What's the Purpose of your Brand Story? | 3 Ways to Use Your Brand Story

So, you've painstakingly sat down with your team over several meetings and crafted your brand story. You feel great. You’ve accomplished something…or have you?

What should you do with your brand story?

Was all that work and exertion for the sole purpose of writing out a statement (that’s not even a story) to put on your “About Us” page or include on a handout for new employees?

I don’t think so.

Today I’m discussing what to do with your brand story, how it improves and streamlines your marketing, and why you should be using it every day.  I’ll be covering 3 specific ways to use your brand story to get the most mileage from your work.

The Two Parts of Your Brand Story

If you want a deep dive into the overall architecture of your brand story, I cover that extensively in this article.  I discuss the two different stories that actually comprise your brand story:  your Marketplace Story (i.e. customer story) and your Authentic Purpose Story (i.e. mission story). Here’s a quick recap:

The Marketplace Story is the value that you add to your customers. Once you figure out this story, you have the basic structure of your customer testimonials and customer language. It describes the value you’re adding to the marketplace.

Next you have your Authentic Purpose – the story journey your company is on. It describes the impact your organization is setting out to make in the world. Ultimately, it’s the story you're inviting your customers into.

But once you figure out those two stories…what do you do with them? How do you put them to use?

There are three ways you can start using your brand story to add value to your organization. By fully utilizing the power of your story, you’ll strengthen your brand and actually achieve your mission.

1. Perspective

First off, your brand story gives a better perspective about your customer and how they view your organization.  In fact, it’s the most valuable thing you can gain from it.

Why is it so hard to get the right perspective apart from your brand story? It’s because we’re all suffering from The Disease, the curse of expertise.  We're too close to our business which makes it extremely difficult to see our organization with fresh eyes. We’re paralyzed by our inward perspective and struggle to view things from the outside in (i.e. the customer’s perspective). We are stuck in the pickle jar. We can’t read our own label because we’re trapped in the jar.

But we can start to read that label by using stories.  

Stories have this very unique ability, almost like a magical power, to transport us into the shoes of the main character. It's called narrative transportation. They become the vehicle through which we experience the story. Thin about a story as a ride - the protagonist is the car we’re sitting in as we go on the journey. 

Once we let ourselves step into the shoes of our customer through story, it kicks us out of our insular view. We realize there is more going on in the world than the internal affairs of our business. We learn that our customer is going about their life with their own cares and concerns. Very often, those things don't match up with our cares and our concerns. In fact, it often surprises us when we discover what they're actually concerned about. 

Here’s an example. I was recently listening to a marketing book called Alchemy by Rory Sutherland. He discussed an advertising campaign for an airline. They had recently launched some state-of-the-air passenger planes and wanted to run ads about all the features of the planes. But do customers care much plane engines? Will hearing about how the wings were made entice them to book a flight? The answer is: no.  Telling them about new aerodynamic features will not convince them they’re boarding an exclusive, luxury flight. But what might entice them? Food. So instead of promoting the expensive plane features, they decided to market the exceptional meals served.

Oftentimes, the things we think are super important and nerd out about…well…the customer could care less. Learning what your customer actually cares about is key to building a profitable business. Your brand story does that for you.

As you’re shaping your brand story, you’re forced to shape and understand the character of your customer. When you place them in the story, you must flesh them out well beyond mere demographics. We can make a lots of assumptions based on demographics (age, gender, economic status, ethnicity, etc.), but they don’t get at the meat of who your customer is.

Developing your brand story helps you answer these questions about your customer:

• What are they like? 

• What do they care about? 

• What problem are they facing? 

• How is this problem affecting them externally and internally? What does that do to their sense of self…to their identity? 

You can’t get the level of depth and understanding with just a demographic sketch. You may be able to target an ad, but you won’t understand what really makes your customer tick.

Besides crafting your customer, you’re also understanding a second important character: you. You’re learning how you need to show up within your customer’s story world. You start answering these questions:

• What type of archetypal story are they in?

• What archetype is my customer?

• What archetype am I? 

• How does my customer need to see me? How do they hope I’ll show up?

• How should I approach them? What level of intensity and intellect? 

