Why is brand storytelling important?

When thinking about the question "why is brand storytelling important?" we must understand that it's human nature to tell stories. Whether it is for entertainment, education, or selling something, we tell stories, and brands are no different.  

Brands should be able to tell a story not by evoking what they want to achieve with it but rather by generating an emotional connection to the audience and impacting their online and offline communities.  

The evolution of brand interactions

Gone are those days where the interaction between brands and customers was static and non-reciprocal. The evolution of the digital world and social media generated the need for brands of any category to showcase the human side of what they do. This allows brands to convey feelings of belonging and advocacy through storytelling and engage with their audience better, converting them into consumers.

When do you use brand storytelling?

Here are some examples of when brand storytelling can help.  

• Team motivation
• Customer engagement
• Showcasing the brand's point of view
• Reputation and crisis management

Advantages of Brand Storytelling

There are many benefits brands can obtain from implementing a storytelling strategy to its marketing/digital campaign. We will focus on two major benefits:  

      1. Increasing the customer conversion rate.

Storytelling can increase customer conversion rate by showing the real and human side of the company, which will allow the brand to develop better relationships with the consumers as they will feel more connected to both the mission and the message and interact with the product or service, daily. Once converted these same consumers can start their voice-to-voice and recommend the brand to family and friends.  ‍

      2. Generate a better understanding of your brand’s concept.

Other benefits include generating a concept of the company — How many times have you heard how nostalgic and well-made Coca-Cola's videos for the Christmas holidays are? Their storytelling pretends to sell the idea that Coca-Cola brings happiness when shared with special people.

Things to consider about brand storytelling

Before a brand even starts considering sharing their story, they should be able to answer the following questions:

• Why is brand storytelling important?
• What do I want to achieve with my story?
• Do I want to give an insight into who we are and what we do?  
• Do I want my brand to be vulnerable and generate emotions of empathy and compassion?

Once these questions are answered, a brand can start planning the content, developing key messages, the output, or the outcome of the story and then choosing the right audience. The essential element of a story is to make it durable and memorable for your audience; otherwise, it will be lost within the millions of stories told daily.  

Great brand storytelling examples

Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic started, companies and organizations from several industries started to showcase positive stories on how they are overcoming the obstacles of the pandemic and how they are helping their employees and their families.

Here is an example of how Washington, DC's non-profit organization, Horton’s Kids, used storytelling to show how they helped the families and kids they serve during the pandemic. They even allowed their alumni to tell the audience and stakeholders their experience with the organization.  

‍

‍

Elements and platforms a brand can use for brand storytelling

• Instagram Reels

The very popular reels feature has taken over the platform. The visual element of videos generates more remembrance of the brand and the message they want to convey.

• Tik Tok

This trendy app that uses a series of short videos can help you show your story and turn it into viral videos among the platform users.

• Twitter Threads

By dividing the story into small continuous paragraphs, it can catch the audience’s curiosity, making them want to share the content.

• Spotify and other podcast platforms

These platforms also generate curiosity and infuse the audience’s creativity as they wait for the next episode.

• Corporate videos

These videos can be used on the brand’s website and on any other platform like social media to generate interaction with the audience.

In a nutshell, companies or brands must know their audience to convey the right message, identify why they want to tell the story, select the core idea or message, and decide what kind of story they want to tell. The world of storytelling is vast, and not creating an emotional connection with the audience is a lost opportunity, especially now while the world is still recovering from a pandemic that changed our lives forever. What story do you want to tell?

‍