Creating a meaningful connection with your potential clients can be difficult in the beginning, especially when you have not taken the time to map out your brand pillars and strategy. Crafting a brand story is a great way to add clarity to who you are as a business, what you do, why you are different from everyone else, and why people should choose to work with you over others.
Let’s start with outlining what a brand story is for your business. Like any other story, a brand story is a cohesive narrative that involves a story line and evokes feelings and emotions in your audience.
By design, humans love hearing stories. We relate to them. We find them engaging. We want to learn more and stay around until the ending. Stories are a great way of capturing an audience. All great stories have common elements in place that make them great. There is always a hero with a problem that needs solving. There is always a guide or someone that helps that hero leave victorious. There is always something negative or scary being avoided. These are all the common characteristics of a great story. This story structure has been around for ages, and it works.
I’m going to help you use this same story structure to create a narrative around your brand and keep your target audience engaged and coming back to hear more of your story. We’re going to walk through the elements of your story in 8 Simple Steps. Without further ado, let’s get to it!
1. Define Your Target Audience
This is the first, and perhaps most important, step of them all. If you try speaking to everyone, you won’t resonate with anyone. On the other hand, if you speak to a small group of specific individuals, you will resonate with almost all. This is the goal with defining your target audience. You want to figure out exactly who your brand will be speaking to and the problems they have. Think about what your strengths are as a business, and who you will be best fit to serve.
2. Identify Their Internal Problems
The second step is to identify the internal problems of your target audience. Notice here that I am specifying INTERNAL problems. Everyone has surface level problems they are trying to solve, but we want to go deep with our brand story and really figure out why they are seeking a solution. You can do this by asking a series of “Why” Questions. For example, someone might come to me saying they have an ugly logo and want a new one. Why? “It looks bad.” Why do you want it to look good? “To look more professional.” Why do you want to look more professional? “So that people in my industry take me more seriously.” Why do you want to be taken more seriously? “So that people will see me as an authority and more people will want to work with me.” Why do you want more people to work with you and to be seen as an authority? “It will make me feel successful and worthy.”
DING DING DING! We have a winner. We have gotten down to the root of a problem. Try practicing this same exercise with your target audience to uncover the real reason they are searching for change.
3. Identify What Victory Looks Like for Them
Now that we know the root of their problems, brainstorm what they will view as a victory. Again, we are searching for a victory to their internal problem. This might be having more money, confidence, or free time. It will vary for everyone. Try to think of the three main outcomes your client will want to see.
4. Position Them as the Hero
As mentioned earlier, every great story has a hero. Let’s be real here, we all want to be the hero of our own story. Seeing other people as heroes is inspiring, but we want to experience that heroic feeling for ourself when we are making any type of purchasing decision. Make sure you are not positioning yourself as the person who can save the day for your client. Position your client as the one who will be able to save the day for whoever they are serving. You are helping them step into their heroism. Take particular notice of this on your About page. I often see business owners framing themselves as the heroes on the about page. Keep the focus on your customer even on the About page.
5. Position Yourself as the Guide
Like Timon and Pumba to Simba and Dumbledore to Harry Potter, all good heroes have a guide to help them reach victory. In your brand story, you want to position yourself as the guide for your client. Let them see that you can provide them with all the knowledge and tools they need to come out successful and reach their end goal.
6. Show the Cost of Not Working With You
Every story has some time of undesirable outcome looming in the background. Sometimes it is something scary. Sometimes it is something that the hero simply does not want to encounter. You want to incorporate some type of undesirable outcome into your brand story. I am not encouraging you to sell out of a place of fear by any means. We are not manipulating anyone. I am saying to evoke some type of scarcity or realism into your story. This can be something as simple as “Only 3 Left in Stock” or “2 Hours Left to Sign Up.” You could also be the realist and give your target audience a little push. Show them the cost of not taking action and remaining stagnant where they are at in their life. Sometimes we just need a little push to get us moving in the right direction. This is where you will incorporate that into your story.
7. Show the Clear Path to Victory
Now that we have defined what victory looks like, make sure you show them exactly how they will get there. You can do this a couple of different ways. I like to do show the exact steps of how my clients will get from start to finish. Another way is to show a video tutorial of how the task can be completed. Revealing the path to your audience will allow them to see exactly how the transformation will take place and confirm they can actually do what is needed to complete the tasks.
8. Vividly Paint the Picture of Success
The final step is to vividly paint the picture of success. You can do this by adding pictures to your website of before and after results, happy clients, past projects, along with many other possibilities. The main goal here is to give a visual so that your target audience can picture themselves and what victory will look like for them.
If you are able to implement these 8 steps into a cohesive brand story, you are going to start seeing tremendous results in your revenue and engagement numbers. People are going to start viewing your business in a different light and be eager to learn more and stay up to date on what is new.
If you need help developing a brand story for your brand, feel free to reach out. I offer strategy calls for business owners like you who need help crafting their brand story. I’d love to sit down with you and develop a story to help you grow your business and start reaching more of your ideal clients.
Until next time friends…
Upward and Onward!
Bailey Thibodeaux
Founder of Honeywave Creative
