First - what is “branding”?

Branding is about the experience of interacting with a business. It's about the range of thoughts and feelings you have when you think of a company. Branding is about how your company interacts with your audience. It's about the tone of voice of your posts on blog posts, on Facebook , Twitter , Snapchat . It's about how your delivery drivers act, how the packaging of your products looks, the colour of your walls, your charity work and your promotions. It's a combination of a lot of different things to form a brand image in the minds eye.

More than your logo

While a logo does a lot to a company’s image and identity, it’s important for a business owner to know exactly what purpose a logo serves, especially if it’s for your startup! A logo serves to identify your business from competitors and to help build brand awareness. It is a pictorial representation of the company and it’s important to know what qualities to look for when designing a logo! A company logo should be memorable, easily recognizable and should bring together all the elements of the company’s branding. It’s also vital that your logo and branding conveys and supports your core values and goals! Don’t stress over it though, it’s not all about (or only about) the logo.

A graphic designer should create a professional logo based on an interview with you - to get a feel for what you stand for, what your products/services mean to the people that benefit from them, to convey all the above in one simple picture. It is a skill, and it’s well worth paying for.

Do you have a colour scheme?

It's no secret that different colours can affect people in different ways. A study by UK psychologists showed that people who saw the colour red were more prone to anger, while people who saw the colour blue were likely to be more relaxed and in a better mood! Of course, colours don't just evoke emotions in the people who use them, but in the people who see them. A study showed that people who were exposed to blue and green were more prone to fatigue and sluggishness, while people who were exposed to red and yellow were more likely to experience energy and happiness. Whatever your business is, you should be using the colours most appropriate to the emotion you want to evoke in your customers. Doing this will help keep them in a good mood while they're around your product! This is all part of your story, and your brand.

Your colours will generally be decided as part of a logo design, and will fit in with your logo. Expect your graphic desiger to provide you with a primary colour (the one most common eg. for your shirts, caps, mugs, website, brochures...) and a secondary colour (also used commonly but less often eg. for headings, header/footer background, sewed-on text...). You’ll also want a highlight colour eg. for the “BUY NOW” button.

“Copy” - the words you use

When it comes to storytelling, words can make a big difference. You can weave together intricate plots, create interesting characters, and develop a captivating story arch, to make readers more likely to remember. Rather than saying simply, "He was a handsome man," you could create imagery by writing, "He was a handsome man with blue eyes that twinkled like stars." Creating powerful imagery for your audience has the potential to be the difference between a mediocre story and a memorable one.

An Image Paints A Thousand Words

Speaking of images, photos play a vital role when you want to tell a story. It's about bringing your audience into the story with you. Be sure to take photos with good quality, the right lenses, the right positioning. You can take photos with any camera, but you want to make sure that the photos are in high resolution. Use good lighting, focus properly and avoid blurriness.

Upload your photo in high resolution, in colour. Don't be afraid to take risks with how you take your photos, sometimes they'll fail, but sometimes it will be your best success.

Important things to remember when taking photos is to be creative, but also to take them with purpose. You want to find the right balance between the two to get the best results.

If you don’t have and can’t get your own unique photos, and instead hop online to choose stock photos, be sure to pick images that truly represent what you’re trying to get across - it’s all about the ‘feel’. There are far too many generic stock photos being used that add little value and say nothing about you other than that you obviously used stock photos. There needs to be a genuine link to you and what you’re saying. After all, the photo is emphasising the story you’re telling. Your story. And therefore your brand.

Get Good At Storytelling

One of the more successful ways to stand out and succeed is through telling stories that relate to your readers (customers/clients). I highly recommend getting hold of “StoryBrand”, a book by Donald Miller. It’s a good read, engaging and easy to follow, and it will fill you with ideas and understanding. It’s available in many places, if like me you prefer to listen to a book while doing other things, you can also get it as an audio book through Audible. Check it out!

Intro

Storytelling is an ancient practice. It’s the internet Version 1 😀

It’s how as a species we have passed on lessons, rules, laws, and processes from generation to generation, tribe to tribe, place to place. Stories teach us, inspire us, and invoke our emotions.

“What does that have to do with marketing?” I hear you ask.

Effective storytelling is a powerful tool for any organisation or business. It creates a personal and relatable link between you and your customer. It creates a connection, and with that comes trust. Write an authentic story and your customers will want to keep coming back to you. Storytelling helps you to stand out from the competition.

As someone running a small business, I’ve always been fascinated by the ability of the internet to ‘level the playing field’. Boxing clever allows almost anyone to compete with billion-dollar multinationals. Reading this blog post, it’s likely you’re a small organisation too, perhaps wondering how to get ahead in a sea of competition. The good news is, you absolutely can!

Does that fill you with optimisim? That’s a micro-story right there.

Of course you’ll be familiar with storytelling elsewhere. It’s all around you, such as adverts with ‘personal’ stories (portrayed by actors, mind you 🤔), every movie you watch, and the guests on talk shows plugging their book.

Let’s go through some of the key elements that a great story needs.

Be relatable

What is it that the “main character” of your story shares with the reader? You’ll need to know your audience - who do you want/expect to read this story, how do they normally speak, what words & phrases are they used to, and will they understand any industry terms or acronyms you use? In other words, use their language about something that is familiar to them. What experience or aspect do you have in common so that your story specifically resonates and relates to them?

Identify the problem

Your story has a point, of course. Be clear about the problem, difficulty or need that underpins this story, and ensure that is one that your audience identifies with. Selling a robo-vac? Then the need is a clean floor without putting in time & effort. Outline the problem or obstacle faced by the main character, and take the reader through a journey to find the solution (probably YOUR solution).

How was the problem solved?

And finally, describe that solution. How it was implemented, the difference it made, and thoughts & feelings about the new situation. Did it all work out as planned and expected? Definitely stir the emotions here!

Storytelling fits into all sorts of different areas of marketing. Your “About Us” page is a great start - why is it that you do what you do, and how does that relate to your customers? If you run an email newsletter, that’s an excellent place for storytelling. Flyers, product/service webpages, TV & radio ads, wherever you’ve got the space & time to squeeze in a story.

So maybe take 15 minutes now for a quick review of your own marketing. Are there places where you could/should be storytelling?