Without even thinking of their products, think of your relationship to Volkswagen, GEICO, Netflix, or Apple. What do you feel when you hear the Netflix “tadum” or see the Apple logo? How has that feeling been reinforced in your mind? Even if you don’t use the products or services, you have an emotional relationship to these companies.
Each and every interaction a brand has to talk to its audience is a chance to tell a story that resonates. It could be irreverent advertising that makes dull insurance seem quirky and fun, or it could be a video on a website that moves you to tears, but when it’s done well it feels almost invisible.
And since we live in a world with non-stop brand messages across social media, websites, and television, brand storytelling has become an important way to stand out from the crowd.
It allows you to connect with your customers and potential customers in a way that builds trust and loyalty over time. It opens the door to deeper and more frequent conversations.
Plus, who doesn’t love to be a storyteller? It gives you a whole new way to approach your marketing work!
If you find yourself intrigued, keep reading for a few tips we’ve learned along the way about brand storytelling.
Take Advantage of the Classic Storytelling Structure
Writing a brand story is like writing any story. You want to identify the main character, the plot, the conflict and the resolution.
Sometimes, the main character is the brand owner, sharing their journey or discovery to finding the perfect product or service they are now offering.
Sometimes, the main character is the customer, who is searching for a solution to a particular problem or issue.
The main character, as well as the plot, conflict, and resolution, will be particular to the brand and the real story it has to tell.
And that’s the main thing you’ll want to address as you craft your brand story: it needs to say something that people can relate to.
Entice Your Audience From the First Words
You’re ready to tell your story, so let’s start with a killer opening. This is something you’ll want to spend some extra time crafting.
The story opening can take many different shapes. For example, if you’re telling a story through an email, your opening is the captivating subject heading you conjure. (Anyone else a sucker for subject headings like, “I couldn’t believe this was happening”?).
If you’re writing your brand story for a web page, your opening starts with the very first words on your homepage, most likely your main header.
If the format is a blog post, it’s the title that usually lays out the author’s promise to educate, inspire or entertain you.
You want to get this part right, because you have so much more story to tell! If you don’t entice your reader immediately, all the work you do next is wasted.
Strike a Nerve
This is where you get to really connect with the reader. The best stories in the world, and the ones that we tell over and over again, are the stories that resonate with a key emotion. Love, fear, anticipation, relief, and disbelief are only a few that we share. You have a lot to choose from.
Being honest will serve you well here, because everyone knows it’s rare for life to go exactly as planned. If your product failed miserably your first year in business before you found the perfect formulation, it’s OK to share that. In fact, people are likely to trust you even more if you share the good with the bad. We’re all human, after all, and it’s those conflicts that make a good story.
So, frame the story around an emotion, and you’re much more likely to connect with your target audience. We all love to root for the hero!
Share Across Platforms
The best part of a brand story is that it can be told in many different ways. And since we now have so many marketing channels to create content for, this allows us to share the story in multiple formats. A webpage may tell the brand story in great detail, an email blast could tell the story in a light and conversational way, and a social media post could tell the story primarily through visuals.
Maybe you tease the beginning of the story on social media to bring someone to your website for the full blog post. Or maybe your email blast sets up the dilemma, and invites readers to your website to read how it ends.
Here is the best part: if your customers see the story in multiple formats, the association to the story grows stronger.
Let Others Tell Your Story
The cherry on top of brand storytelling is when your customers begin to feel like they know you so well that they have to tell others about you.
This often takes place in the form of testimonials, which you can weave into your brand storytelling, either by sharing as parallel versions of the brand story, or by using quotes as supporting material for your main story.
Testimonials support your claims, and show that your brand can deliver on its customer promise. There’s no better ending to a brand story than that.
Need help creating your brand story? The team at Linea absolutely loves digging into these projects, and we’re here to get you started on writing your amazing story.
