When it comes to branding, the goal for every (in-the-know) business is to be able to produce storytelling in a manner that provides a compelling incentive for customers to make a purchase. When done well, branding can incite trust between you and your customers – not to mention your employees and suppliers as well.
One of the critical parts of branding storytelling is the ability to remain authentic. Today’s consumers can sniff out an inauthentic brand easily, which can create a PR storm that is almost impossible to control. To ensure this doesn’t happen for your company, read on to learn how to create authentic narratives across your brand channels.
1. Build a compelling brand story
Before you can start to create authentic narratives across your brand’s channels, you first need to know what your narrative is, why you are sharing it, and whom you are hoping to reach. Therefore, your first step is to work on building a compelling brand story.
This expresses who you are and what you stand for and is the base from which the narrative can blossom. In other words, your brand story must establish the purpose of your company for both your employees and customers.
Consumers want to connect with a brand that aligns with their values and appeals to their sense of self; therefore, you want your brand story to create a powerful emotional connection which, in turn, will generate consumer goodwill and attract more customers. The most effective brand stories help a business to quickly increase sales, while also enabling it to scale more effectively and with a community that fosters the brand experience.
When sitting down to create your brand story, make sure to remember the passion that got you started in the first place. By demonstrating your passion for the product or service, people are much more likely to want to be a part of it.
Moreover, you must understand both your product and your target audience. To boost sales, you need your brand story to be relatable to your product or service and also relevant to the passions and pain points of your desired consumers.
Honing in on your target audience can be an overwhelming task, but it’s imperative if you are going to create a brand story that resonates. Don’t make the mistake of trying to appeal to all customers.
2. Plan out campaigns
Now that you are ready to start building authentic narratives across your brand platforms, you want to start planning out campaigns. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to plan out a complex year-long strategy; instead, consider each post as a single part of a much larger series on the same subject or theme.
By thinking through how your posts will lead into the next, you will be better positioned to create a story arc – a proven strategy for attracting more people and engaging with them.
To do this, sit down and brainstorm several messages that you want consumers to associate with your company and direct your content around strengthening those messages. Or, you could focus your content around events or sales that you are hosting. You know better than anyone what your campaign focus should be, just make sure you have one.
One of the other benefits of planning out your campaigns is that it makes it easier to stick to a social calendar (a must for ensuring a continuous stream of quality content). By creating – and sticking to – a monthly social calendar, you can efficiently organize what content is going live where and when. Plan out the beginning and end dates for each of your campaigns and consider using a spreadsheet to manage all due times, publishing dates, the platform of choice, and more.
3. Work with a reputable branding agency
There is nothing easy about creating your brand story and ensuring that it is maintained coherently across all channels. That is why businesses of all sizes see the benefit of bringing in the professionals and, therefore, opt to work with a reputable branding agency with a relevant creative agency portfolio.
After all, if you don’t have a clearly defined digital marketing strategy, then you are making it harder for yourself to grow your business effectively.
A branding agency will be able to help you get to the core of your message and ensure that you are aligning your values, mission statement, and branding. Furthermore, they will also utilize their knowledge to help you become more innovative in your brand awareness strategies.
By utilizing the services of a branding agency in Dubai, you can benefit from areas of expertise that you don’t have in-house. Additionally, you can be assured that the frameworks and methodologies that they use are tried-and-tested ways to manage branding effectively.
Why put yourself through a trial-and-error period, when you can start doing it right from day one? Not to mention, an informed outsider perspective helps alleviate creative blockage and stagnancy, while also encouraging innovation, creativity, and problem-solving.
Is your firm currently struggling with branding-related issues? Or, do you have any additional tips to help others who are working on branding matters? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below!
AUTHOR BIO
Grace Yacoub is the owner, founder and CEO at Zaman. She recognized the potential to develop brands in Dubai back in 1996. Amongst her first projects were to convert the local powerhouses of Etisalat and NBD into branded entities and engage the nation in the drive for modernity. She has since led projects across finance, family, industry, property, retail and all sectors to convert many of the region’s most important companies into powerful brands.
