Storytelling is essential when it comes to branding.
Without a story, your brand won’t stand out and you’ll look like everyone else.
When you have a story, people are more likely to remember who you are and what you have to offer.
Storytelling in branding can have an emotional impact on your clients, and while you tell your story, you’re also telling them important facts about your business.
You may have an amazing story, but you might not be telling it right.
You can tell your story just through your design and it can be very easy to understand.
For example, look at the branding below.
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Today we’re going to cover 5 essential elements of storytelling in branding that you need to know about.
Let’s do it!
1. Know Your Audience
You know you have an amazing, effective brand story when you can impact your audience in all stages of their customer journey.
One of the greatest ways you can find out who your audience is through the use of research.
So who is your core demographic?
You can answer this is a few different ways, but two ways specifically are obtaining customer data using the browser and purchase history to track preferences, and also by asking your followers directly on your social media.
The reason why it’s so important to know your audience is because you’re designing for them.
You need to know who you are trying to reach because design is not one-size-fits-all.
Once you know who your audience is, you’ll know what style to go for.
2. Find Your Style and Be Authentic
Once you know your audience, it’s time to determine your style.
You don’t need to fit into the mold and be like everyone else.
You need to be authentic, true to yourself, and relevant to your product.
A few questions you can ask yourself before figuring out your style are:
- Why does my brand exist?
- What problems do I help people solve?
- What do I do differently than my competitors?
- What obstacles have we overcome as a brand?
Once you start answering some of these questions, you can start designing.
3. Be Consistent
You’ve heard it been said before, “Consistency is key”.
Having consistent branding is going to be crucial in your brand recognition.
You can’t have half of your branding be neutral, flat design and minimalistic, and the other half neon and 3-D.
It just doesn’t work.
Your branding needs to be aesthetic and should be consistent over all platforms.
Once you create a consistent branding style that works for you, people will begin to recognize your brand subconsciously.
4. Build Your Character
In order to have effective brand storytelling, you have to build a brand character that your audience will be able to relate to.
You have to be approachable by your audience.
The way that you can build character for your brand is by using a language that your audience would use, so that you’re relatable.
So if you are approaching a younger, fun generation, then maybe use terminology they understand and create fun memes to post on social media, talk to them like they’re as your friends, etc.
You could create cool and colorful visuals that they would be happy to share.
And the opposite would be true for a more formal branding approach. If you’re a large corporation, then use more formal language and more elegant and sleek visuals.
Create the character that reflects your brand and try to reach your audience at the level they’re at.
Be true to yourself and your brand, because people can see right through a pretend character.
5. Find Your Competitors, Then Do Better
My final piece of advice definitely sounds a bit harsh, but find your competitors, research their branding, see what you like and dislike about what they’ve done, then do better.
You need to prove yourself to your audience and tell them why they should use your services and buy your product, instead of buying your competitor’s products.
What makes you different? What makes you stand out?
Answer those questions throughout your website through your design.
So, see what your competition is doing, do it better.
Do it for yourself.
Your product deserves the attention of others and you’ll get that through great storytelling in your branding.
We hope you found these 5 tips helpful and that you’ll have a great time finding clever ways to implement your story into your branding.
And as always,
Stay safe and stay creative, folks!
