Whether you work for an established company, run your own start-up, or work for yourself, the business entity you represent has a brand, and that brand has a story. Knowing what that story is and how to tell it will strengthen your brand by relating more effectively to your audience and solidifying your focus and core value.
Successful marketers know the story they tell at any given time is of paramount importance. It doesn't matter whether you are working on an email newsletter, a landing page, an advertising campaign, a blog post, a social media post, a one-sheet, an infographic, a PPT slide, an internal messaging document, an email to a media analyst...the list goes on. In every situation, the story you are telling is vital to know. Once you have identified your intended story, you can support it with copy, data, and design. And once the content asset is complete, the way you promote each resource must align with the overarching strategy and provide value to the target audience. Otherwise, even the seemingly best marketing project will fall flat.
Stories are not just things we tell to our friends or fables that prove a point. Stories can be found in blog post, interpreted from a designed PPT slide, or conveyed through a multi-channel campaign. Stories don't have to be one-note -- they can be weaved among many formats, channels, and even chapters or angles, as long as there is a clear flow and benefit throughout.
A brand's story can be identified at the company level and can be used to inform cascading strategies. For instance, Storyhaven's mission story is to promote the art of storytelling in business and pleasure in order to yield more successful outcomes. Each blog post that is published has to somehow roll up into that story; maybe one article talks about how to tell effective marketing stories, while another provides some fun writing exercises. Each of those two projects has different goals and tactics and formats; they'll look different in implementation and will be used differently by different people. But they both contribute to our company's overarching story, and that is why they are relevant and important and strategic.
If you work for an existing company, consider some of the stories that represent your company. If you run your own company, think about the stories you want people to think about when they associate with your brand. If you are a freelancer or work for yourself, think about the stories you can tell that represent your goals, mission, vision, values, and direction, and think about how each action weaves together to tell the stories you intend to tell. If you find yourself wondering whether you should try a certain tactic or take on a new project, ask yourself if it aligns with the story you want to tell. Or ask yourself if there's a story in that project that will make sense for your strategy. If not, it won't support your brand to go through with it. But if there's an angle you can craft that will align with your overall mission, go for it.
Stories can be the results of our strategies, or they can be the foundation that informs them. Whether you prefer to think one way or the other, there are stories prevalent at every stage in every business model and every project plan. Numbers tell stories, design tells stories, and word, of course, tell stories. Our strategies hold stories of which way we want to go, and the execution tells the story explicitly. Our audience research tells us stories about who we want to target or should be targeting, and our product includes our brand's story in its existence as well as its packaging, price, and promotion. Regardless of the format, stories can be found everywhere; as such, they can be created everywhere as well. To be more actively engaged in strengthening your brand, craft the right stories and ensure alignment across all projects for true brand cohesion.
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