Storytelling is one of the oldest art forms which have been blended into business to keep the boredom out and fun intact.
When we hear the word BUSINESS, it mostly follows the word SERIOUS, but storytelling can make it all unorthodox.
Sharing stories has helped brands/businesses connect to the audience emotionally.
As there is a difference between selling and marketing, so is the difference between branding and brand storytelling.
People have always reacted to those brands better who have strong and crisp storytelling skills rather than the ones who talk straight business.
How to develop a brand story?
To learn that, we first need to understand what a brand story is and what it is not!
Brand Story is not just a logo or a tagline or “about page” or sales pitch. It is about the uniqueness of the business; it is about the heart and soul of the company; it is about the culture, the employees, and everything human.
1. Know Thyself
Before appealing to the audience through your story, you need to know yourself as a brand first. You need to know where you stand and why?
If Amazon had remained rigid and had only kept the English-speaking audiences in mind, it wouldn’t have flourished. But because it is a multi – lingual website which also enables voice search, it is one of the top ecommerce websites in the world.
Similarly, initially it only sold the books online but because the owners knew where they wanted to take the business, they did not just stick to selling books online, and thus, it expanded its business over a period of time.
Because Amazon knew itself, it could tell the story of how Jeff Bezos started with A and reached Z as mentioned in the brand logo.
2. Vision should be Sorted
It is crucial for the business to have a clear vision of where they want their brands to stand in the coming few years or even decades, if lucky, and the people working for it are ready to work hard.
There is a process to determine the vision of the business – learn about the strengths, determine the purpose of the organization (selling, promotion, social service, etc.), share the ideas, write them, and narrow them down to the T, and the last step is to follow through.
This is how the vision of the brand will be sorted, and it will help build the story around it.
3. Niche Audience
Sometimes a person is excited about sharing their ideas, but the people sitting in front listening to that person aren’t as receptive as expected. This is because the thought process of the committee/audience, their expectations from brands, and their requirements do not match with the person sharing ideas.
It results in a flop show, and the brands fail to reach the heights. It doesn’t mean what you are doing is wrong; it’s just that these are the signs that your business is targeting the wrong audience. And the result of targeting the wrong audience is delayed success.
However, do not limit yourself to a particular kind of audience. Once you are done finding the correct niche, experiment, and appeal to other audiences as well. Try to widen your audience range and see what happens.
4. Find the Narrative
Your brand doesn’t need to have a standalone brand story like that of how the founder started this business, but you can have various mini-stories that will become the voice of the brand.
It will become the narrative of the brand creating real-life examples for the customers, employees, or workers to tell the story. The narrative doesn’t need to be something out of the world; just the brand being true to its values is enough.
5. Keep it all Simple
Many make the mistake of thinking that the brand story needs to be larger than life to appeal to the customers. But what they seem to forget is that keeping it simple will attract quality people.
It is good to appeal to an audience in numbers, but the ones that will be willing to associate with the brand for a more extended amount of time will be the ones who would prefer quality and promises to be delivered.
They will not be attracted to great storytelling but to how brands deliver it and how true they are to their vision and mission.
6. Relatable, Shareable, and Meaningful
Brand story should be relatable to people. As mentioned above, it doesn’t need to be fancy or adventurous but empathizing. And all the ones who are associated with the brands should be able to share it.
People should be able to swallow and digest the story rather than puking out.
Also, the story needs to be meaningful. People will not buy it just because it is emotional. It needs to be backed up by facts and substances, and evidence. Thus the story has to be meaningful as well.
7. Evangelize in Reverse
To evangelize is to preach the gospel to someone and convert them to Christianity. The brand story doesn’t need to evangelize people. Instead, it needs to be evangelized by people. How?
Well, the story should relate itself to the customers as well, rather than people associating with the story. Every part of the story needs to converse with people and back it up with substance.
Thus, the brand story is something that needs to be evangelized with people lest only evangelizing them.
8. Be strategic about the story
Telling a story doesn’t mean revealing everything at once. You have to be strategic about how to share your story. There are inside tricks and secret sauces that one cannot afford to share. But sharing the parts that you are proud of is a must ingredient of the storytelling.
Sometimes, the story cannot be told in total, which is when you break it into bits and freckles and tell it at different points in time. This way, people will also be waiting for you to finish your story.
As it happens in movies these days, the writer-director duo shows them in 3-4 parts. You can strategize the storytelling in such a manner and increase the curiosity of the audience.
9. Test and Iterate
The last step is to test and iterate what works and what doesn’t. At times the story of the brand might not speak to the audience, and that is fine. One can always go for trial and error and see what works and what doesn’t.
Thus, the expert brand storytellers will always suggest testing and iterating. Only when you see what doesn’t work out for you will you know what will strike the chord with the audience.
Conclusion:
Storytelling has become a must when it comes to brands because people have become more intelligent. They will not believe anything and everything that is sold to them. Thus, they need to be captured and bound emotionally to the brand.
Hence, select amongst the best branding companies in the world to build the brand via storytelling. They will help you tell the story correctly to the right audience and appeal to the potential ones, making your brand one of the world’s top.