Why Is Telling Your Brand's Story Important?
Why High Quality Content Is an Important Marketing Strategy
You have a problem.
It’s not the product. It’s not the people. It’s not the availability. It’s the connection...or the lack thereof.
You have an amazing product. You have a great customer service team around you. You’ve built a substantial email list.
But still your numbers are not converting into sales. You always have to find ways to get new customers in your door. Your sales are steady, but your customer loyalty is low. Your web traffic is fair, but people don’t stay on your site. Your emails fall on deaf eyes – if they even get opened…
You need to connect with your customers in a way that inspires loyalty and builds trust. But how?
Stories Connect
Many business owners work tirelessly to convince their customers to buy their product or service based on features and benefits. Sure, that’s logical, and it’s important.
But, people buy on emotion not logic.
For all its merits, logic doesn’t convince people to buy a product. Logic doesn’t stimulate attachment. Logic doesn’t attract your customers back to your brand again and again.
Stories do that. Your story.
Stories connect with people on an emotional level. Stories inspire feelings of empathy and inspiration.
Stories stimulate the brain’s dopamine's when they confirm beliefs of the reader. They stimulate oxytocin to form attachments. That is the science behind every human being on the planet.
People buy from people not companies.
That’s why your brand’s story matters. Do your clients know your story? Or, at least, the product's story?
Stories Teach
People are more likely to remember lessons when they learn it through a story. This creates a huge opportunity for you to connect with your customers. You can impart valuable information that they remember.
Teaching through storytelling chooses either a positive or negative example from which to learn. Positive examples show the ideal and set expectations. But don’t underestimate the power of negative examples.
What avid hiker doesn’t have a story about that time I forgot to pack…
Salt
Duct tape
The tent fly
My sleeping bag
My mess kit
My hiking boots (Yes, it happened. How? I don’t know, but it’s a good thing this Florida girl can do anything in flip flops!)
Fill in the blank with something you’ve left behind on accident, and I bet your story ends something like, “And that’s why I will never forget to pack (insert whatever you forgot here) again."
If your experiences are anything like mine, looking back on them is pretty hilarious. Even if you were miserable at the time.
Share your story and what you learned with your customers.
You’ll entertain your customers, while providing valuable information. And you become more than a business selling them things.
You become a fellow human who makes mistakes. They can relate to that!
Stories Persuade
Stories are persuasive tools when you use them properly within an argument. Stating reasons in favor or against a product or service doesn’t often penetrate our thick skulls. We need the application of those reasons to persuade us.
The application comes in the form of a story.
The Buddy Principle is a well known rule that states you should always stay with another person when galivanting around in the wild. Yet boys being boys, they roll their eyes and ignore you when you tell them this. But what if instead you tell them a story...
"You find yourself walking through the woods…You try to remember where you were going or who you were with…
The Scouts. They’re at the boats waiting for you. But where are you? Who are you? Why are you alone?
You keep walking...You’re the guide. You were scouting around for the portage.
Why does your head hurt?
You reach up, feel the lump behind your ear, and you know you’re in trouble. You’re hurt bad!
You’ve got to find your way back! But your compass...where’s your compass? You leant it to the scout who was reading the map…You sent him back while you looked around.
You must’ve taken a bad fall to bust your scalp that bad. You’re disoriented with no compass to point you right.
Why did you send that scout back without you?"
That’s how you persuade teenage boys to take a buddy wherever they go.
And that’s actually a true story of what happened to a guide at Northern Tier Boy Scout Camp. Luckily, thanks to his training, he found his way out alive.
I use his story to persuade boys that what happened to him could also happen to them, but it’s less likely to happen if they always have a buddy.
Stories Sell
Brands who incorporate storytelling in their marketing gain the trust and loyalty of their customers. But blogs don’t just provide valuable content for your customers.
Blogs that incorporate copywriting techniques can convert readers into customers. It’s as simple as following the story with a clear call to action. Let the reader know how they can continue the connection you’ve established.
Stories connect you and your customers through empathy with shared experiences and beliefs. But there’s another important something that stories connect you to.
That something is Google.
Connect with Google
The Google search engine’s main job is to scour the web crawling and indexing relevant data to answer people’s inquiries at a moment’s notice.
Storytelling has the power to put your website in front of a potential customer when they ask Google a question. Optimizing your stories with keywords so Google can index your information easily is what SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is all about!
When you begin telling stories that answer people’s questions, you make Google very happy! When you make Google happy, Google puts your webpage in front of your potential customer who just asked a question about your product.
Google needs long form content for its bots to read. Without higher word counts, the bots don’t have enough data to conclude whether or not your content is relevant. Without enough content, Google decides not index your website.
No indexing means you don’t show up on the results page when your potential customer asks Google a question.
Incorporating simple SEO practices in your content, pays off over time. In fact, if you’re choosing the right keywords, your content just keeps gaining momentum. For a look at a precise, SEO driven strategy go here>>
Your story has the ability to connect with your customers emotionally, teach them valuable information, persuade them to trust you, and sell your brand.
Look back at the beginning of this blog.
All I did was tell a story...your story! Something I said resonated with you. So schedule a call and let’s tell your story.