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People will not remember your name or the name of your business. But they will remember your brand story. Possibly how your story made them feel and what actions it inspired them to take.
That’s why it’s important to create an Unforgettable Brand story – one that sticks in people’s minds.
If you follow Vanessa Lau, she is amongst the top female entrepreneurs whose habits intrigue me.
And she once talked about how she quit her $60k yearly paying job to become a waitress.
Say whaaaaaaat! Yep you read that right.
At the time I didn’t know her by name but that story stuck because of how shocking it was.
So all I searched on YouTube was girl who quit job to become waitress…LoL ? Don’t judge me.
BUT…
I know I’m not the only one who is a culprit of doing that. Stories stick better than names.
What Happens when you don’t Clearly Craft a Brand Story
Without knowing how to clearly craft a brand story, you’ll end up
- Disconnecting with your ideal audience.
- Creating a cliche brand story.
- Sounding fake.
As you can see, these are all things you want to steer clear of doing especially if you’re creating a personal brand.
So in this post, I’ll be walking you through:
- The 3 Strategies to creating an unforgettable brand story.
- What to do and what not to do with each brand story formulation strategy.
Lets get into it.
3 Strategies to Crafting a Brand Story that Resonates with your Ideal Audience
These 3 strategies make the basis of creating a brand story. They are by no means a way to lie your way through to people’s hearts.
Your brand story has to be true. It’s just the presentation that we will be talking about.
In short, it’s a way to help you tell your story in a way that is captivating and not boring by cutting out the fluff and focusing on the aspects that I’ll be showing you in just a little bit.
So keep reading.
The Hero Brand Story Strategy
This strategy focuses on You as the hero of your story hence the name.
It creates a problematic situation that you experienced that is related to what your audience is currently facing.
And then followed by how you were able to go through the challenges that you faced.
OR…
What steps you were able to take that got you out of that situation.
Let me give you an example of a hero brand story strategy.
Lisa Nichols is a life coach. She talks of how she had no money to get diapers of food for herself and her son.
And then she walks you through what she did in order to get herself out.
She talks about how she worked from her closet and made sacrifices like downsizing her house and never eating out to get herself and her son out of debt and poverty.
At the end she talks about how she was able to save a certain amount of money that finally got them out of poverty.
As you can see there are 3 stages to properly executing this brand story strategy.
so what are they?
How to execute the Hero Brand Story Strategy
There are 3 parts to executing this brand story effectively.
Part 1: Introduce the predicament or the situation you were in.
In this part, you want to make the problems you went through relatable to what your ideal audience is going through.
Infact, you’ll normally see this on most sales pages.
But the truth is that you have faced a whole bunch of problems in your life. So how do you know which problems to highlight?
Well, you can start by checking what your audience cares about. That’s the only way your brand story will pique your audiences interest.
Remember your audience is interested in knowing whether you know where they are or what they are experiencing.
That also means that you have already done brand mapping and you know what services or products you’ll offer your audience in the future.
For example if you want to sell an IG course to influencers, you’ll need to have been an influencer or managed an influencer/influencers. That will give you enough experience to know what zero growth feels like for an influencer, what works and what doesn’t in the influencer world.
With all that info, your hero brand story stands a chance to be unforgettable to your ideal audience.
Part Two: The process to becoming the hero.
Here you explain what difficulties you went through and what you sacrificed. If you had any AHA moments, this is the part to put it.
Remember when you’re talking about this part, be sure to talk about the details. If not, show photos or videos. It makes the story more memorable & believable as well.
Final part: You become the Hero.
Here, you don’t want to sound like you knew you were going to be successful – because in reality nobody actually knows that they will be a success.
Just be honest in how you were feeling at the time when you realized you had gotten to your goal.
For instance, it could have been that you accidentally discovered a strategy. Or you were so consistent that you forgot your goal only to realize weeks later that you had crushed your goal.
Just remember to make this part seem attainable for anyone in your shoes.
Avoid making it seem like it success was only possible because it was you. That will immediately disconnect the readers from your brand story.
Speaking of connection…. Let’s talk about the next strategy
The Relatable Brand Story Strategy
Sometimes we really haven’t gone through any hardships that our audience is going through… But we relate to the things they like.
