Rich Newsome
Gabriela’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mgabrieladpereira/
Gabriela’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/DIYMFA
Contrary to popular belief, marketing is not about a snappy slogan, fancy algorithms, or complex design. As someone who must champion your company’s message, your job is to craft a story, a narrative that engages your audience.
Brand storytelling is an immersive experience between your customers and your product, and the best way to unleash this marketing superpower is through a multi-dimensional approach, combining your brand’s identity and your customer’s journey.
Gabriela Pereira, Founder of DIY MFA, aims for the session to help you:
- Understand your customer’s journey, so you can position your product as the heroic solution to the obstacles they face.
- Identify your brand’s storytelling archetype so you can create a narrative that stays true to your core values.
- Use your market context to inform your storytelling, so you can rise above the competition.
Gabriela begins with the notion that ‘story is everywhere’, in every element of our lives. She compares a story structure to a ‘hub and spoke’ design where everything starts with a single point of entry.
In contrast, you have the ‘big bubble design’ story structure, which she compares to an amusement park, where the layout doesn’t match the story we expect.
With this image, we quickly learn that the ‘hub and spoke
Gabriella’s analogies closely link with research from Hasson et al. (200) that found that human’s brains are wired in such a way that responds well to stories.
Brand Story + Customer Journey
Step 1: identifying your brand’s storytelling power.
Step 2: If necessary, shift to fit the customer’s internal story.
Step 3: craft a compelling journey for the customer.
This relates directly to the customer’s journey when they start to use your website.
The storytelling Matrix
Your brand falls into this matrix.
Customer Story
If you build story into your narrative, you’ll align your brand story with customer expectations. Gabriella calls upon us to question how your customers identify themselves. Are they the underdog, disrupter, survivor or protector?
Your story telling will depend on how customers identify themselves.
Two Stories
In any online experience, there are two stories happening simultaneously: the customer story and the brand story.
One if the story you tell to your customers and the other is the story already happening in your customer’s minds.
All Characters Change
Gabriella emphasises the notion that characters undertake huge changes throughout their journey, and this is the same for your customers.
The Customer Journey
I’ve written about embedding a story structure into your writing before, and Gabriella also focusses on a beginning, middle and end.
The customer goes through this same journey. As a building products and construction company, your customer will be the architect or the specifier.
You need to establish the status quo so your audience has a context for change. If they don’t know where they are starting from, they have to way to measure progress.
Build a common vocabulary and set expectations for how you will communicate, establishing the ground rules.
If the customer doesn’t realise there’s a problem, they won’t look for a solution. In marketing terms, this is the problem. At this stage you emphasise the ‘why’.
Conclusion
Story is a powerful tool for your target audience to make a purchasing decision. At Insynth, we advocate a strong focus on content marketing and using stories to sell your brand.
If you’d like to talk to one of our content marketing experts on how we can create stories for building products and construction company, get in touch today.