What’s your brand story?
Your brand story is the very essence of your business. It’s the narrative you use to connect with your audience on an emotional level. It’s who you are and what you stand for. To continue this ongoing dialogue with your customers evocatively and effectively you need to be a good storyteller.
As a business owner, you need to be smart, driven, flexible and intuitive to be sustainable in the competitive business world. Business acumen aside, there is an art to telling your brand story in a creative and evocative way which resonates with your customer.
Brand storytelling is time consuming and requires careful attention and planning. This is not a set and forget task; it is never ending and must be sequenced, integrated and consistent across all your marketing platforms. If this sounds utterly exhausting, you may want to consider outsourcing this role to a professional marketing team who can focus solely on the task at hand.
Working out your Tone of Voice
Before your team of marketing magicians start work, they need a solid brief to develop an authentic brand story. This involves establishing the right tone in your narrative so you can develop a connection with your audience.
Is it friendly and casual or authoritative and formal? Jump on socials or industry websites to find some examples of writing and story telling that you love and absolutely despise.
Identifying your Visual Story
Your brand’s visual story needs to be consistent with your tone of voice and all aspects of your brand. Find examples of images you would and wouldn’t use across all your platforms.
It’s helpful to establish why you love and hate certain photography, images, memes etc. Think of this mood and storyboard as an extension on your brand style guide of colour palettes font types.
Rebutting unofficial authors of your brand
Unfortunately, you (or your outsourced team) are not the only ones telling your brand story and sometimes your business must revoke negative press that comes about from the freedom of the virtual soap box that is social media.
Whether it is serious press or unsavoury social and google reviews, it’s best handled with care to ensure a strategic and objective approach is taken. You may have felt the pinch of a bad review or comment about your business and wanted to respond with a scathing and loaded response.
Tempting as this is, it only adds fuel to the fire and rising to the challenge with a respectful, pragmatic, and strategically posed response will serve your brand well. If in review you are finding the overall customer perception of your brand is different to the story you want to tell, then it’s time to map out a strategic approach to change the narrative.
A professional marketing team can help you develop a road map to success with tactics to change the way your brand is perceived. A good old SWOT (strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis is a great way to start to reveal all your home truths.
Picking your platform
Picking the right platforms to tell your brand story is as important as the story itself. To do this you first must understand your customer’s habits both digitally and in real terms.
For some brands, getting across all the social platforms is essential and for others a combination of Facebook, Instagram and Linked In is suffice. As afore mentioned, it all depends on your target audience. Is your 60+ female audience on Tik Tok?
Do you research first before making assumptions, but you’d probably be safe to say no here. If you are time poor and have budget restraints, you are better off operating very well across one or two platforms, than spreading yourself thin across all the socials.
Don’t forget the importance of having a regularly updated website that continually tells your brand story. This is your virtual reception area and should look schmick and offer confidence in your brand.