What's up brand builders! Stephen Houraghan here of BrandMasterAcademy.com and in
this video I'm going to share nine brand storytelling strategies that
you must leverage within your brand so you can show your
audience that you understand their story and align your brand with
the idea of a successful journey.
now if you are new to the channel and you are interested in building brands
that go beyond the visuals with strategy psychology and storytelling
then you're in the right place make sure you hit that subscribe button and the
notification bell and you will be well on your way
now there are countless ways that brands can use to tell their audience that they
have a solution for their problem and most brands go
about this through push marketing so they'll pay Google or they'll pay
Facebook for the privilege to get in front of that audience
and when they do they'll talk about features or benefits now the problem
with this approach is our tolerance for it we have no tolerance for this kind of
approach this kind of push marketing anymore
and there's a term called banner blindness which is essentially the term
to describe how we scroll past ads without even seeing them without them
even registering or leaving any kind of
imprint if you want to engage with your audience
today you need to do it like a modern brand and modern brands
tell stories now the reason that modern brands tell
stories is because neuroscience has told us that
storytelling is the most effective way to communicate
because it's ingrained in our DNA it's been passed on
for millions and millions of years it's the way we've transferred information
from one generation to the next for millions of years so our dna makes
us gravitate towards it and if your brand
can tell a story of a journey of success that aligns with who your customer
is well then they will gravitate towards that story
so in this video I'm going to give you nine brand storytelling strategies that
you can take into your own business so while your competitors are pushing
your audience away with their marketing you're pulling your
audience in with your storytelling strategy number
one highlight their challenges so what are the biggest
problems and the biggest mistakes that your audience comes across
on their journey to success what are their limiting beliefs what is it that
they don't feel that they're capable of doing and what is it that's standing
in their way right now in order to get to that success what's
stopping them from being successful right now so highlight what those
challenges are strategy number two show understanding now in highlighting their
challenges you've already gone a long way to showing that you understand
you've shown an intimate knowledge of what those obstacles are and just in
doing that alone you've already shown that understanding and that empathy and
you cannot underestimate the power of empathy when
your audience or just anybody in general when they feel
understood when they feel that the person standing across from them
hears them and they know what they're going through and they understand
those challenges then they immediately feel
that they trust that person or that brand
so if you're able to show understanding then
you cannot underestimate the power of that empathy and
this will go a long way to earning that trust and we tend to do business
with people or brands that we know like and trust
and once you show that empathy once you show that understanding you'll have gone
a long way to earning that like and that trust strategy number
three support their beliefs so what is it that
they believe what is it that they believe
about themselves what is it that they believe about the industry or
about the wider world and how can you show an alignment
to those beliefs so you might be able to create some content or
share some content or raise a story raise a point of view and this will
really show that you have aligned beliefs with them
and if they feel that your beliefs and their beliefs
align they will feel a connection strategy number four honor their values
so what is it that they hold dear what is it that they hold dear in the
way they hold themselves in the way they behave what are their values and
can you align your brand with those values and you can take out
characteristics here as well so you will find brands that
will put values on their website like honesty integrity respect but when it
comes to storytelling really what you're trying to do is you're trying to align
your brand with values that your audience holds dear and you can do this
through characteristics you can do this through sharing content through sharing
articles that talk to those values so do they
value resilience or determination or kindness
what do they value and how can you align yourself with
those values strategy number five turn up the emotion now remember that
your audience is on a journey themselves that is the story really that you're
trying to tell they're trying to achieve something they're trying to
succeed and they will come across many challenges they'll have a picture
in their head of what success looks like and what failure looks like and that
draws out their fears and desires so focus in on what they fear and what they
desire and turn up the volume of those emotions so you can use this
through stories of your own clients maybe you
have customers and clients that have gone through the whole journey and
they've come out the other side and you have their story of success and you can
talk about the trials and the tribulations
and the challenges that they've gone on to really draw out those emotions draw
those fears and draw those desires strategy number
six use detail generously so have you ever read
a book and you've come across a passage and it
feels like you're there feels like you're there within the moment the
story feels tangible and if you have if you've really experienced that before