For instance, in the case of e-commerce store that sells a cat litter, creating a brand story from other cat owners (audience look-alike) makes the brand story relatable.
or better yet creating a scenario where the audience can relate. ie talking about how the cat poops everywhere in the house when you’re running late for work.
I have a friend who is a cat mom and that’s how I know these things that cat moms and cat dad’s go through.
You can also use the likes and dislikes that you have in common with your audience.
For instance, fashion blogger who owns a dog, lives alone and is into retro stuff will talk about where her love of retro came from, her dog, and how she loves living alone.
That immediately connects her to any retro fashion lovers who live alone or own a dog.
The only down side of this is that a portion of your audience will feel disconnected to you especially if they don’t have/do the things you do.
To avoid that, I advice that you choose things that you know your audience loves and hates.
For instance, if your audience loves retro fashion, they probably hate mainstream modern fashion. That’s a dislike you and your audience have in common .
You can also share what you love about retro fashion and the things that attracted you to become a retro fashion lover.
That way your brand story will be relatable to a huge portion of your audience rather than narrowing it way way too much to you as an individual rather than as a brand.
How to Execute this Brand Story Strategy
Since there are multiple ways of executing this brand story, there are only 3 things to keep in mind.
- use lookalike audiences that your potential clients will highly relate to.
If you cannot use your experience to tell your brand story, then this is the best method.
You can do that by using different stories from different clients you have had in the past.
If you are brand new, find your ideal personas who are interested in your products and offer them the product for free in exchange for an honest review.
You can do that in, most if not all, Facebook groups. Simply type in your type of audience and you’ll find a Facebook group for it.
2. Focus on your likes and dislikes
Do this if you’re using your own personal story to create a brand story. It will be the center of connection between you and your audience.
3. Use Your Audience’s Wins
If you can’t relate to your audiences problems, then use their wins to relate to how they will feel when things get right.
This will normally be the case if you worked in a company that helped your type of audience.
For example, you were working as an influencer manager in a Talent management firm.
Now, that will set you apart as an expert and will make your audience relate to your brand as the one that makes their goals possible.
Using the example above. If you’re an influencer manager talk about taking influencers on when you were working in your corporate job and changing their lives.
In short, talk about the positive changes the influencers experienced when they worked with you.
Also, dont forget to introduce yourself as an expert. For example. I’m Angela and I was working with a talent management firm as an influencer manager for X number of years.
But remember the best way to keep it memorable is to bring in a story of the reservations your ideal audience might have with working with you or show the results you’re able to give them.
Though, whatever you decide to go with to create your brand story in this case is entirely dependent on you.
There’s really no set way of doing it when you decide to execute a relatable brand story.
Price Related Brand Story Strategy
Just as the name suggests, it’s all about pricing… To be more precise, lowered or increased prices in comparison with the existing competition.
Depending on what you’re trying to show your audience (increased prices or lowered prices) it will influence what you’re talking points will be about.
If you want to talk about lowered prices, you’ll show your audience that:
- They can get the same quality product/service at a lowered price.
- There is no need to pay more to get quality products / services.
- They will save a ton of cash to buy other things they probably need to get.
On the other hand, if you want to talk about higher prices in comparison to your competitors, you’ll show your audience why:
- Compromising on quality because of price will be more expensive.
- The quality of services/ product is better than the cheaper version. ie the results they will get.
And remember in this case, the brand story will use the same rules of execution as the relation brand story strategy. Thats because most of the time, this is a strategy used by non personal brands and e-commerce stores.
What to do and not to do when executing this strategy
- Do not mention other brand names when you’re comparing with yours as you can be charged with defamation.
- Do mention how much the audience will save or how much it will cost. Exact figures make the purchase decision easier.
- Do show the audience how much they will save by using their lifestyle. For instance; you’ll save money to buy $9.99 flowers at Trader Joe’s for your home – if you’re targeting moms.
- Use words like imagine to help your audience visualize what price difference to expect from your brand. For example imagine buying 3 faux plants instead of 1 without adding any extra cash.
The dollar tree company is a great example of this type of branding.