What Stories Your Business Should Tell

Marketing

What Stories Your Business Should Tell

Storytelling is a powerful way to get your message across, so it's important to focus on the right stories to attract your target audiences.

As I shared in Part 1 of this series, stories are a powerful tool that actually help us retain information in a different way than facts alone. When it comes to your business, you might be wondering, “What stories should I tell?”

Start With Your Audience

We think the best place to start is with your audience’s story. After your employees, your customers are the central figures of your company’s overall story. I engage in an “Audience Builder” workshop and process with my clients that identify who these people are, what makes them tick, what they really want or need, and how your business can help. From there, I create a narrative they can relate to and a story they see themselves in. This creates connection, empathy, and understanding.

Example: Old Spice

I love this example because it cleverly puts the target audience, women buying bath products for their partners, at the center of the story, but not in the way you might suspect. Old Spice captures women’s attention through an attractive actor, humor, and subtle nods to things women care about, including a good-smelling plus-one.

Tell Us About Your Roots

The next story you can tell is your origin story. How did your company get started? What was the catalyst for embarking on the adventure of business building? Is there something unique that could connect potential customers to your purpose or vision?

Origin stories help connect audiences to the founder(s) – actual humans behind a logo or website, highlight motivations for the company’s existence, and create brand interest and loyalty. As a bonus, they can also be used to motivate and rally your workforce and get new hires aligned with your purpose (why you exist) and vision (how you see your company in the future).

My brand workshop process helps uncover the hidden gems behind the history of an organization including its origin story.

Example: Naadam

Naadam’s origin story is compelling because it immediately captures your attention with humor and interesting visuals. It’s longer format to tell the full story but gives you an appreciation for how the company accidentally came to be and how it’s committed to being the source of the world’s fairest cashmere through sustainable and ethical business practices.

Why You Exist

Finally, you can tell your purpose story – why your brand exists in the first place. Closely tied to your origin story, your purpose should answer questions about what specific impact you’re looking to make and how you are living that out.

This is important for more than just feel-good reasons. More and more studies reveal that consumers (at least in the U.S.) are motivated by a company’s stance on issues along with their purpose, and employees today are more concerned about their company’s impact than ever before.

Example: Seventh Generation

In this story, Seventh Generation shares a fundamental belief: “you can’t live a healthy life on a sick planet.” Different employees, from the CEO to a customer care rep, share how the company makes an impact on our health and on our planet.

The Challenge Of Telling Your Own Story

There are two major challenges our clients face when it comes to being effective storytellers: 1.) As my mentor, Steve Morris, says, “it’s hard to read the label from the inside of the jar.” In other words, it’s really hard to have a clear, objective perspective of your company’s story when you’re so deeply invested in it. To get out of the way and get to the essence of your business, its people, and even you as a leader, almost everyone needs outside ears and eyes. I found this to be true when I embarked on the process of re-doing my website last fall. I went through several discovery processes with my mentor, had him walk me through my own brand workshop process, and then hired a copywriter friend to help me. 2.) It’s also difficult to tell the story of your product or service when it’s complex. This is especially true for some of our B2B technology clients who are too in the weeds of their own business to be able to explain what they do layman’s terms. One of the things I specialize in is taking the complex and confusing and making it clear and easy to understand. From new tech like electric vehicle (EV) charing to IoT solutions, I have extensive experience simplifying messaging and making it relevant to a target audience.

Both #1 and #2 are part of why I do what I do. It’s one of the ways I help leaders and businesses maximize their potential and impact so they can be the world-changing brands they were always meant to be.

Need help telling your story? Contact me today and let’s start a storytelling adventure together!

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