Stories are a powerful tool to help you connect with clients and engage employees. It’s likely you’ve already got your business backstory or origin story in place. You’ve probably even designed a series of values statements for internal and external use. But there are other stories marketers and internal communications managers should consider adding to their toolkits.
In this series, I’m exploring the different types of stories you can design to:
- share your successes
- connect to your audience
- celebrate your successes and
- engage your employees
Today’s installment covers the types of stories you can consider creating.
1. Start with an Origin Story
Your business’s origin story is a powerful tool that can help you build an emotional connection with your audience. Use it to showcase your values and mission, and to demonstrate how your business came to be.
- Ready to reveal who you truly are? Read the blog post: The perfect storytelling framework for purposeful brand origin stories.
- Check out my breakdown of Coyo’s Backstory – it’s one of my favourites.
2. Highlight Client Success Stories
Sharing stories of clients or customers who have achieved success using your products or services is a great way to show potential clients the value of what you offer. Use these stories as a marketing tool to demonstrate the benefits of your business’s offerings. For many years, I’ve written client stories and case studies for purposeful businesses.
- Not sure where to start? Read the blog post: Client Success Stories: How to overcome your fear and start writing!
- Read my client stories for Propeller Advisory.
3. Share Employee Stories
Sharing stories about your employees can help build a sense of community and pride within your company. Use these stories for internal communications and to showcase your business’s culture to potential employees.
- At Pitcher Partners, we designed a fantastic campaign called ‘Making Careers Personal’ to riff off the tagline of ‘Making Business Personal’. Download the stories I produced for Pitcher Partners’ recruitment campaign.
4. Tell the Story of Your Product or Service
The story of how your product or service was developed can be used to showcase your business’s innovation and expertise. Use it as a marketing tool to differentiate yourself from competitors.
- Feel the goosebumps with Google’s 2010 Super Bowl Commerical, Parisian Love. It’s not a search engine. It’s a love machine 😉
5. Craft a Brand Story
A brand story communicates your business’s values, personality, and mission. It’s a powerful tool for creating a consistent brand message across all marketing and communications channels.
- Discover the utterly delightful, personality-filled Good Pair Days Brand Story.
6. Share Your Social Responsibility Story
Sharing stories about your corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives can help to build a positive image and increase brand loyalty. Use them for marketing purposes and to boost employee morale. Make sure you know the pitfalls of greenwashing or socialwashing before you craft a CSR Story.
- Thankyou do a great job of telling their CSR impact stories through the people their profits and projects support. Read this story of the impact Thankyou had on Kalpana in Nepal.
Compelling stories can help you can engage your clients and employees, build brand loyalty, and differentiate yourself from competitors. You can start crafting or rewriting your stories at any time – whether you’re an established business or team, or going through a period of change and transition.
Follow this series over the next few weeks to learn more about crafting each story type above. Or, if you’d like to develop your stories with support from an experienced storytelling teacher, get in touch:Client
