Brand Storytelling: They 3 Key Points to Effective Marketing
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By Lauren Gonzalez
- September 14, 2022
- 8 min read
We live in a world of transactions. Every brand wants to win the customer’s trust, however it seems that trying to become unique and important in their target audience’s mind is becoming very hard.
For every product, there is endless competition and brands are often trying to find a way to separate from the marketing noise.
Sometimes, from the consumers point of view, it feels as if there is just too many people trying to advice you about what to choose. It feels just as when we were very young and there were all these adults giving us advices about this or that. Yet, the best advices we can remember were the ones connected to some story that had some emotional impact to us and this is the understated power of storytelling.
Storytelling makes anything more relatable, it uses connections among people, and between people and ideas. Stories told by leaders get attention by their listeners, especially personal stories. They inspire trust, confidence and invoke action.
Every brand wants to be heard however most brand try very hard to connect with their target audience by telling them how amazing their products are and sure, product specifications is important, but something even more important is WHY YOU DO WHAT YOU DO. Becoming relatable and inspiring action is far more powerful than explaining why your competitor’s product is not as good as yours.
Stories teach us about life, about ourselves and others. It creates an atmosphere of culture which shows who you are for.
I remember my mother buying health-related products online after watching a webinar about this person who created some gut-related supplement after falling into bad health-related issues and how this product got him out of it. Since that point he decided to put this product on the market as he realized he wasn’t the only one with this problem.
Storytelling should be part of the DNA of any brand as it offers the opportunity to personalize their brand and form a deeper connection with their customers. If you want o be heard then developing a brand storytelling strategy can help your audience learn more about your brand, your purpose and products and it helps with gaining trust.
The 3 Biggest Benefits of Brand Storytelling
Storytelling is not about coming up with some fake story to engage with people. In fact it’s very easy for people to see when brands are putting out fake stories. Because storytelling IS part of the DNA of a brand and simply put, the foundation of the creation of the company, creating a story that is true and that will cement the rest of the company’s journey it should be the most carefully crafted strategy that will move forward the whole company there after.
1. Brand storytelling will help you stand out.
Being unique because how beautiful your logo is, or because you are trying to appear premium is not enough.
So what makes you unique? Perhaps is the way your product is designed or because you offer more quantities for less. But this is still not enough. Why is that you designed this product this way? Why do you add more quantities for less? What is there that inspire you to create this? And will this story connect with your audience?
Energy drinks and the coffee market are on the rise. This market used to be owned by a handful of brands. However, a new company was born.
They didn’t sell an energy drink…
They didn’t sell a new coffee brand…
They sold health, a new lifestyle through a story that many would relate to. And this was the birth of MUD/WTR© – a company that makes a coffee alternative energy drink made of mushrooms.
The whole DNA of this company lies in the funder’s story which you can watch here:
2. It makes your brand HUMAN.
People want to be with people and we love connection and interaction. Yet a lot of startup companies want to appear as a 8-figure corp-like company.
But if we know something from all we have seen in the past decade with big tech brands losing money to the little ones, is that wanting to appear huge will not give you the advantage.
Brands are created by people and anyone would want to know who these people are. Just think about how many times consumers have been betrayed by the “big ones” – they have poisoned us, lied to us, giving us not what we expected, there is a very good chance to compete against them.
In fact, in a 2019 study by Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report, found that only 34% of people trust the brands they use.
Unfortunately, as I said before, many brands mainly want to focus talking about the fancy features of their products.
Dove, one of the most famous beauty brands owned by a multinational billion-dollar company, Unilever was able to change when changed demanded it.
They dropped the fake-beauty standard that dominated the past decades while many other beauty brands were pushing and still are pushing.
Sure, Dove doesn’t have a great story about its foundation and it has been the topic of many controversies in the past. And yet, they have, through storytelling being able to come up to be, in 2022 one of the most liked brands by woman.
Their not-so-secret strategy was a campaign to humanize Dove with #ShowUs. By sharing a message that resonated with people so deeply, they have been able to create a buzz that now they don’t even need to market their actual products. It’s no secret that shampoo, deodorant and body wash probably don’t make you feel emotional, but Dove’s continuously empowering campaigns definitely spark an emotional connection through storytelling.
3. It helps you attract the right people.
A brand it’s not and should never be for “everyone.” A brand is a niche and sometimes a niche within a niche and has a very specific target audience with a very specific demographic.
Brand storytelling helps you communicate your core values and what you believe. When you are able to articulate your values, you make it easier for people to align themselves with you.
Having storytelling will help you attract the RIGHT type of potential buyers by showing them why you are like them, it makes them feel welcomed to your tribe.
GoPro is a company that makes portable cameras but in a world where nearly EVERYBODY has a camera on their phone it makes us really think about how is this company surviving and who would want to buy portable cameras.
Well, GoPro is not for everybody. Their main target audience is extreme sports enthusiast and their brand story is aligned to those into that type of activity.
Their CEO, Nicholas Woodman, writes in GoPro’s website:
GoPro is dedicated to helping people capture and share their lives in exciting ways. We’re passionate about our purpose — we believe sharing and reliving our experiences makes life more meaningful and fun. Our customers around the world bring our brand and to life. They help us see the world in new ways and motivate us to do more, including celebrating and supporting diversity within our workplace so that eventually no group goes underrepresented.
GoPro is able to survive in what it’s a very saturated market by aligning their brand to video producers and sports enthusiasts.
And that in a nutshell is the importance of brand storytelling and that’s why at Principium, we built brands from the inside out. We believe that every brand has a very important story to tell, and to just focus on their products is not just a disservice to their target audience but to the brands itself.
Looking for help in building a customer-attracting brand?
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