Creating your compelling brand story is essential for connecting with your audience on an emotional level that inspires action. However, building a story framework is only the first step to making that narrative work for your business. As with many other things in life, the devil is in the details—how you implement your brand story, integrating it into your communication channels, will help determine its ultimate effectiveness. And although storytelling is about emotions, you have to be ready to measure its impact with facts. Without measurable goals, you won’t know if you’re hitting the mark or if improvements could be made.
Putting Your Story into Action
A great brand story will give you a consistent throughline that conveys your company’s mission and core values to help you build strong connections with your target audience, if you are consistent and deliberate about how you deploy it. It’s not enough to put together your story framework and trust that the message will get out. You need to strategize with your team to figure out the best way to use the communication channels at your disposal.
This starts by assembling the professionals you will need to produce and distribute the content that takes your story to your potential clients or customers. This can be writers, editors, digital marketing specialists, content experts, videographers, developers, graphic designers, or others, depending on the types of projects you have in mind. Introduce them to the story framework, including the goal, brand values, and the narratives that have been outlined—this will be the central focus that will ground the strategy you develop to reach your storytelling goal.
As your team considers the best means to accomplish your objectives, everybody should be considering these questions:
- What platform(s) will enable us to reach our audience?
- What tactics and activities are we going to use to reach our goal?
- Are we using a mix of channels?
- Should we cross-promote our content?
- Should we employ a paid social strategy?
Answering these questions during the planning process will help you avoid time-wasting missteps later.
Your story framework and the defined strategy you and your team devise will then help you articulate to your content creators—writers, designers, videographers, etc.—what you need them to create and why. Giving them clear information up front, like the business goals you’re trying to achieve, what your users want, and how their work fits into the overall strategy, will empower them to use their expertise effectively. It will also reduce the odds you end up with multiple rounds of avoidable revisions.
Measuring Storytelling Success
To understand if you’ve hit the goals and objectives you set in your strategy meeting, you also need to decide how you’re going to measure performance. For example, if one goal was to increase engagement through a series of Instagram stories, how is that defined, and what metric are you using to measure it? The key performance indicators (KPIs) you select will help you figure out which tactics are working and which need adjustment.
Possible KPIs you could measure might be the number of impressions paid media campaigns generate among current and potential customers, the number of unique visitors to a specific landing page on your website, increased Facebook engagement (measured by percentage), or increased views of your video content. Consult your development and analytics team when you’re determining the KPIs you want to measure, as they have the expertise that will help you pick the best metrics to report on and the best way to track them. Your analytics team can also help you create clear reports put that information in a format that makes your progress (or lack thereof) clear.
Building Authentic Connections
When emotionally resonant storytelling is at the heart of your communication efforts, you have a unifying theme that ties your messaging together, allowing you to create content that may not be directly focused on selling but which still builds authentic connections with your audience. If you’re searching for that core narrative but haven’t found it yet, Squash and Stretch Productions can help. Our marketing coach Karl Pontau will help you get to the heart of your brand’s unique story to reach your ideal clients. To schedule your free initial consultation, contact us here.
