Does your Brand have a Story?

In this digital age, we all have a voice, with so many platforms to communicate through it is crucial that your brand has a story that grips customers and helps sell the ethos of your company. This blog looks at five key areas that should be followed to create a story that reflects your brand and excites your readers.

Know your customers
Understanding and even anticipating your customers’ needs will help you write a story that speaks to your target market with a message that will be of interest. Stories that highlight problems and provides solutions if this is targeted correctly at you who would not be interested in reading your story?

The anticipation of your customers’ needs is very interesting. A great example is Sony and the legendary Walkman brand (an early iPod for the younger readers). “Why would I want to walk around with music playing in my head?” was a typical response to the idea. Anticipating this need and creating a story that sold the concept to different markets resulted in over 400 million sales.

Finding your own space
What makes your brand special? Incorporating what makes you unique to the rest of the market again should be part of your brand story. Informing readers of why you make your product in a certain way, why you buy ingredients from a sustainable source or different approach to service delivery.

Anyone can tell an audience that they are the best, cheapest, best value etc. Interlacing these messages within your brand story provides a context and explains the reasons why!

Delight your customers
Following on from understanding your customers. If you fully understand who your customers are and the problems they incur, then you can create a solution that will delight them rather than just satisfying their needs.

Essential questions for your brand story
Who are our customers?
What are their problems, needs or desires?
How is this problem, need or desire currently resolved?
How can we improve this experience to delight them?

Modify the story for different audiences
The core elements of the story will remain constant throughout, although you may modify the message or tone for different audiences. As an example, business to business, you would tell a different story depending on what department you were talking to. IT would be interested in integration with current systems; marketing would like to hear about increased targeting while the MD would like to know the impact on the bottom line.

Are we still relevant
Your customers change, the world in which we live in changes, so should your brand story. Revisit the essential questions about your brand story and ensure you still understand and can answer each as effectively as possible.

Your brand story should engage with people, understanding their needs and desires. It should excite and educate them, understand what is possible and why it is essential. Finally, your story should evolve as the market changes and peoples needs, wants and desires moving forward.

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