Storytelling is a great way to make your brand come alive for your audience. It can add strength and power to your brand, and for that reason it is often a core component of content marketing. But how exactly does storytelling strengthen your brand? Read on for our top eight reasons.
We should note at this point that these reasons are only true if you’re telling an authentic, honest brand story in a way that truly connects with your target audience and ideal customers and makes them feel something. Your brand story or stories should resonate with them and inspire them to buy into your brand before they’ve even bought your products or services – in fact, buying into your brand makes it more likely that they will buy your products or services. (That’s a spoiler for how storytelling can strengthen your brand – it can drive revenue and keep customers coming back for more.)
Related content: What Is Brand Storytelling?
Another great thing about brand storytelling is that it can be part of your brand strategy no matter the size of your company. It takes imagination, creativity, and time – but you can tell your story without it costing all your marketing budget.
How storytelling strengthens your brand
- Storytelling supports your brand positioning – Brand positioning is the place you want to own in your target audience’s mind and all the benefits you want to come to mind when they think about your brand. Positioning your brand effectively means you need to construct your brand narrative – from your, messaging, logo, and imagery to product benefits, your website, and social channels. Your brand story can play a huge part in this narrative as you can use it to engage and connect with your audience on an emotional level, which helps them remember you. It can also set you apart from your competitors, and this differentiation further embeds your brand position in their minds.
- It is a powerful way to get your message across – Storytelling can bring your brand to life and make it easier for you to convey your core brand message. You can take your audience on a journey with you while weaving your message through your story, ensuring it is easy to understand and difficult to forget. (Related content: How To Tell an Irresistible Brand Story)
- You can truly connect with your audience – Humans are hard-wired to engage with, relate to, and remember stories (even if they forget the names of characters and places). We remember how a story makes us feel, and it’s that emotional connection that can help to strengthen the relationship your target customers have with your brand. A lot of the purchases we make are based on emotional decisions, and it’s almost impossible to inspire this type of emotion when you’re strictly talking business.
- You can subtly sell your product or service – As lovely as a heartfelt story with a happy ending is, you can (and should) use your brand story to tell your customers how your product or service can help them, how it can solve their problems or challenges and make their lives that little bit better. There’s a fine balance in doing this as you shouldn’t overtly sell, but imply the great benefits of your products and answer any questions your customers may have. In this way, you can create an irresistible story while generating value for your business.
- Storytelling differentiates your brand from your competitors – Your brand story is unique to your company. No one else will be able to tell the same story and that’s what sets you apart, especially if you can tell it in a compelling way that emotionally connects with your target audience.
- It builds trust – Building brand trust is one of the most difficult and essential things a company can do, and storytelling is a powerful way of generating that trust. Telling your brand story in an honest, transparent way, showing your audience that your brand isn’t infallible and that you make mistakes (and overcome them), can build trust and loyalty amongst your customers. And when a customer trusts you, they will start recommending you. Which leads us on to…
- You can put your customer at the heart of your story – Telling your brand story is an essential element of your content marketing strategy, but you can also tell stories that put your customer at the fore, making them the central character. This is important because they will then identify themselves with your brand in a very positive way.
- A great brand story can help boost conversion rates – A culmination of all the reasons listed above, a brand story is a core part of a successful inbound marketing strategy that generates leads and increases conversion rates, and this is the ultimate way in which storytelling adds power to your brand – it positively impacts your bottom line.
An essential thing to bear in mind when you’re telling your brand story is who you are telling it to. It must be written for your target audience, and for this to be effective you need to understand and know your audience intimately – their wants and needs, problems and challenges, what motivates them and what keeps them up at night. Your brand story will only be powerful if it truly resonates and connects with your audience.
Make sure your business stands out – read our brand guide for more branding advice or contact us to chat about brand development.
