Your marketing story is how your business came to be. It’s the reason why anyone should care that you exist. Your story should include your company’s culture, vision, passions, failures and advantages. It’s a transparent view into the people behind your business. A well-written marketing story can build precious client relationships, and an authentic one will bring your brand to life.
Follow these 8 steps to strengthen your marketing story:
1. Acknowledge your audience and where they congregate.
The key to advertising is getting the right information in front of the right audience. You can’t put together a powerful marketing story without having a clear target audience in mind. You need to be aware of your audience and be able to approach them on an appropriate level. To effectively engage your prospective customers, you need to know where your audience congregates, what they’re talking about, and how you’ll contribute to their conversations.
2. Evaluate your brand.
Is your brand relevant to your target audience? Is it consistent? To be truly relevant, your brand has to identify and meet the needs of your market. Focus on your company’s solutions to your customers’ pain points, how your product or service resolves problems, and the success that comes afterwards for them. Concentrate on one message and make sure it’s present in all of your marketing efforts. Your audience should connect with your marketing story on an emotional level.
3. Enhance your video marketing strategy.
Video is the future of content marketing. It’s also very easy to tell your marketing story with video. If you’ve already jumped on the video marketing bandwagon, don’t stop at just one… do a series! It’s more cost effective this way, and a few short videos will keep your audience engaged over a longer period of time. Videos can be spread across multiple platforms at once, and can reach your target audience more effectively than any other format.
4. Don’t stop improving your web presence.
These days, a strong online presence is crucial to a company’s success. Many companies put in a lot of time and effort into developing a new website, but don’t re-engage their creative partner after launching it. Unfortunately, this is a very common mistake. Schedule regular meetings with your creative agency and work with them to improve your content marketing strategy. Fresh content will attract new customers, keep your website up-to-date, and improve your SEO.
5. Establish your company’s persona.
Your brand is like a person with it’s own unique personality. Thinking of your brand as a person will make it easier to identify where your brand stands in its market in comparison to your competitors. Your brand’s characteristics will give consumers something to relate to. Customers are more likely to invest in a brand if it’s personality is similar to their own. Does your brand have a distinct personality based on your brand promise? If not, you need to transform your brand, so that it lives and breathes its persona.
6. Differentiate yourself.
Does your brand stand out from your competition? If we replaced your logo with a competitor’s (say on your website, or on your print collateral), would your customers know the difference? Is your design creative too generic? Are your messages too cliche and aren’t inspiring? A good way of knowing this is if you took your messages from one of those corporate posters from the 90s (you know, the ones with the sunset view that says “integrity” on top…). If you don’t have a unique brand, you’ll have no way of differentiating yourself from your competitors. Try to create a memorable and personalized experience when building your marketing story. Inspire your customers to connect with your brand in a real and human way. Stop following the crowd and start forging your own path!
7. Consider regular meetings with your creative agency.
You need to work with your personal trainer and keep going to the gym if you want to stay fit. There’s nothing different about working with a trusted partner who will help you with your brand in the long run. Solid marketing is born out of strong relationships where both the client and creative partner understands each other, and understands where you’re going. Meet with your creative agency on a regular basis to improve your marketing strategy and keep your brand moving forward.
8. Measure your results.
Are you just shotgunning your approach? Or are you being strategic and regularly measuring your conversions for success? Ask your creative partner about conversion tracking. Once you have it set up, you can keep an eye on some important statistics to help you measure the success of your campaign. Low conversion numbers could be the result of bad design choices, a low SEO ranking, or disinterested visitors.
Got a question for us? Drop us a line at 604.553.1081 or email us at [email protected].
