How To Tell Your Brand Story [Part One of Three]

One of the challenges I face as a brand developer is turning lorem ipsum into copy that converts my client’s leads into loyal customers. There’s either no copy at all, or too much of it. 

We have less than five seconds to capture a visitor’s attention. Whatever we say must be said in a way that ‘ends their user journey’ and drives them to action, instead of driving them away and to the next site. I read a dozen blog posts on the topic of ‘crafting your brand story,’ and they all say the same thing: 

• Understand your ‘why’. 
• Know your audience and solve their problem. 
• Keep it simple. 
• Do it like Apple, Nike, Coca Cola. 

That only helped a little. 

I still had no clear framework to use for my clients. The road map was missing. That elusive ‘step-by-step’ guide. A deeper dive led me to the book Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller.

The aha-moment was so enormous that I simply have to share the golden nuggets. The book has three sections, and my attempt to condense it into articles will be delivered in three instalments. 

First: sobering reasons why marketing strategies fail. 

Our brains are wired to survive and thrive above all else. Next comes our need for shelter, then our need to connect with others. All that Maslow stuff. This principal is valid regardless of language or culture: in terms of basic needs, the human brain operates the same all over the world.

Simply put: if your marketing message doesn’t explicitly land on your customer’s survive and thrive radar (whatever they need at the time) the message is lost. Survive and thrive may manifest as different needs to different audiences. It’s important that we understand our target customer. 

It takes calories to process information. The more complicated the message, the more calories needed. This explains why people ‘zone out’ when presented with information they consider too hard to process. In Miller’s words: it’s like trying to give your elevator pitch to someone while they’re jogging on a treadmill. 

Would they stay engaged for long? Not likely. If the message doesn’t present anything that satisfies their survive and thrive impulse, they’ll move onto the next site. 

The trick is to deliver your message in a way that doesn’t overwhelm your audience. That makes them want more. 

Why, with the supposed short attention span we have these days, do audiences still sit through three-hour movies without getting up once? Binge-watch series for days on end? Play video games all day? 

Story

Story is the “sense-making” device, allowing us to deliver a message without using too many of our audience’s calories. There’s much more to unpack in exactly how to define the elements of story so it relates to our brand and website.

In part two we’ll explore the real juice: the seven-step framework to creating a compelling brand story to captivate our audience and drive them into action. Stay tuned. 

Need help with your Brand Story?

Talk to me.