When you have a background in journalism, you understand the importance of knowing a good story

The idea of using stories to build a brand and connect with your customers or audience is something that naturally interests me.

Consumers are tired and sceptical of heavy-handed marketing messages and sales pitches, and a more subtle approach is needed.

What is Brand Storytelling?

More brands now rely on storytelling techniques to form a connection with their customers. Stories about who you are and what your business does helps to build that trust.

It’s easy to talk about the product or service that you offer and how you offer it – but it doesn’t always mean that you’ll connect with your readers and customers.

Why should we care about a particular brand?

If we think about the brands we love, why do we love them? Why do we care about them? There’s usually some connection that’s developed through understanding that brand’s history, their mission, purpose and values. All those things give us an idea of who the brand is and our reasons for forming a connection.

When customers know and share the same values as a particular, it helps build more loyalty.

When I worked for the UK pet insurer ManyPets, I always had a very clear idea of what the brand stood for and why the company was first created. ManyPets wanted to ‘make pet insurance better for customers’.

The CEO would often speak about how their pet insurance was more than a financial service, that they wanted their policies to improve the lives of pets and owners. The company wasn’t just another insurance company, but as a brand, they always wanted to show pet owners that they loved pets just as much they do.

From the point of view of working in the Marketing department, understanding the brand and it purpose helped make my job easier as you understood, not just the product that you were selling (pet insurance) but why we were selling this product, why we were different to other insurers and how it would help our customers.

What was interesting is that I’ve never owned any pets, but I still loved the values and mission of the company, and it made my role as a Content Marketing Executive easier, as I knew exactly what my role was in contributing to the success of the business and building the brand.

I knew our brand purpose!

What type of stories should you be telling?

I think there are two stories you can tell. Firstly, tell your customers about who you are. Your ‘origin story’ Why you’re different, the challenges, setbacks and triumph that have helped you become who you are today.

The second story should be about your customers, they should be at the heart of this story, the heroes. Going back to my time in the world of pet insurance; insurance isn’t always the most interesting or exciting of topics, but as a brand, ManyPets wanted to help pet owners ‘love their pets better’.

Pet owners can do this by knowing that whether their pets were ill and suffered an accident, they would be able to love and care for them no matter what through having insurance with ManyPets

I’m obviously biased, but I think that’s a really nice story to be able to tell!

I think if you’re a pet owner, that’s a story that you can definitely relate to and identify with.

3 things to remember with brand storytelling

So when you’re thinking about how to define and build your brand, you need to think about more than just your product and service that’s on offer. You need to talk about yourself and your offerings in a way that makes you stand out from your competitors. People need to know what makes you different.

You need to identify what your customers and audience need from you, and this goes back to defining your values, your mission to create that connection.

And finally, there’s making an impact. How can you show that what you do is more than just about selling something and making a profit. What cause do you support? What changes do you want to see, what difference do you want to make.

Consumers what to know the story of the business or brand they’re buying into. By creating and developing those stories, you’ll hopefully connect and inspire people.