A lot of our life experience is actually anchored on mythical archetypes. We know these stories well and expect certain things to happen. Being armed with that information helps you have a  deeper understanding of your customer and what they’re facing. It helps your brand become truly customer-centric.  And once you’re truly customer centric, all the other benefits of your brand story naturally fall into place. 

2. Strategic

Second, your brand story provides a strategy. 

When I realized that stories are a strategic framework underneath everything in life…it blew my mind. It completely changed how I go about life, so let’s talk a minute about life in general.

Life itself is a massive story that we're living out. It's full of drama and conflict, victory and sadness. You have the full circle of life and death.

In order for us to make sense of life, we frame life through the lens of stories. It’s a shortcut for how we process what happens to us.

Stories are how we create meaning and establish value. What's the point of a family heirloom without the story behind it providing significance and value? Without the story, it’s just a stained veil or chipped teapot. 

Stories are essentially a framework for how we experience life - not just our life experience, but our identity as well.  We each have a personal narrative. It’s a story where we’re the central character and our whole understanding of who we are is based on that story.

We relate to other people through the stories we tell. We form friendships with them. We understand the strength of that friendship by how we frame it within our story.

Even meetings follow a story arc. There’s a lull at the beginning as attendees arrive and get set up. Some back and forth banter goes on before the energy revs up. Then, things get interesting. A problem arises that must be tackled together. A power struggle develops as subordinates offer solutions while the leader tries to take back control. It all plays out in a very interesting, collaborative, and (hopefully) productive drama. As the end of the meeting approaches, things start to taper off again. The energy dies down, goodbyes are said, and the meeting is over.

That’s a story! It follows the arc of anticipation, a call to action, a giant battle, resolution and return to normalcy.  

Okay, so now you know stories provide this strategic framework we’re all familiar with…but what do you do with that? How can you actually start putting your brand story into practice so it’s not lost on the “About Us” page on your website or casually slapped on a handout for new employees that inevitably gets trashed?

Think about your brand story as an entire strategic framework for building your brand. 

As I mentioned earlier, it gives you perspective about how your customer expects you to show up. Now use that perspective to inform your brand voice, tone, look, color palette, and fonts. What visual elements will trigger meaning in the mind of your customers? You don’t have to brainstorm from nothing to answer these questions – just use your customer’s story.

You can use your brand story to structure an entire marketing funnel. Since you now understand your customer’s journey, you know how to insert yourself into their story and call them to adventure. You can show up unannounced, yet not as an interruption, but as an invitation. And now you can design an entire funnel that feels natural, awesome, and meaningful to draw them into your organization.

You can use story as a way of mapping out your evergreen content pieces. Now that you understand the journey, you can provide appropriate content pieces for each step of the way. You can even build out an annual content strategy based on the story of your customer. Think about the experiences and emotions they'll encounter over the year, then create content that serves them. 

3. Tactical

Finally, your brand story provides tactical help by shaping your copywriting. Now that you understand this story, it becomes a framework for your copy. You know how to structure your words to invite your customer into your world.

You could approach this by using the Problem-Agitation-Solution formula. First, you discuss their problem and remind them about it. They feel that pain again. You demonstrate that you understand it and are the best person to solve this. You reveal the solution which feels amazing since you’ve created an emotional delta.

Or you could use a different structure: Inspire-Promise-Invite. You get them excited about the transformation that awaits. You’ve been on this transformation journey before; you can guide them to success. Now that you understand how you need to show up, you can craft language that’s inspiring. It reminds them of the success they're after and why they're even doing this in the first place. Get them inspired, promise you can lead them to success, then invite them to join you. 

As I mentioned earlier, understanding your Marketplace Story gives you a framework for all your customer stories. Once you know it, tell that story on repeat. Use it for you customer testimonials, case studies, and employee stories. 

In fact, now that you’ve done the hard work to define your brand story, it should streamline everything tactically for you. Use it to structure the copy on your website, define your website structure and flow, create funnels, write ads, etc. It makes all your marketing easier, and more meaningful and effective. 

Conclusion

With your brand story, you've essentially created a template designed for the purpose of captivating your audience and deepening the connection between your brand and them. So that's how you put your brand story to use.

The value it actually adds is a perspective shift, making you fully customer-centric. The strategic component helps you understand how to actually design and map your content and design funnels so they’re relevant and meaningful to your customer. Tactically, it helps with your messaging and composing copy that your customer wants to hear. 

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