With the market being oversaturated, consumers getting hit every day with unlimited amount of marketing messages (I’m serious, it’s tiring!) in order to stand out, it has become absolutely important for survival. I’ve seen it time and time again as businesses chase digital growth, but I’ve also seen the companies that get it right: they figure out how to connect to their audience and then, surprise, they tend to come out on top. They say, it’s amazing how something as mundane as telling a story, as old as human civilization, is now the secret sauce of modern business success.
Why Brand Storytelling Matters More Than Ever
Here’s the truth – everyone’s outgrown being sold to. We are all so sick and tired of these in your face sales pitches and cringey promotional messages filling up our social media feeds. Ultimately the thing that people are actually craving is what I would say is authenticity and connection, and that’s what brand storytelling is. Done right, it is having a heart to heart discussion with your target audience but without the awkward pauses and making (pretending to make) eye contact. According to studies, we are 22 times more likely to remember stories with messages than with facts alone, and frankly, that number doesn’t shock me.
The Psychology Behind Storytelling
We are just wired for stories, literally—it’s how we work. Oxytocin, the “trust hormone,” is released in our bodies when we hear a good story. It is this chemical reaction that engenders an emotional bond between the storyteller and the listener or, in the brands’ case, a brand and its audience. Really, we’re building brand loyalty using biochemistry. And the best part? This isn’t some marketing ploy, I might have nodded off a couple of times during the more technical parts of those studies, but this is neuroscience backed stuff.
Essential Elements of Brand Storytelling
Character Development
In every compelling story you have to have characters that your audience can root for. This could be your customers, your founder, your product in brand storytelling. That is to say, you make the characters relatable and three dimensional. The last thing anybody wants to hear about are perfect people doing perfect things, which to be honest, is pretty darn boring and totally unrealistic. Bring out your facepalm moments, the struggles and the failures. What makes a story real and engaging, is that.
Conflict and Resolution
That’s where we get into the juicy stuff, the real story has a few dramatic twists in it! In brand storytelling this typically means showing your customers where they hurt and how your product or service swoops in to make the pain go away. Please, though, for the love all things holy don’t make it sound like one of those cheesy infomercials where everyone is having such a hard time trying to figure out the use of some super-basic household devise. It must be authentic and it must be based in actual situations your audience is living.
Implementing Storytelling in Your Brand Strategy
It’s not enough to sit down and write pretty words and call them a storytelling strategy anymore (though, let’s be real, I have yet to come across a strategy that isn’t chockfull of pretty words). A storytelling strategy means making sure that every single one of your brand touchpoints is a part of your narrative. This also means your story should be the same across your website, your social media, your email marketing, and even your customer care. Imagine it as building a universe where the universe of your brand story exists. And trust me, I’ve seen plenty of brands mess this up by trying to be everything to everyone – spoiler alert: it never works!
Content Creation and Distribution
Getting your story out there actually has to be done very smartly. Approach needs to change for different platforms — what’s the win on LinkedIn is a disaster on TikTok (sink or swan the hard way). The key is to restructure your core story into each platform, without losing its true essence. Please and don’t try to copy / paste the same content everywhere – That is like taking a tux to the beach… technically you are dressed, but you are doing it wrong.
Measuring the Impact of Your Brand Story
Things can get a little trickier here: Measuring the impact of storytelling isn’t as black and white as measuring how many sales your product is making or how much traffic is coming to your website. Yes, those metrics are important, but they don’t tell the full story (pun definitely intended). That means you should look at brand sentiment, social media engagement and customer loyalty over time. Sometimes the hardest to quantify impacts are the most valuable impacts; it’s more of a marathon than a sprint. Brands have been disappointed because they’re not seeing quick results, and that’s not how this works.
Key Performance Indicators
Measurement of storytelling impact can feel fuzzy, but there are some how you can measure it and make it repeatable for yourself and your team. Look at things like:
Is the time your visitors could be spending on story based content.
There are social sharing and engagement rates.
- Feedback from customers as well as testimonies from them.
- Brand mention sentiment
- Customer lifetime value
So remember, these numbers are just part of the picture; the most powerful impact a brand can make sometimes happens on the invisible plane where someone feels authentically connected to your brand.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid
Firstly, let me share a few hard lessons I have picked up on, so you know what not to do in your brand storytelling. First up: he was trying to make everything perfect. Your story should have raw edges. That’s what makes it real. I’ve watched dozens of brands slip into the perilous world of over polishing their narrative to the point of losing all personality and becoming just another snooze-fest of a corporate spiel. Focusing so much on yourself is another huge no no. Yes, it is your brand story, but it should really be your audience’s story and how your brand fits into that story.
Authenticity vs. Marketing Speak
Nothing’s worse than corporate jargon and marketing buzzwords when it comes to killing a good story. You know the type: “We are leveraging synergistic opportunities to make optimum use of customer satisfaction through innovated solutions.” No, ugh! Just talk like you are having a conversation with another human being. You wouldn’t say it to a friend over coffee — don’t put it in your brand story.
The Future of Brand Storytelling
Looking forward, storytelling will be even more important in branding. To address that, we came up with a five step process… Until of course it came time for the rise of new tech like AR, VR, whatever else Silicon Valley comes up with next… And out of this new tech, we’ll continue to see brands telling stories in increasingly immersive, interactive ways. The medium ends up changing, but ultimately the fundamentals of good storytelling stay the same here too. It’s the same idea, but you’re using cooler toys to play with.
After all, brand storytelling isn’t about selling products; it’s about sharing values, establishing connections and creating lasting relationships. Sometimes you’re going to screw up, sometimes your story is going to croak, and when life serves you that kind of shit, remember that’s okay. If you’re trying to make the habit stick, pick yourself back up, learn from it, and keep on telling your story. And in the end, we will always see ourselves as human because of it — because we all connect through stories, even if the story is not perfect.
LekFex 