The best way to reach a customer who’s deciding what to buy is to stop pushing your products too hard and focus on the value of your business. When you tell a story and explain your business values in your marketing messages, you’ll engage customers who share and appreciate your values.
As an added benefit, when you find customers who share your values, there’s a much better chance they’ll stay loyal to you (even if you think brand loyalty is a thing of the past!).
Connecting with Customers Through Stories
The question many small business owners continue to struggle with is how to use stories to create, expand and nurture customer relationships.
It comes down to listening, learning and engaging with your customers. Remove assumptions and lead your audience along a journey without selling or pushing them. Staying genuine and authentic will increase brand awareness, return higher engagement rates and, ultimately, convert more qualified leads.
Keeping your content honest equates to authentic storytelling. Strive to provide customers with an opportunity to feel like they are part of a larger group. Don’t be afraid to share stories of failure or misjudgment. Genuine humility shows you have the capacity for growth and learning, which everyone can relate to. Good storytelling takes practice and it will help build credibility for yourself and your business.
5 Benefits of Brand Storytelling for Small Businesses
1. Brand Storytelling Helps Your Business Stand Out From Your Competitors
Whether it’s your product design or service features, there’s a reason you’re different, and customers need to know what that is.
Remember your childhood and how you were read stories. Life’s lessons told in story format makes them interesting, entertaining, and memorable. If you can highlight the things that make your business unique through your content, you can easily gain a competitive edge.
2. Storytelling Motivates Customers
A good story about you or your business can lead the customer to your primary message so they hear it. Adding engaging, interesting and relevant stories on your website with calls-to-actions (CTA’s) will draw in customers and then build excitement for your CTA so they click on it.
Link your story to your desired outcome and you will motivate your readers much more naturally than you would with a more forced sales pitch or empty promise.
3. Storytelling Builds Relationships
Individuals who feel connected to your brand are likely to not only be repeat purchasers, but they will probably mention it to their friends or family. The key to selecting stories your target audience can directly relate to is having a thorough understanding of that customer’s buyer persona so you can start speaking their language.
Building relationships this way so they can experience the true nature behind your brand for themselves and forge a meaningful relationship with your small business.
4. Storytelling helps you communicate your value
How many companies do you know that try to compete on price alone? You see it all the time but unfortunately, unless you are Amazon or Walmart your business won’t stand competing solely on price as a differentiator.
Competing on value, however, can keep you in the game for the long haul. Think of the value your business provides. What experience and value does your product or services bring to the table? What do customers “get” when they buy from you?
5. Storytelling can Reinvigorate Your Brand
Coming up with new ideas to support your marketing efforts is hard. Storytelling will help you take something that you or your business experienced in the past and put a new spin on it that specifically addresses the needs and interests of your target audience.
Doing this will help your messages perform better on social media and in your advertising efforts because storytelling will perform better for you and increase conversions from prospect to customer.
