Why a company’s narrative drives its business success?

Storytelling conveys purpose and businesses with purpose are noticed and win the loyalty of consumers.

So it’s not enough to have a product or service that solves a problem — your company needs to stand out.

We have discussed the reasons as to why storytelling is important below.

Business development-

When you come up with an idea for your business there will be a story behind it — whether it’s to do with developing a new product or growing your business. Tell this story and provide the context so your customers and stakeholders understand why your service or product is worth buying/investing in.

Your idea has been created to solve a problem so tell the story of how you were affected by this problem and how this led to your product/service.

Ensure that you’re making the story relatable to the audience by using real-life situations as this makes it easier to see why your goods will add value to their lives.

Using storytelling in this way helps the audience to connect with you so they trust you, the human, and therefore they trust the brand.

This is especially the case when the story is very relatable, which also has the added benefit of being easier to understand and more memorable as it’s personally relevant — the audience can see themselves as the character in the story.

Competitive advantage-

There is so much information that consumers are exposed to so it’s easy for a business to be lost in the noise. A business may be selling something that is better than its competitors but decision-making is more emotional than logical so telling a story can help distinguish your company from competitors.

Maintains attention and increases understanding-

Simply, stories are very engaging. Whether you are using a story in a pitch, an advert etc, you are less likely to lose your audience’s attention. This is why public speakers frequently begin presentations with stories.

Stories are also highly structured forms of communication so they help with the audience’s understanding.

Marketing and advertising-

Storytelling can form a powerful marketing strategy — people want to connect with brands and businesses and the best adverts do this by, again being relatable, or evoking emotions, such as the John Lewis adverts in the UK or this Budweiser advert. Advertising needs to be more than cheap tactics, such as using sex appeal.

A good brand campaign should also be transparent so consider telling people what the business struggle was and how you pulled through (known as a monomyth story). This will lead the audience to care about you and consequently your product or service.

Ensure that you keep this story consistent across all mediums e.g. adverts, social medical, your website, your employees etc. You want your audience to understand your vision and a consistent brand story will do this.

Increases employee efficiency and engagement-

Employees are the heart of the business, they are the company’s best asset and a business only succeeds when its employees do.

You can cultivate the right culture at work by using storytelling. This goes beyond sharing a successful vision, instead share stories about the company’s history, its struggles, its values, aims etc. Share what’s important with your employees and explain what this means for them. This will give them something to believe in and consequently they will believe in the company and their motivation to work will increase.

You are essentially giving your employees a greater sense of purpose and meaning by making them part of the company’s wider story. Further develop this by allowing your employees to share their own stories.

Decision-making-

People look for stories to make decisions, for example, when you think about buying a product you look at reviews which are essentially stories and not just facts and features. This is the same for looking at businesses — when people think “why should I get involved with this business?” they are trying to think of the reasons so they look for stories.

Each business needs to use storytelling to answer the simple question of “why should people care?”, whether they are targeting customers, potential employees or stakeholders.

Humanizing a brand and increasing profit-

The most successful companies have deep and thoughtful stories behind them that stir a sense of larger purpose and meaning into what they do, such as Google and Apple who are not just businesses — they are brands made by visionaries who wanted to transform the world. If your business has a vision that audiences can believe and buy into then you are more likely to be successful.

So use storytelling to show your company’s empathetic nature as this is more likely to lead to your company’s success.

Due to social media people can now directly engage with brands by asking questions and sharing their thoughts and feelings as though the brand is a person. Tell a good story so you show your company’s personality and humanity — don’t just become a faceless company that consumers feel unconnected from and uninspired to interact with and buy from.