03 Brand Story
Now it’s time to get into the most challenging and rewarding part of business communication: telling a well-defined, compelling brand story that accomplishes your business objectives.
- Create your Primary Strength™ based on the intersection of your market position and defined audience.
- Understand the specific objectives that a brand story must satisfy in order to create business.
Marketing is no longer about the stuff you make but the stories you tell.3
5 Steps In Creating A Compelling Brand Story Warm Up
There are brands that don’t tell stories, there are brands that tell stories, then there are brands that tell stories that satisfy business objectives. There is a world of difference between the three.
By creating your Primary Strength™ and satisfying the specific brand story objectives, your brand story can be formed.
5 Steps in Creating A Compelling Brand Story
01 Create your Primary Strength™
The insights you’ve gained from 01 Positioning and 02 Audience will allow you to create your Primary Strength™. Found at the intersection of your market position and defined audience, your Primary Strength™ is a concise statement that acts as the guiding principle to your brand.
02 Provide the lens of Marketing
Unless you’re in the entertainment business, your brand story should, to some degree, sell your service.
03 Provide the lens of Engineering
As learned in 01 Positioning, your service solves a problem. By highlighting the problem you solve, your brand story will create urgency.
04 Provide a benefit
Demonstrate the benefit of using your service. Your benefit could be immediate or long term; either way, people want to know what benefit your service will provide them.
05 Ensure your benefit is unique
Your benefit must be unique. If the benefit you provide is not unique, your claim will fit in with the rest of the competition.
Takeaway
From your market position and defined audience, your Primary Strength™ is born. Your Primary Strength™ guides your brand, therefore your brand story is created from your Primary Strength™. By satisfying the objectives outlined in this module, your brand story will create business growth.
Create Your Brand Story Deep Dive
As the internet has become the most common medium for people to access information, the way brands get people to buy has changed. If you want people to be aware of your brand, it must be through story.
The Problem
Providing cold-pressed beverages squeezed daily, a juice brand has integrated a delivery service to create new clients. Now they must tell a compelling brand story that focuses on their positioning while staying true to their existing clients.
As the internet has become the most common medium for people to access information, the way brands get people to buy has changed. If you want people to be aware of your brand, it must be through story.
The Problem
Providing cold-pressed beverages squeezed daily, a juice brand has integrated a delivery service to create new clients. Now they must tell a compelling brand story that focuses on their positioning while staying true to their existing clients.
The Solution
Step 1: Create and utilize your Primary Strength™.
When you create your Primary Strength™, and it becomes the starting point for your brand story, your market position will be communicated to your defined audience.
How this could go wrong
By not understanding your market position and defined audience, you fail to create a Primary Strength™. This results in your defined audience not clearly understanding what your market position is.
How to get it right
You create a Primary Strength™ based on the intersection of your market position and defined audience. As a result, your defined audience will know your market position.
From your Primary Strength™, you create a brand story that will engage your prospective client. Depending on the choice of medium, the way your brand story is told will be different, but the essence will remain the same. For example, your brand story could be told via print material or video, but whichever medium you choose the same brand story will be communicated. The following four steps should be implemented to ensure your brand story will create business growth.
Step 2: Provide the lens of Marketing.
You’re communicating your brand to your defined audience to make sales.
How this could go wrong
The brand story attempts to entertain your prospective client. By not focusing on your service, your brand fails to create a need to buy.
How to get it right
Your brand story sells your service.
Step 3: Provide the lens of Engineering.
Your service is a solution to a problem. Giving your prospective client the understanding of the problem creates the need for your solution.
How this could go wrong
By not communicating the problem, you will speak to a fraction of the audience who already know that your service is a solution to the problem. The rest of the audience who are unsure of the problem will not see a reason to buy your service.
How to get it right
By stating the problem and demonstrating how your service is a solution, prospective clients will recognize the need for your service.
Step 4: Provide a benefit.
We’re all looking out for our own interests. If you’re able to demonstrate the benefit of your service, it’s going to be that much easier for your client to justify the purchase.
How this could go wrong
Without the benefit, your prospective client begins to think about alternatives to your service offering.
How to get it right
When the prospective client understands the benefit of your service, it will be easier for them to justify their purchase because of the benefit it provides.
Step 5: Ensure your benefit is unique
When your benefit is unique, it proves your service is one of a kind. It is authentic, and only available through you.
How this could go wrong
With a general benefit, your claim will fit in with the competitors. For the client, this means that they will have to compare your service based on price or through their own understanding of why your benefit is unique.
How to get it right
By having a unique benefit, you’ll have a service that only you can provide.
Conclusion
By creating your Primary Strength™, your brand story can be formulated. Starting the brand story process from your Primary Strength™ ensures your market position will be communicated to your defined audience. Steps 2-5 ensure your brand story has the selling power to grow your business.
The Brand Story Checklist in the template section will allow you to check your brand story against the objectives in this module. Once the Primary Strength™ has been implemented and the objectives have been satisfied, your story is ready. In the next section, 04 Communication Mediums, you will learn how to create consistent messaging based on your brand story.