Why writing a better brand story matters

The story you're telling is critical to your business's success. It's how potential customer understand you, remember you and tell their friends about you.

If your marketing is off or missing, those potential customers get confused and go elsewhere. Without a good story, current customers forget you, and word of mouth stops spreading. This directly impacts your bottom line.

When the story isn’t clear, customers don't pay attention. 

Creating a regular stream of new customers for your business will require the right marketing framework, strategy and collateral. All this can feel overwhelming because there is a lot to design and create.

And marketing can feel complicated. You didn't get a degree in it, and you probably don't write copy or dream up campaigns for fun. And you shouldn't have to. Running your business is enough work on its own.

We get it. You should be able to focus on growing your business. There is already plenty to do when you get up each day.

But how much is unclear messaging costing you? How many potential customers don’t immediately understand how your business can help them?

People don’t buy what they don’t understand. If your story is unclear, you’re leaving money and impact on the table.

How to write your brand story

Writing your brand story can seem like an overwhelming task, but it helps to followup a process and framework.

Clarifying your brand story is critical if you want to expand your reach.

Your brand story has a couple of parts, and we’ll walk you through them. 

Customer

It all starts with your customer. Who are they, and what are their goals?

You must get specific when identifying your customer. If you try to serve everyone, you will serve no one. 

People don’t buy what they don’t understand

Instead of thinking about all your possible customers, consider who your ideal customer is. Who is the customer you really want to help? Or asked in another way, if you could have one type of customer walk through the door day after day, who would they be?

You'll get business results from telling a compelling story and effectively executing the essentials.

Consider the example of a mentorship program. There are multiple characters (students, teachers, parents, administrators, volunteers, partners), but you can group some of these and still identify the ideal version of each.

• An elementary-age child struggling to keep pace in core areas like reading or math who comes from a low-income family and likely doesn’t have the resources to secure educational assistance on their own.
• A school with teachers and administrators open to partnering with outside individuals and organizations to provide additional support and services for their students. 
• Adults with a heart for helping kids and have the time and commitment to show up each week for a year. 

Identifying and describing your ideal customer can feel overwhelming at first. But with a little bit of framework to get you started, it can also be fun because this is likely the person you started your business to help. 

With a clear story to tell, you'll stand out in a crowded marketplace, and word of mouth will continue to grow.

Answering these questions will take you a long way to describing your ideal customer.

• What are their goals?
• What are the challenges they face? 
• What emotions do these challenges produce?
• If they could wave a wand and fix one priority problem, what would they choose?
• What’s their location? (if you can only serve a specific area like an HVAC company)
• What is their income?  (who can afford your service?)
• How complex are they or their problem?  (who are you best suited to help? ex: business coach whose best contribution is with companies making more than 2M and less than 50M
• What are their demographics relevant to the services you provide? (age, gender, family size, vocation…)

At the end of this process, you want to be clear on who your customer is and what matters to them. If you’ve been running your business for a while, you likely already know the answers to these questions. But writing them out creates the clarity you need to effectively focus your marketing and communication.

Business

Now that you’ve identified your ideal customer, it’s time to introduce yourself.

Answering just these three questions will go a long way to helping your customers understand who you are and how you can help them.

• Why do you care?
• Why should they trust you?
• Who’s on your team?

Why do you care? 

This is not the time to tell a long story about how you started the company. Tell a story of empathy and understanding. If you had a back injury that led to becoming a chiropractor, talk about that. 

Without a good story, current customers forget you, and word of mouth stops spreading.

Why should they trust you?

What are your credentials, expertise and track record? Customers want someone who can say, “I’ve seen this before, I can definitely help you get what you want.”

Who’s on your team?

People work with people. Introduce your team and have them answer the two questions above. Why do they care, and why should someone trust them to get the job done?

When things are unclear, most people don’t take action. 

Make it crystal clear how someone can do business with you. Just clearly stating the essentials goes a long way.

• What’s the process?
• How to start?
• What to do if they’re on the fence?

What’s the process?

Keep it simple. You only want 3-4 steps. You’re not explaining the details. You’re just orienting your customer to how it will work. Here’s our process for Better Story.

Better Story Marketing Plan

• Write your brand story.
• Integrate your story into a focused marketing strategy.
• Automate telling the story.

It’s pretty simple. There’s a ton more I could say about each step, but this isn’t the time for that. Most people equate information with control, and when they feel in control, they are more comfortable moving forward. 

You’re helping them feel confident to take the next step by making the process clear.

How to start?

If someone is ready to do business with you, make it easy. 

Your primary call to action, or CTA, might be as simple as a “buy now” button. Or it could be something like “make an appointment,” “apply today,” or “schedule a discovery call.”

If your story is unclear, you’re leaving money and impact on the table.

You want a clear, action-oriented option for the customer who is ready to buy.

What to do if they’re on the fence?

Not everyone is ready to buy in the moment. If someone isn’t ready, give them a reason to keep thinking about it.

Your secondary CTA should be free, packed with value and related to the service or product they are considering.

If you try to serve everyone, you will serve no one.

Here are two examples of secondary CTAs we’ve helped people create: one is a for-profit, and one is non-profit.

• Home HVAC checklist - an HVAC company
• A 30-day prayer journey - a ministry in Kenya

Your action plan doesn’t need to be complicated. In fact, it shouldn’t be. You want the steps and CTAs to be clear and compelling, making buying easy for your customers.

Transformation

If nothing changes from the beginning to the end of a story, then it probably wasn’t a very interesting story. There is something your customers want to be different that is driving them to do business with you. And you want to tell that story.

• How will their life be changed?
• What will be better?
• What pain will be avoided? 

This is not a time for manipulation but for honesty. If they don’t make a change, there are real consequences. 

When describing the transformation and what’s at stake, consider both their physical and emotional needs. How will their identity be changed, and what will be the impact on those around them, like their friends, family and community? 

When things are unclear, most people don’t take action.

You can speak to the impact both in the short-term and long-term. At the end of the day, you’re answering the question, “How is their life better?”

How a messaging framework helps you apply your brand story.

When we help small businesses and non-profits write their brand story, we always deliver a messaging framework that gives them the toolbox they need to write and speak about their organization.

The framework provides you with a collection of content elements you can adapt and use in many different contexts. You’ll draw from your messaging framework when creating or updating your website, creating content for social media, designing print or email promotional campaigns, writing customer service scripts and so much more. 

And that’s not even the best part. A well-designed messaging framework means you don’t have to do all that work. You can give the messaging framework to someone on your team or someone you hire to create content for you. 

Being confident in your messaging frees you up as a leader to empower others to design and create content that still speaks with your voice, tone and distinctives.

Are you ready to write your brand story? 

It takes time and intentionality to write a brand story that truly represents your business and resonates strongly with your ideal customer. This process can feel overwhelming or intimidating because most founders didn’t go to school for marketing and don’t write copy for fun. 

But it’s ok. We’ve been studying and practicing this stuff for years. We’ve helped solopreneurs, international organizations and many small business owners in between. 

We find most owners are extremely thankful to have someone facilitate the brand story creation sessions. It allows them to fully engage and speak into the story being told.

Those same owners are also relieved to have a team like ours take all the creative output of the session and codify it into a messaging framework. 

If you want us to work with your team to create a brand story that will allow you to connect and engage with your customers, then sign up for a focus session. We’ll talk through what’s involved and get it on the calendar. 

Once your brand story is written, the next steps are integrating it into a focused marketing strategy and automating your story to run on its own while you run the business.