What is a brand story, why do I need one… and how can I get one?

A brand story is a critical piece of any marketing strategy that communicates the mission and vision behind your business through storytelling. In short, it’s your “why”. Why did you start your business and why are you so passionate about what you do? Your brand story should give people a reason to believe in you.

Your goal is to show your target client you understand where they are coming from and that you’ve been there too; that could be struggling to plan their wedding, lacking motivation to hit a personal fitness goal, finding a makeup style that feels natural, eating healthy with limited time for cooking, connecting with their ideal client in order to grow their business.

By communicating your “why” you should be able to achieve these three things:

• Increase the perceived value of your business

• Gain loyalty and engagement from your ideal client

• Effectively communicate your vision and purpose

Step 1: Answer these 5 questions

I want to make writing your brand story easy, so we’re going to start off answering these questions.

• Why did you start your business?

• Why are you so passionate about what you do?

• What is your ideal client struggling with? (What’s their pain point?)

• How do you help solve this struggle?

• What does it feel like once you have that challenge solved? (How are you going to make your ideal client’s life better.)

By answering these questions you should have come up with some themes, or key topics. These are things you want to talk about often in your social media feeds. (You’ll probably find your answers to these questions make really great Instagram captions… hint. hint.)

Step 2: Write your “elevator pitch”

The next step is to summarise your brand story into more of an “elevator pitch” which answers the following:

• What is the pain point your ideal customer is struggling with?

• How can your business help solve this struggle? 

• What does it feel like to experience the transformation your business can offer?

Let me give you an example of my brand story for The Strategy Studio. 

“Most creative entrepreneurs have a vision for where they want to take their business but face roadblocks in trying to get there. These roadblocks can be from a lack of resources (time / money / manpower), confidence, objectivity, know-how or often sheer overwhelm; the feeling of drowning trying to do “all the things” while not achieving “any of the things”. I take a deep dive into creative businesses through Strategy Sessions to map out a manageable action plan, helping entrepreneurs bring their big ideas to life and run enjoyable, profitable businesses.”

• Pain Point = Roadblocks getting in the way of you achieving your business goals. 

• How I help = Strategy Sessions and making an action plan

• Transformation = You get to run an enjoyable and profitable business.

Okay! Now it’s your turn!

In the next post we’re going to talk about how to use your Brand Story in your marketing.