These days, brands commonly communicate with audiences across many different platforms. From websites and social media to blogs and email newsletters, brands are creating more dialogues with consumers than ever. Therefore, this presents a prime opportunity to enhance a company’s image and reputation through savvy brand storytelling.
What is Brand Storytelling?
Essentially, brand storytelling refers to the way in which companies connect with audiences through ideas, experiences and values. It is achieved through content, as well as every facet of a company’s operations and interactions.
In order to understand the scale of brand storytelling, consider how humans interact and bond with each other. We speak, ask questions and listen in order to gain an understanding of each other. Usually, using these interactions, people can form their own opinions on someone fairly quickly.
It’s pretty much the same thing in marketing. By connecting and relating to audiences, businesses may strengthen their relationships with potential customers.
The 3 Basic Tenets of Brand Storytelling
1. Be Genuine
The first rule of brand storytelling is to be yourself in order to better connect with consumers. From your values to the way you interact, never imitate something that is not true to your brand.
When you’re inauthentic, you run the risk of coming across as phony or fake. As soon as this happens, people will start thinking of your brand as such, which is the absolute last thing anyone wants.
2. Use Emotion
Without being too sappy, it never hurts to add emotion to your marketing or advertising strategies. Think of the way that powerful content uses words, images or video to evoke emotion.
Just a few years ago, Coca-Cola created an entire campaign around the tagline “Choose Happiness.” It wasn’t based upon their product—it encouraged consumers to share their memories and experiences that sparked joy.
The point is that there’s no better way to relate to an audience’s emotions than by showing them in your own brand. Whether its happiness, sadness, anger or frustration, emotions develop deep connections that can last a lifetime.
3. Provide Examples
In order to give audiences a sense of the benefits of using your products or services, it helps to show the impact that they’ve had on real customers’ lives.
For instance, even global brands like Airbnb are following this model. An entire portion of their website is dedicated to “Community Stories,” which is comprised of real, positive experiences that people have had with Airbnb.
By providing examples of real experiences, you give audiences a chance to see how your business is changing the lives of their peers. When audiences see themselves in content, they might be more inclined to do business with that brand.
Forging a company’s image and reputation is no walk in the park. However, through smart brand storytelling, it can be.
