5 Essential Elements of Brand Storytelling
Some brands are instantly recognisable, think Nike, McDonalds, Cadbury. All well-known brands have found success by telling a consistent brand story.
Your brand should have a compelling narrative, this can help you build your audience that are truly invested in your offering.
Stories are as old as time they allows us to participate in conversations, understand the world we live in and most importantly, build connections. Businesses can tap into triggering the sensory cortex in our brain (which lights up when we listen to stories) by telling their own story. Brand storytelling is all the stories a brand can share and align themselves with to trigger an emotional response from their audience.
Marketers believe that humanising your brand, can lead to brand awareness, revenue growth, and also encourage customer loyalty. It’s all about having that mental availability. What sensory things pop up when for you when you think of a particular brand? If you smell something particular, does it start to recall a part of your memory? If you answered yes, you can thank branding 😉
Your brand story begins the moment someone hears your brand name for the first time, or sees it on their screen for the first time. It’s the service your brand provides, how you align yourself in the market and what your brand ethos is. A brand story flows through your logo, your website, your about page, your social media interactions etc.
Consistency and authenticity is key, knowing your audience, communicating the problem your business solves, building your character, and finally, connecting with your community.
Here are 5 essential elements of telling your brand story!
Authenticity and Consistency
Remember Maria from the Sound of Music? She said “Let’s start from the very beginning, a good way to start” She wasn’t wrong! At the beginning you’re going to need to ask yourself a few important questions.
Why does my brand exist? What was the hap in the market that let you to start your brand.
What were the early days like? Whether you’re part of a big company, or you’re a start-up, each phase has magical moments. Evaluate.
What does your brand offer, how and why is it different from competitors? What is your unique value proposition you bring to your customers?
Have those answers? Congrats, you now have the building blocks to begin crafting your story. This will help you write your socials bio, about page, and is great to use as an elevator pitch.
Another strategy is authenticity. We all want to portray success from day 1, but we have to be realistic. Be honest with your audience, it helps them relate to you more. If you had any setbacks that have gotten you where you are today, share them. You never know what will come from sharing a vulnerable moment.
When thinking about your unique value proposition, it’s best to have a simple phase that helps illustrate this point. Something that will invoke a personal response from a reader or future customer. For example, if you’re selling a product about healthy affordable food, you can have a phrase like “making healthy food affordable again”. Simple, to the point, and really shows what you’re about. If you head to my Instagram you’ll see my tagline under my name ‘Big ideas, creative designs’. Do you get a sense of what I do?
Design Tip: Emphasise your mission statement / tagline by using large, bold fonts and contrasting colours. This will help your user understand your story from the beginning.
Know your audience
Your brand’s story impacts your audience at every single stage of their journey. This is why you need an effective branding story. One way you can do this is by doing some market research.
(In order to persuade people to choose your brand, you need to know what makes them tick. User research and data help inform you how to tell your story – from your copy and design to the products you offer)
You can gather and understand your research if two ways. First up, just ask your audience what they want, or who they are. Social media is GREAT for this! Or, you can obtain their data by using the browser and purchase history to track preferences. This type of information can help you build a picture of your primary audience, then you will know them better.
So what do you need to ask yourself here?
What is your core demographic? Who’s your audience!
Think about your customers’ tastes, dreams, visions, ambitions.
What solution are you providing? What issues are you trying to solve for them.
Here’s an example of finding what your audience likes, when I was studying I had to complete an assignment on this very topic. I chose to focus my research on Spotify. How many times have you listened to ‘Your daily drive’, or ‘Daily Mix 1’, or ‘On Repeat’ (I am guilty of the last one!) Spotify constantly collects data, and tracks your listening patterns and habits so they can personalise your music, to make it feel like they know you, like an old friend. What about Spotify’s ‘Wrapped’ campaign at the end of each year. All the songs you listened to collated into one playlist for your convenience. You can see how research can help you not only adapt your product, but also stay informed so that you are still meeting your brand ethos & assessing if that is what your customers are after.
Communicate the problem you solve
Part of effective brand story telling is communication. Remember that problem you help people solve with your products/service? Tell your audience what it is. It is super important to incorporate this in your brand messaging.
You don’t want people to come to your website or your social media page and think, ‘well this is pretty.. but what do you even do?’. You need to have clear messaging, tell the story but get to the point as well. What is your ideal audience’s pain point, and how can YOU solve it for them?
Build your character
Effective brand storytelling has a brand character that is relatable to your audience. Is your voice authoritative? Witty? Motivating? Humorous?
An example, ‘Frank Body’ when you look at this brand, who do you think they are communicating to? What voice are they using? Is it authoritative or casual and relatable? Their voice is friendly, and easy to understand it leaves the readers feeling like they are apart of the friend group. They have this type of language on their website, their social media and even their packaging. Frank Body is a very strong example or how a brand’s voice & personality can be incorporated into every element of branding.
Connect with your community
Building a relationship with your audience is vital, but it is important to know that it is a two-way street. While you can provide exceptional services / products to your customers, it is important o recognise that this alone does not ensure that they will love your brand and keep them coming back to you.
In order to foster a sense of connection, use your social media networks to respond to feedback, and interact with the customers who have taken the time to interact with you. Whether it’s reposting images, quoting and tagging positive customer reviews, or simply liking your comments, this starts to facilitate a relationship with your customer.
Ask yourself, are you reaching out to your audience? It could be as simple as encouraging your customers to send ‘snaps’ to their company social media accounts unboxing their goodies, or tagging them in your Instagram stories. You can also look at having a day where you connect with your audience by creating a hashtag unique to your brand and encourage people to use it for example the company ‘Everlane’ has “Transparency Tuesday” on their Instagram account, here all their followers are prompted to ask questions about the brand and their story, products and job opportunities and members of the team will then answer them. This builds authentic connections between brand and audience.
Remember, as a small business, you might not have a big marketing budget. But you don’t need a huge budget to make an impact on your audience.
