Once your audience has viewed or read your story, what do you want them to do? Do you want them to buy a product? Subscribe to your weekly newsletter? Donate money? Your objective will tell you what your CTA should be.
For instance, if you want to sell a product to them, your CTA will be “Tap the buy now button below.”
- Choose the medium of your story
There are many ways to tell a story. How you want to tell your story depends on your budget and time. Here are the various mediums of telling a story:
- Written story – It is narrated via blogs, articles, and books. Written stories are texts with a few images. These are the most affordable storytelling mediums. All you need is a pen and paper, and a word processor.
- Spoken Story – These are told in person, just like TED talks. Spoken stories require more skills and practice as they are live and unedited.
- Audio story – These are also spoken, but unlike spoken stories, these are recorded. Creating an audio story is very much affordable in today’s world of technology. These are generally in podcast style.
- Video story – These are told in the form of videos or animations. Since these are active and visuals, these are the most effective storytelling medium, which is why they are the most expensive too. However, the video quality doesn’t matter, conveying the brand’s message is.
- Write away
Once you have got the foundation of your story, the company’s fundamental message, storytelling objectives, and CTA, you can start writing and get this over with.
- Share as much as possible
Put as much effort into sharing as you have in writing. Promote your content using social media, blogs, YouTube (if video), and email. Sharing efforts will determine how many people your content reaches.
So, this was all about brand storytelling. With these nine simple steps, you can become a great brand storyteller for marketing. Drop your views in the comment box available below!