How to build a brand story through storytelling?

Storytelling is a powerful form of human communication. We have used storytelling in sharing our history, expressing our feelings, and telling people our purpose. More and more businesses are starting to build their brand story through storytelling. Since there are many benefits to it, it’s very beneficial to try out storytelling ideas for your own eCommerce business. To help ensure that you will be heard you need to be genuine and tell the brand story that appeals to your audience. It’s about resonating with people who have a specific problem which your product or service might be able to solve. You can connect authentically with your customers by breaking down these four essential elements of brand storytelling. 

 

Find the why in your business

There are tons of content being created and even more of it is being shared each day. Ecommerce is a completely packed and highly competitive market. In this fast-paced environment, companies cannot afford to be faceless. It is hard to sell something when there is no uniqueness in it. Every brand is unique. As Simon Sinek puts it, "People don't buy what you do. They buy why you do it." Why should be the essence of your brand. It’s not the product you sell, it’s the bursting energy behind your business that differentiates you from your competitors. It’s why you exist. Ideally, you should be able to describe what you stand for in just two or three words. For example, Nike stands for athletic excellence, Disney - family happiness. What does your brand stand for? 

Brand storytelling is no longer a trendy thing to have. As Mark Truby, Vice President of Ford Motor’s Communications once said: “A good story makes you feel something and it is universal. They want to grasp your values and your commitment to excellence; be inspired and intrigued. Storytelling is the most powerful way to convey these ideas.”  Find out that one single thing that makes your brand stand out from the crowd and make it the essence of your story. 

What is the message you want to communicate to your audience? You should focus more on emotions because it drives the urge to purchase whereas logic tries to rationalize the buyer’s decision. Think of the emotion you want to evoke in your audience every time they interact with your brand. Your audience may forget what you say, but they will remember how you made them feel. 

 

Define your customers

After you know more about what story you want to tell, learn more about the people who will see your content. Understanding your target audience is the second step to creating relevant and engaging content. Ask yourself who will see your content? These questions might be helpful to better understand your target customers: 

• What do your customers look like?
• What would be the key topics that might be interesting for your customers? 
• What type of problems does your audience encounter? 
• How your products or services could help them to solve these issues? 

After answering these questions you will have a better insight who is your target audience and that could lead to creating better content. If your audience understands, trusts, and likes your content, they will more likely buy from you. 

 

Use data to support your content

Data plays a huge role in supporting your storytelling. The best brands know exactly what their customers want. They know when they want it. They know how they want it. Placing data at the heart of the business strategy is more important than ever. Information should be the heart and the soul of the brand. If you are not amongst the biggest brands yet it might be difficult to gather a lot of relevant data. Nevertheless, you can still gather data to support all your brand-related decisions. Here are some tips that might be useful when searching for ideas where to collect more data:

• Use heatmaps and website analytics to better understand how readers engage with your blog posts.
• Built-in social media reports can give you valuable information about your followers and their preferences.
• Doing online surveys might be very useful to gather more data about how satisfied your customers are and how your e-shop could be improved. 
• Check out some data gathering & analysis services. Some companies offer data-based reports or custom business case studies for free or charge extra. Depending on your financial situation, it might be a great information source to feed your content.

 

Fuel your story by choosing the right advertising tools

If your story is a fireplace, your advertising tools to promote it need to be the gasoline. Promotional marketing campaigns should be the driving force to make sure that your content will be seen. Usually, marketers spend more time creating content than actually promoting it. Without the right tools, your content might not be seen outside your friends’ circle. Moreover, advertising can create more awareness not only for your content but also for everything you are doing. Digital advertising is a great way to help get that content found and consumed once you’ve put a lot of effort to produce it.  

If you are one of those marketers who invest more time producing instead of promoting content, you are on the wrong track. The rule of thumb is to spend 45 % producing and 55% promoting the content.  By choosing the right advertising tools, you will be able to get the most from your content which is a bigger engagement, growing sales, and happy customers. There are many different marketing platforms such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter that could be used to achieve different advertisement goals. 

 

No one can tell the same story twice

Use these advices the next time you create stories to build your brand. Make the narrative unique and personal, support it by data and choose the right marketing channels to advertise it. All this will help you to tell your brand story in a way that creates a strong emotional impact, attracts more customers and grows your business.