How to Build the Perfect Storytelling Strategy for Your Business
A great storytelling strategy has the power to connect your company with your audience and persuade them to choose your brand over all others. Keep on reading to find out how to build the perfect business storytelling strategy, that will help you increase your brand loyalty and achieve higher engagement!
What is Business Storytelling?
Business storytelling is a highly effective communication tool used for both internal and external communication, and has a main goal of allowing brands to connect with their customers.
Besides being a powerful marketing tool and having a great impact on advertising, business storytelling can also be implemented at conferences, business events, conventions, press releases, and even directly with stakeholders.
Ads, presentations, videos, content, articles - implementing a perfect storytelling strategy can boost all of your marketing channels.
Why is Storytelling in Business so Important?
Creating a good storytelling strategy means creating a powerful narrative to support a message. Humans form a deeper connection with things they understand not just rationally, but also (and most importantly) emotionally. Sensory marketing matters!
Getting a deeper and more meaningful connection with an audience, it’s what every company should focus on. By making your business more personable and honest, storytelling leads customers to believe that your organization is much more than just a brand trying to sell you something.
What are the Benefits of Building a Compelling Storytelling Strategy for your Business?
- Higher engagement and brand loyalty: Telling a story in a way that speaks to an audience on an emotional level, drives customers to connect and relate to a brand, which ultimately boosts engagement rates and stimulates brand loyalty.
- Keeps your brand on people’s minds: As we said before, humans are emotional learners, therefore, emotions are more likely to encourage action. A good story will resonate with your audience and keep your product/service in their mind.
- Builds trust: Nowadays, consumers want honesty and authenticity. “Humanizing” your brand gives a sense of trust between you and your audience.
- Competitive advantage: Building a storytelling strategy that communicates your mission, vision, values and beliefs well, gives you a chance to stand out from the competition, and even connect with your competitor’s audience.
Tips on How to Build a Perfect Business Storytelling Strategy
Know your Audience and Have the Basics
Who’s your main audience? What are they looking for? What are their likes and dislikes? What channels are they using?
Answering these questions will help you get a sense of how you should tell your story, and how your audience will respond and take action.
It’s also important to consider how you’ll be telling your story, i.e., choosing a brand voice and tone, focusing on the message you want to give, and figuring out why you’re telling that story. Appeal to what worries, motivates and interests your audience.
Be Transparent
Trust is built on the basis of honesty. Your customers crave real stories. Transparency and honesty is what makes you unique, and also where you can explore the narratives the audience might relate to.
Showing your day-to-day life, mistakes you might have made, challenges, wins and failures, is what makes your company more human.
An authentic and genuine story is more likely to connect you to your customers rather than an elaborated, and unrealistic one.
Be Consistent with your Brand Identity
Make sure to stay true to your identity as a business - colors, fonts, imagery, logos, and tone of voice should all be implemented when designing your story. Remember that repetition and consistency are key to creating a memory and increasing brand awareness.
Moreover, having a consistent and clear brand identity also helps when telling the story.
Choose a Channel
Stories can be told in many ways. Whatever channel you choose - written, spoken, or visual - make sure your story reaches your targeted audience.
Some examples of these forms of communication are:
Written: Blog posts, newsletters, articles, eBooks;
Spoken: Radio, conventions, presentations, audiobooks, pitches, podcasts;
Visual: Videos, posters, GIFs, images.
Digital Channel for Storytelling
The digital channel is by far the most effective one, due to its flexibility, versatility, and for its reach power.
When telling a story, you need to make sure your viewers are engaged and connecting with it. Due to all of the noise of information and content that exists nowadays, the chances of reaching your audience definitely declines. That’s why it’s so crucial that businesses keep innovating, and continue to be critical when deciding on the best communication channel to share their story.
A form of communication that has been growing exponentially is through the implementation of interactivity. Interactive content can help you tell your story in an engaging and innovative way. In fact, it generates 2x more customer conversions and engagement than passive content.
A very useful and innovative way to present your story is through digital flipbooks, for example. They contain multiple features that can captivate and engage your audiences like the options to add videos and sounds; They are also 100% digital, which makes sharing so much easier, being it with the public, possible clients at conventions, or even internally to stakeholders.
Final thoughts
Building a great story takes practice, it’s a “trial and error” situation. Remember to be honest and authentic, keep it entertaining, valuable, memorable, and always listen to your customers. It is an ongoing process, but if done right it will help you attract and build stronger connections with your most valuable clientele.