Your advertising must stand out in this age of information overload
Traditional advertisements or cold calls no longer convince customers. They’re looking for solutions to their issues, and it’s your role as a marketer or salesperson to help them along the way. It makes sense to design your marketing efforts in the form of a story when you see the consumer’s journey as a sort of story. A story-driven approach to advertising and sales is the next frontier of marketing, and understanding it will help you build a deep connection with your audience.
What Is Brand Storytelling and How Does It Work?
The art of developing a brand identity using storytelling tactics and the sharing of both the company’s and consumers’ stories is known as brand storytelling. While corporations have always used story-based advertising, their focus has changed to human emotions, inspirational stories, and things relevant to current events.
These patterns indicate a long-standing human fascination with stories. It’s in our biology: when we’re immersed in a story, our cerebral activity increases fivefold. Multiple parts of the brain benefit from this cognitive boost, including the sensory cortex, which lights up when individuals read or hear words like “chocolate cake” or “ice cream.” This indicates that the meaning and connotation of words affect the brain in quantifiable ways.
Certainly, the storytelling method has a significant advantage in copywriting and video marketing, where conversational copy, video-based testimonials, and user-generated content are all important components of today’s most effective marketing strategies. Listening to and imagining stories stimulates and inspires us. So, when brands provide that chance, customers are more likely to remember the brand and accept its message.
Why Do You Need to Know It?
While brand storytelling may appear to be difficult or even foreign to your current branding approach, it really simplifies both sales and marketing. That’s because it’s a trademark of inbound marketing, which is termed after the fact that it generates leads and creates a devoted customer base. This saves you the time and money it takes to find new consumers.
Consumers are tired of the typical, interruptive marketing technique, in which you bombard them with advertising and emails in the hopes that they would be distracted enough from their everyday life to look at your product. An inbound strategy, on the other hand, does not disrupt them but rather draws them in with interesting material, generally provided in a narrative format. This strategy creates a link between their life and your brand, allowing them to perceive your product as something that can fit into or improve their daily lives.
Brand storytelling is a great tool for achieving this connection, and it works because today’s customers want to feel in control of their experience. They get information and shop for things through accessing social media (which is full of stories), viewing videos (which is also full of stories), and talking with their personal connections (which is of course full of stories). People may ignore traditional advertisements that appear in their feed but they will pay attention to exceptional content with stories.
While sharing your company’s story is a vital element of brand storytelling, keep in mind that you’re also creating a community around your brand. Sharing your customers’ stories helps to democratize your brand and increase client loyalty. A wonderful example of this is a Land Rover mini-documentary that portrayed the story of Nepali porters who use Land Rovers to transport goods over the dangerous Himalayas. The protagonists in this epic story were not only actual individuals, but they were also not employees of Land Rover. The story is so genuine and it illustrated how the product (the Land Rover) completely improve someone’s life. That is exactly what brand storytelling is all about. Check it on YouTube: The Land of Land Rovers.
Your brand’s objective should pervade all aspects of your marketing and sales strategy. Why are you in this line of work? What passion drives you in your job, and how did you establish your brand? Consumers nowadays, particularly those of the younger generations, want to believe that a brand is trustworthy and genuine. To acquire their confidence and hence their allegiance, you must share your experience and be open and honest. Using brand storytelling improves your ability to connect with your target audience, whether you openly tell a story or utilize storytelling methods and a narrative framework in your products.
Nearby we are coming to an end but before that, ask yourself these two questions.
Are your copywriters merely outlining the attributes of your product in their ad copy, or are they informing your audience why you made it?
Customers aren’t interested in technical details, instead, they want to know how something will benefit them in their daily lives. They want to see how the next step in their journey will help them solve an issue.
Are your sales execs merely reciting reasons why a customer should purchase your product, or are they expressing your company’s goal and how it affects the consumer?
Customers want to feel like they’re a part of something bigger than themselves. Telling stories to a prospect or assisting them in visualizing their own story are both great strategies to reach out to them. This strategy reduces the reluctance many individuals have to be “sold to.” By its sheer nature, brand storytelling hooks people into something significant.
Final Thoughts
Telling your company’s story is only one aspect of brand storytelling. It involves utilizing the story’s main themes, characters, and morals to improve your marketing and sales efforts. Your story and that of your customers can and should infuse all elements of your business, from sales strategy to content marketing to ad campaigns, to better connect with your audience.
By creating excellent brand content, you contribute to the inbound marketing strategy that attracts clients to your business. This method not only saves you time and money, but it also works better. You can also demonstrate your thanks for your consumers by sharing their stories, which will help you establish a community of individuals who are invested in your company.
Check out my posts here to learn more about brand storytelling.
