Storytelling is a powerful way to draw an audience. It is also a great way to make customers trust your brand more.
A lot of brands comprehend the power of stories to transform their presence and identity.
Iconic brands such Coca-Cola and Dufill’s Indomie noodles have used stories to build trust across all customer spectrums and have long realized the power of their brand story to build a connection with their audience.
Companies like Apple and Microsoft possess brand stories that are legendary in their status.
What’s in a story, though? How does the story develop authenticity? How does a story create that trusting feeling that customers crave for?
Weave the story around an individual, a personality
In her Forbes article, Susan Gunelius describes the best story like this:
Brand stories are not marketing materials. They are not ads, and they are not sales pitches. Brand stories should be told with the brand persona and the writer’s personality at centre stage. Boring stories won’t attract and retain readers, but stories brimming with personality can.
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In other words, your story should not be dominated by some fairytale figure who dominates the legend and infuses the company with life and power. No. Instead, it should be inspired by the presence of people who participate, create, connect, and develop the growth and success process.
Personality drives the story. But the story isn’t a biography of an individual. It’s the evolution of an entity told with personality.
Take for instance, when Johnny Walker wanted to tell an African story of Success and resilience, it chose to tell it with brand icons like Ethiopia’s Haile Gabrielselasie and Nigeria’s entertainment mogul, Michael Collins, popularly known as Don Jazzy.
People trust other people. The core reason why your story should be personality-driven is so that it will provide someone real for customers to trust.
Make it simple
The company’s story should be geared towards identifying a problem, finding a solution and landing with a success.
If you try to pack more waves into the story, you tend to lose the momentum that is integral to its success.
Simple stories are better. Science says so, and experience affirms it. While we may love the complexity of a Harry Potter plot, we can’t import that same complex model into the brand story. We need simplicity.
Every story has a beginning, middle, and an end. The three-part model mentioned above carries this natural progression:
· Beginning: Problem. Explain the problem that you set out to solve.
· Middle: Solution. Describe how you solved it.
· End: Success. Get excited about the success this produced.
This is the form of a story that people expect.
Simple stories are more trustworthy. As some of the world’s most famous brands have shown, the complexity of the story can erode trust.
Let the story shape your reason for existence.
Why does your business exist?
The answer should be a story.
The answer to that question requires that you tell a story.
A brand like Indomie noodles uses their story as bedrock for their existence. It tells the story of hunger and the ‘instant-ness’ of filling that hunger in a short time. Hence, it’s a two-minute noodles.
Their story describes the whole reason for the existence of the company. That builds trust. Careful customers are asking “why should I buy from you?” If you can answer that question with a real story, then you’ve built the trust of that customer.
It must connect with your customers.
At its essence, a story isn’t really about your company. Your company is the construct, but the goal of the story is to create a connection with your customers.
Tell your story in such a way that it tells your customers we relate to you, we understand you, we are like you.
Few things can communicate that level of engagement like a story can.
When your story connects with the target customer, you build trust. You win.
Let customers buy a part of the story, not just the product or service
Why? Because the customers are not only participating in the story itself, they are participating in a monetary way. They engage the story by purchasing from the business or service that is behind the story.
When a customer purchases your product or uses your service, they must feel as if they are buying part of the story.
The customer owns the story, therefore, they trust it. The customer is now part of your story. They’ve bought into it. Literally.
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Let other people tell your story
In one sense, the story takes care of itself. A good story is shareable. Others will appreciate and engage in the story. That being said, there are a few things that you can do to enhance the story’s viral success:
· Build your personal brand. Remember how a story is infused with personality? You and your team are the personalities behind this. Grow your reach through your personal brand.
· Be active on social media. Stories will spread through the power of social media. Snippets, extracts, and anecdotes are passed around, retweeted, liked, and explained bit-by-bit. Meanwhile, you build a presence and a brand that lives in public social consciousness.
· Encourage your customers to tell the story. Customer testimonials are one of the most effective ways of broadcasting your story. Customers themselves will experience the problem, solution and success momentum of the story. If they’re satisfied, they will be more than happy to brag about it. Use these stories on your website and marketing materials. They will reinforce the brand’s story.
Stories are a vehicle for trust and belief. When people hear your story in more places, it reinforces their trust. And when they start telling your story themselves, they trust it even more.