How to win clients by telling your brand story

Everyone loves a great story. Stories give a reason to reason, a reason to think, a reason to relate, and a reason to understand. Stories can make your readers the main characters in your content and help them relate to it better.

Business storytelling is about creating a line between your business and your prospects - which is your customers. You communicate your value and mission consistently to your audience by telling your brand story. 

People want to feel connected to a group so they relate better to stories. However, you need to tell a genuine story that resonates with your audience in order to attract them.

According to Hubspot Academy on Storytelling, there are three essential elements you need to incorporate when writing your brand story. The three elements are characters, conflict, and resolution.

Every good story has characters in it, and with content marketing, your characters are your audience.

Storytelling can’t happen without involving your audience. If potential customers can get the answers to their questions in your story and relate easily with it, they’ll be more likely to use your product or service and experience the happy ending you offer.

This is the lesson in how your buyer persona (character) transforms through the challenge. Conflict is what drives the character to move from the stage of helplessness to the stage of attaining success with a product or service. A story without a conflict is nothing but a pitch.

The conflict should drive your brand story and affect how characters react. This is what should influence your prospects’ engagement. Make sure the conflict aligns with your buyer’s journey and fits their needs.

Where there is conflict, there should naturally be a resolution to the problem because your prospects would wonder, “what happens next?” This is where your brand story should reveal how your product or service leads to a character change.

The resolution doesn’t have to be a happy ending; it can be a sad one too. Every good story should have an ending so the resolution is expected to provide context for your story and make the audience relate easily with it. The resolution should also reveal your call to action - which is the intent behind the story.

List the values that make you stand out from your competitors and tell a story about that.

Make your story flow from the beginning to the end and add some colour to it by provoking emotional reactions from your audience. 

Bear in mind that no one wants to read bland content. Appeal to your audiences’ lifestyles, problems, interests, and needs with your story.

Look at the day-to-day events that you take for granted. There might be one or two lessons that your readers can draw from them. Use real-life examples to tell your brand story in the most relatable way.

Toms is a slip-on shoe company that focuses on spreading social good. Blake Mycoskie, Toms’ CEO, saw the hardship many children faced in living without shoes and wanted to do something about it. The intentions of Mycoskie are important for the brand’s positioning. He understood that if people are going to purchase simple-looking shoes, they would want it to have a story they can relate to.

Toms is striking an emotional chord with its audience by raising awareness for something they are passionate about. With every product you purchase, Toms will donate a pair of shoes to a child in need. They’ve made this a part of their brand identity by creating a slogan that reinforces who they are and what they’re about: The One for One company.

The best part is how Toms ties it with their resolution: If you buy a pair of shoes, they’ll donate a pair of shoes to a child in need. That is a powerful story.

Toms created an emotional, feel-good story that makes their customers feel like they’re changing the world by simply purchasing a pair of shoes from them.

Over the years, Toms has sold over 60 million pairs of shoes, which means they’ve also given over 60 million pairs of shoes to children in need.

What are your thoughts on the storytelling strategy in content marketing?

Your business story doesn’t necessarily have to be shared with words. Every story has an appropriate format that will make it more digestible. Use the right format for each story and make it shareable.