Another way to grow your audience: Brand Storytelling

by Alaine Gordon Writer

Do you know what brand storytelling is? In a nutshell, it’s the story that your brand communicates with your customers and the public at large. This makes it bigger than just your logo and your brand tag line. In fact, it makes it bigger than you advertising. It’s what people take away from your brand at the end of the day.

It has its origins in content marketing and in some ways it still is – though it is both more specific and bigger than content marketing. For where content marketing is focused on providing content as a way to attract users to your websites, brand marketing is more a focus on what ideas they walk away with. As such, it is both the explicit content that your brand puts out as well as the implicit ideas they take away from everything including the colors you use, the stories they read in the news and what they tell each other.

First the stuff that’s the easiest to control – the content

The first part of brand storytelling is to find some good stories to tell. Really, the best way to do that is to find internal stories that you would like people outside of your company to know about your company because you feel that they project the right ideas about what you’re doing. Send out an email internally and ask people if they have any good stories to tell about what you’ve been up to.

When trying to figure out what stories to use make sure you actually keep what we know about storytelling.

· There has to be some sort of beginning, middle and end.

· There has to be progression and growth. A lesson learned, as it were. You’ll want your story to follow one of the standard arc types as people recognize them and like them.

· As you want people to walk away happy, your stories have to generally finish on a high note – this doesn’t mean you have the solution but that you’re working towards one or that your audience can help create one.

· The main character has to be likable!

· Cut the fluff. Don’t let yourself get pulled into lots of asides that aren’t relevant. These distract from your message and reduce the effectiveness of your brand storytelling.

Note, you might want to get professional help with crafting these stories as they will form the core of what you’re doing. If they’re well-crafted they’re easy to remember, captivating and the point is obvious. This means, you can pull one up when you’re doing an interview, or talking to a client. If they’re not, then they won’t be half as useful.

Now for the other stuff

Now that you’ve created a number of stories that form the heart of your brand storytelling, make sure that everything else comes into line with them. If, for example, you’ve got fussy feel-good story that makes people go ‘awwww’ then a jagged, violent looking logo probably won’t do it any justice. If, on the other hand, your story is about resistance and perseverance, then you might not want to go with a bunny.

The same, of course, goes for colors. There is a whole psychology of color out there. Now, do note that the marketing institutes make it seem far more cut and dry than it is. There isn’t as much agreement as they pretend. Nonetheless, it is important that you consider that the colors your using on your site are the ones that fit the story you’re telling.

Make sure your everybody is on message

Once you’ve got the stories and the site ready then the next stage is to start pushing the stories as best you can. For that to be possible, everybody that’s involved in marketing your brand knows what kind of stories you want to tell.

This probably means that you sit them down and consider the stories together. Don’t just read through them but also demonstrate why you told the stories the way you did. This means explaining the underlying messages that your stories are to give your audience.

With this meta knowledge it then becomes possible for your marketing team to spread these stories in other ways. For example, if your brand storytelling is all about a plucky company that is taking on the competition as an underdog and coming out on top, then the marketing team can find stories of people or companies in other sectors who are doing the same. By spreading these kinds of stories across your social media, for example, you’ll reinforce the story your brand is telling.

Test and track

From there it’s just a matter of getting the content out there and seeing what happens. The best strategies are to try a lot of different channels a little bit, with tweaks and modifications. Then, take the information that you get from that and use it to tweak the tests that you’re doing and try again.

Of course, make sure that you aim your content to those platforms where they get the most traction. In this way, your marketing dollars will go further. There are a lot of useful tools to figure out where your stories are doing better. For example, use things like UTM codes to really figure out where your content is pushing ahead.

Another idea to keep track of, as you test out new formats and presentations for your stories, do occasionally go back to the platforms that didn’t work that well in the past. For as your message gets sharper and more effective, that means it might get more traction in the long run.

Also, remember that when you’re creating these kinds of stories you might feel really good about them when they give you a lot of visitors. Do remember that this isn’t actually what you’re after. What you’re after is people that take the next steps – following your social media, subscribing to your newsletter and – best of all – buying your products.

If they’re not doing that, regardless of how many people are visiting your site, then your campaign isn’t as effective as you’d like it to be.