By Arjita Kulshreshtha
Brand storytelling is an effective tool for organizations to engage with their audience, build trust, and differentiate themselves from the competition. Through stories, companies can create a narrative that resonates with potential customers and provides them with an emotional connection. This emotional connection helps organizations to craft a unique brand identity that customers can identify and feel a part of. Moreover, companies can use stories to convey complex ideas and concepts in a manner that is easy to comprehend.
Understanding Brand Storytelling: What it is and why it matters
Before we take a deep dive into why businesses should incorporate a good brand storytelling strategy as a part of their marketing efforts, let us first try to understand what brand storytelling entails. Brand storytelling is essentially a marketing practice, where a creative narrative is used to convey what a brand stands for to its customers. More often than not, this narrative is aligned with the mission,values, and objectives of the brand. In addition to this, brand storytelling also usually covers the history of the company, its milestones, as well as the goals it has for the future. The products or services that the company offers are also tied up to this narrative, in order to create a robust brand story — ensuring that a connection is made with customers, rather than a mere transaction.
With a good brand story in place, companies can Enjoy a deeper connection with their customers, but that is not all. The benefits of brand storytelling goes far beyond just the personalization of a brand; a few additional benefits include:
It can make brands a lot more memorable. A study conducted by Headstream went on to say that customers who love a brand story are 55% more likely to buy their product. Further, a whopping 44% are more likely to share the story with others.
Brands that boast of a good story have also witnessed better audience engagement, as opposed to brands that don’t have a good story tied up to their name.
Brand storytelling is one of the most effective ways to increase brand awareness.
Companies that work on their brand storytelling have witnessed a striking increase in their sales and revenue margins.
Perhaps one of the most remarkable benefits of brand storytelling is that it helps create a community around your brand — the job of a brand does not end with just the purchase of its goods or services; true success is when a customer remembers your brand and talks about it long after the purchase has been made. Brand storytelling transforms a mere transaction into a whole other experience.
Types Of Brand Storytelling
The type of story that a brand tells should be unique and tied to a compelling call-to-action. There are several types of brand storytelling approaches, but some of the best, tried-and-true stories are the ones listed below:
A story around the mission: A mission-focused storytelling is often centered around the purpose and objective of the brand. It highlights the culture of the company, the values it stands by, and the goals it has set for the future. When using this type of storytelling, customers tend to align with the core values of the company.
Employee-centered brand storytelling: Marketers and brands that use employee-centered storytelling often share stories that feature the people who hold the fort within a brand, namely, the employees. Using this approach ensures that the brand is portrayed in a more humane and personalized light, allowing customers to connect with “real people”. Through this kind of storytelling, brands may also shed light on the company culture and the emotional aspect of their organization.
Storytelling driven by data: There is no doubt that sometimes, numbers tell the best story. With this in mind, several companies use data-driven brand storytelling, where in analytics, statistics, and data is used to tell their success stories. For example, the revenue and profits that were made as well as the proceeds that go into corporate-social responsibility can tell the audience not just how successful the company is, but also that the brand has a humane side.
The bottomline
Brand storytelling is an effective way for businesses to communicate their message and values to their customers in an engaging and memorable way. Not only does it help organizations to better articulate their message, but it also helps to create an emotional connection between the customer and the brand that can be difficult to achieve through other types of marketing. Additionally, it provides businesses with a platform to showcase their culture, values, and mission in a way that will resonate with potential customers. Furthermore, stories provide businesses with the opportunity to humanize their brand and leverage the power of storytelling, allowing them to create an emotional connection with their customers that can help them stand out against the competition.
The author is the director of Bizongo Artwork Flow