What Is a Brand Story and How To Create One

People are drawn to brands with genuine brand stories now more than ever. Because of this, it’s crucial that you learn how to present the history of your brand in the most appealing manner. It must be strong, transparent, and genuine above all else. You could think of the exact definition as follows.

What’s your brand story? | Jeff Freedman | TEDxBeaconStreet

Why is a brand story important?

Because it establishes your business as an entity with objectives and a purpose beyond selling goods, a brand story is a special marketing tool that can engage more consumers than simple advertising. Here are some strategies for involving customers in your brand story:

Communicates information about your company

You can share company information with potential customers through your brand story before they make a purchase from you. You can use your brand story to tell your customer about your company’s values, mission, something you’re proud of, or the reason behind the product if those things are important to you. For instance, if you started your business to support environmental causes, you can mention in your brand story that you donate sales revenue to environmental charities.

Connects to your customer

A brand story is a way to relate to your audience by giving your business characteristics that they can relate to. Customers may feel a connection to your product and be more likely to interact with it if they can relate it to ideals they share. Your brand story can humanize your business so that customers view it as more than just a supplier of goods and instead associate it with values or goals they share.

When you put your founder or CEO at the center of your brand story, you can also give your company a name and a face. In place of a product, this allows your customers to relate to a real person.

Separates you from other companies

Market saturation means that businesses can rely on marketing to distinguish themselves from the competition. Your company’s brand story highlights a quality that can help you stand out in your target market. Your business might stand out to customers as one they want to invest in if it can provide them with a product and a sense of purpose when they buy it.

Even better, a compelling tale might pique the interest of collaborators to help them create their own unique brand identity. Customers who have a strong sense of brand loyalty and trust are more likely to choose your company’s products over competing ones.

What is a brand story?

A brand story is a marketing strategy used by businesses to explain their mission to customers by outlining their history. In addition to the “About Us” page on a company’s website, a brand story can also be told through a video or an infographic. The brand story conveys details about the brand that the business uses to draw clients to its mission, its commercial objectives, and ultimately, its products.

An organization may create a brand narrative to alter or control how the public perceives the organization and the associations it makes with the brand. Because the brand story depends on how the public perceives it, a business may take into account how its interactions with the public impact its brand story.

Due to the fact that it outlines your brand’s overall purpose, your brand story can also serve as guidelines for your company’s procedures and policies. Making sure that your company’s actions are consistent with its reputation and public image is another way to ensure that your customers are telling other potential customers about your brand in an authentic way.

How to create your own brand story

Your brand’s narrative must be authentic to your business and the need it addresses. The following actions can help you develop your own brand story:

1. Define your brand

Establish your core principles before focusing on your product or the people who work for your business. These values serve as the company’s guiding principles and served as your entrepreneurial spark. Determine what the market lacked that you saw when you created your brand.

In addition, consider what principles guide and sustain your company. For instance, a paper company might sell paper while also planting trees to lessen the impact on the environment. In this instance, the brand can recognize a need in the paper industry to reduce the environmental impact of paper production. Additionally, it can help the business adopt environmentalism as a guiding principle for its policies and operations.

2. Know your target demographic

Your brand’s narrative must establish a relationship with your target market. Find ways to make your brand appealing to your target market once you are familiar with it. Identify the demographics that share the same values as your brand. Highlight elements of your story that you think might appeal to your target demographic once you’ve determined who they are.

For instance, a paper company that practices environmental responsibility may appeal to consumers who must use paper, but especially to those who care about the environment. These potential customers may have struggled to go paperless or to locate high-quality paper products. These are the demographic segments that this paper company can target when telling its brand story.

2. Brainstorm

The elements of your brand that you want to showcase and that you believe people can relate to should be highlighted in your brand story. To organize your brand story around highlighting elements of your company that make your brand relatable and sympathetic, take into account the answers to the following questions:

3. Craft your narrative

Create a narrative to better sell your message to your audience once you’ve decided what you want to say. Because customers are accustomed to them, traditional narrative structures also function for brand stories. To involve your audience in your brand story, you can create a narrative with a beginning, middle, and an end using a storytelling structure. Heres a look at each step:

For instance, a CEO of a paper company that values the environment may have previously worked for a wasteful paper company. Some workers may have experienced conflict at their previous job if they felt the need to replant trees to mitigate the environmental effects of making paper. Because of this, they might choose to quit their current paper company and launch a new one that plants trees to offset its production of paper, ultimately resolving their conflict.

4. Incorporate consistent branding

Include consistent branding when you format your brand story, whether it be on your website, in a brochure, in a video, or on the back of a menu, to remind your customers of your story whenever they see it. This can assist you in increasing brand recognition among your target market. Consider using the same tone and themes from your brand story when writing content. Consider using the same fonts and graphics from your brand story when creating any graphics.

For instance, an environmental paper company might include a picture of a tree in all of its graphics and use the colors green and brown throughout all of its content to make it clear to potential customers that it deals with trees and the environment.

5. Back it up

Once youve established your brand story, work to maintain it. You can accomplish this by continuing to inform your clients about your progress toward your goal. You can also achieve this by allowing the guiding principles that you used to create the brand to continue to influence its development.

You can use the following types of content to remind viewers of your brand story and encourage them to support your business:

For instance, a paper company may want to explain its involvement with replanting in white papers as part of its brand message. The business can use white papers to share the numbers behind its accomplishments, demonstrate to customers and investors that it is responsible for replanting, and detail the steps it has taken to step up its replanting efforts.

Tips for creating an effective brand story

Here are some pointers for an effective brand story:

Make it meaningful

Your customers may be persuaded to think of the mission rather than the business by an effective brand story that is personal, straightforward, and authentic. As a result, the customer’s decision to purchase your product is elevated from a business one to one based on their own principles and objectives. To achieve this, be sincere in your commitment to the goal you establish in your company’s brand story.

Be consistent

Keep your entire team informed with a content strategy plan so they can remain consistent with its content and actions, in addition to making your brand story consistent across all media and marketing components. Every decision your company makes has an impact on how the public perceives your brand, so think about how each department, from strategic planning to customer service, can uphold the objectives and mission stated in your brand story.

Change it if necessary

Although your brand statement is probably connected to how you see your business, that doesn’t mean you can’t change some of its components. Work on the tone, design, and format of your brand story until it targets the right market if you don’t think it’s effectively communicating your brand image to your target audience.

FAQ

How do you define a brand story?

1. Define Your Mission and Brand Personality. To ensure engaging and effective storytelling, you must clearly define your business mission.
2. Make It Appealing. …
3. Study Storytelling. …
4. Make Up Your Main Characters. …
5. Add Visuals. …
6. Stay Consistent. …
7. Make a Difference. …
8. Activate Your Story.

What is a brand story example?

Here are some instances of some of the best brand storytellers in the world, ranging from Warby Parker to Nike. When Warby Parker made designer eyewear accessible, eco-friendly, and simple to try on at home, they revolutionized the eyeglass market. Their brand comes from a great story, too.

How do you structure a brand story?

1. Show, don’t tell. It’s always better to show rather than to tell.
2. Create a long-term story arc. …
3. Consistency is key. …
4. Let your brand story show what’s on the inside. …
5. Get your audience’s attention – and keep it. …
6. Tell your brand story in an effective way.