that's because the author has gone into a huge amount of detail and they've
really set the stage there they've talked about the smells
and the sounds and they've given you a real tangible feeling of what the
environment is like and if you're able to do that within your stories
then you can do the same as those master authors you can really draw
in your audience so when it comes to the journey that they're on
the challenges that they go through and the
fears and the emotions and the desires that they go through if you're able to
really fill in that detail well then they will feel the same way as
you do when you're reading a really really engaging book strategy
number seven demonstrate transitions so the journey that your
customer is on has a starting point and it has an end point and somewhere in the
middle there is a corner that they need to turn they need to go
from one state to the other state and turning that corner is a big part of
that and that is the transition so what were they not
able to do before that they're able to do now or
what epiphany did they have what transition did they go through so
really take the time to understand what your customers go through and talk to
your customers talk to your existing customers who have been through
your full service or your full product or who have experienced all of that
and talk about the transition that they have gone on what corner did they
turn and if you're able to really put a sense of tangibility
on that transformation then that will really hit home it will really feel
that you're talking to what they need to overcome what that challenge is that
they need to overcome so really identify what that transition is that
your audience goes through and talk to that transition strategy
number eight celebrate successes now the only reason
that your audience would engage your brand is because they want to
achieve some kind of outcome now obviously this outcome is
different for every brand but nonetheless
no matter who your audience is or what your solution is
your audience wants to achieve some kind of outcome they want
something at the end of this transaction that they have with your brand so
really focus in on that detail what is that
outcome that they want what does it look like what does it feel like
sound like and what impact will it make in their overall lives so really focus
in on the outcome that they want to achieve
and paint in the picture of that outcome with great detail and strategy number
nine story sharing so this is all about user-generated
content and you do have a lot of modern brands today
leveraging this strategy and leveraging it to great effect you've got the likes of
Coke and GoPro so you might remember Coke
when they came out with all of the names on the cans and had that spread like
wildfire through social media because it involved their product and it
gave their customers and the wider public something to talk to
and the same happens with GoPro they get their users
to post their content and they really incentivize them to do that so how can
you do the same how can you go to your existing customers those who
have been through those success how do you incentivize
them to post user-generated content and share their own stories now if you
can pull this off this is really really effective because this
comes from a place of success it comes from a place
of authenticity if people want to share their stories then it's because they've
achieved something it's because they've experienced
that outcome and your future customers looking in are looking at that outcome
and that is the outcome that they want to achieve
and if they see somebody else somebody that is just like them achieving
that outcome then that becomes really tangible so this is a potent strategy
if you can incentivize your existing customers to share
user-generated content now smaller brands tend to trip themselves up
when it comes to storytelling now although they are
drawn towards storytelling they love the idea of storytelling they believe that
it's reserved for the bigger brands like Nike or Coke
or GoPro or Red Bull but storytelling is not about having a massive budget and
about being able to produce high-quality video or really
highly produced video it's not about that at all it's about
the stories of the individuals it's about the stories
of people achieving some kind of success and there are
countless ways that you can tell those stories and if you could break
the journey of those stories down into micro stories then you have multiple
opportunities that you can use to tell stories on different platforms
to tell stories on instagram or facebook or linkedin wherever it may be
on your blog or on your youtube channel so
really take the time to understand that the journey that your audience is on
because that is the journey that your customers are interested in they
want to hear a story of success that aligns with their own
journey so really understand the journey of your
audience the journey of your customers where they're trying to get to what
they're trying to achieve and tell that story now if
you've made it to the end of this video no doubt you have an interest
in storytelling and I'd love to hear from you I'd love to hear what your
experiences are do you map out a brand storytelling framework
for your own clients or do you do it for your own brand do
you tell stories for your own brands or do you have examples of brand
storytelling that you love that you'd like to share
I'd love to hear from you if you've got any challenges
or questions around brand storytelling or how to develop a brand storytelling
framework let me know in the box below I'll do my
best to answer all of those if you like this video
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storytelling I'll do my best to answer all of those
until next time brand like a master tell stories and I'll see you in the next video!