Behind every successful brand is a good product, a great workforce and an engaged target audience. But for continued success, a brand needs to nurture its connections with consumers, and a strong brand narrative is a great way to achieve that goal.
Storytelling creates emotional connections with customers by painting pictures of the issues or pain points they face and outlines how your brand can help resolve them. Weaving a consistent narrative through all your marketing efforts, while staying true to the core values of the company, makes those connections deeper and longer lasting.
Brand narrative – more than just a story
Turning a compelling brand story into a brand narrative means embedding that narrative across all aspects of the business, aligning brand personality and messaging with your marketing strategy. Maintaining one consistent brand strategy and brand identity, and following the same narrative in this way, helps to build trust with potential customers to form a deeper connection with your company over your competitors.
In e-commerce, for example, the focus for a brand narrative might be on why your product will help the buyer in their day-to-day life. The scope might be broad to appeal to anyone who comes across the product. On the other hand, for a brand selling a niche product, for example a microphone, the scope of the narrative might be narrow to create an emotional connection with a niche audience – like producers of podcasts – focusing on the trends in the industry and hoping to resonate with entrepreneurs.
While brand storytelling is the practice of creating individual stories that convey specific messages, a brand narrative is the broader, strategic narrative that defines the brand’s identity and guides all its storytelling efforts.
Developing a successful narrative is an ongoing process for any business that requires continued planning and monitoring against a clear set of goals to ensure it aligns with the brand’s mission.
By keeping the brand’s values central to the story as the company evolves, the image of an authentic brand develops over time, which helps to increase customer loyalty and can be the differentiator that creates a great brand – up there with the likes of Apple or Nike who have found ways to connect on a deeper level with stakeholders and create a lasting impression with consumers.
Top tips for creating an effective brand narrative
- Know your audience – To captivate potential customers who are hearing or reading your story, it is important to know first who they are likely to be so that you can more effectively connect on an emotional level and begin building trust.
- Talk about your roots – Every brand has a different origin, so tell the story of yours. Talking about your time as a startup can be a great opportunity to be open and honest and form a connection with any entrepreneurs or small businesses who could use your services.
- Tell your story in your marketing campaigns – Digital marketing on social media platforms from Instagram to LinkedIn, is a powerful tool and a good chance to make short form videos, or written narratives, telling your story as a business and authentic stories of people you have helped while also content marketing and increasing brand awareness.
- Demonstrate brand loyalty – If you can show that your product has withstood the test of time and people keep coming back, it will attract more customers and it will keep those customers coming back for more. A compelling story can be the difference between a one off purchase and a returning customer who spreads word of the product and the brand.
- Use visuals – In addition to video clips and ads, infographics can help to visualise the brand story and narrative, and can be especially useful to demonstrate the strengths of your company against its rivals.
All this helps to ensure your brand stands out in a crowded market and gives the company some personality in and of itself. Whether highlighting how important sustainability is when planning next steps, or focusing on empowerment of employees and customers, it is important that people can distinguish your brand in the wider market place.
What makes a memorable brand?
There is no secret sauce to a memorable brand, but here are examples of how two brands have successfully developed their brand narrative:
John Lewis
One of the most famous examples of a British brand employing narratives to win over customers is John Lewis and their Christmas advertising campaigns. Each year they make a heartfelt and touching video that seemingly has nothing to do with the company itself. The short film, shared via TV and social media channels, communicates the business’ mission and aims to form an emotional connection with people watching. The brand builds anticipation for their Christmas ads with teasers and uses hashtags on social media to encourage conversations, helping to spread the notion that John Lewis is there to help its customers with life’s challenges and with celebrating joyful moments.
Airbnb
Airbnb is a great example of where the brand story was adapted to accommodate changes to the brand, yet keeping the narrative consistent. Airbnb changed their strapline from ‘A place to stay’ to ‘Belong anywhere’. The company was growing and it was clear a new way of portraying the brand was needed, the old slogan was lacking in emotion and did not stand out. By aiming for a deeper feeling they now focus on belonging – a human emotion – rather than simply staying somewhere. A seemingly simple change that makes all the difference.
Enhance your skills in marketing and management
If you’re a marketing professional looking to extend your business knowledge and leadership skills in marketing and beyond, you could consider a 100% online MBA Marketing degree from North Wales Management School. This flexible course boasts industry-led content and reflects Wrexhams’s status as a career-centric UK university with a leading employability ranking. You can study anytime and anywhere and with six start dates per year you can start within weeks.
