#LoudIt: Want your small business to be seen and heard? Tell a story!
In a fast paced generation like ours, with everything and anything calling for our attention, the average human has an attention span of about eight seconds, it seems like business owners on the internet are screaming at us and we can’t hear them. The distraction is such an overload that one minute, you pick up your phone to do something and 20 minutes, you don’t know how you landed on the Instagram explore page.
The actively engaged internet audience no longer know who to listen to, because everything is competing for their attention. What does this mean for small businesses? you need to cut through the clutter by engaging the way your audience already loves to be connected with. How? by making your brand interesting enough to be heard amidst the noise. You might be wondering how brands effectively get into the minds of readers, I’ll let you in on a couple of ways to get that to happen for your small business.
The most effective way to reach, engage, and retain an audience is by telling meaningful stories that first connect and then appeals to their emotions. Your customers are already faced with the battle of living their own lives, your business is certainly the least on their minds, so why should your stories even matter in the first place? So you see, there is more work to do if you have to be top of mind for them.
Read Also: How much is right? How to fix prices in your small business.
No Rambling, No Jargons, No lies.
This is where the bigger brands get it right, let’s look at Coca-Cola’s campaign for their 1 liter PET bottle of Coke which they call Mama. It featured Tuface, and his family where a concept as basic as the family was used to tell a story of how the 1 liter pack can be used to unite the family and share intimate moments. What was the winning strategy? People love Tuface, people love love and people are always sold to any story that talks about the perfect family. Your business may not be able to afford a Tuface, but it matters that you tell stories that addresses what matters to people and their pain points. Ultimately paint the big picture for your brand, tell people what you stand for.
Your story should project the goods or services you offer, stating how people should feel after an interaction with your brand. Beautiful storytelling doesn’t focus on the product’s features, it focuses on the heart of the product. You must realize that in a world full of alternatives, nobody buys features of a product anymore, they buy how a product makes them feel. If you want to create real leverage for your small business on the online space, tell your story!
You should check out our Profitability Checklist to see how Triift Africa used real stories to help small businesses.
The secret to great brand storytelling starts with understanding why your business exists in the first place.
Read: More than just #PositiveVibesOnly. Your small business needs a #PositiveCashflow.
Elements of a well told story
Every step in your business is a story that should be told; the highs, lows, regrets, mistakes, challenges, and achievements; they might not be obvious and can usually be found in the most unlikely places. You can’t fake this so don’t even try to. Impressive brand stories are real human experiences of your brand served through the right channel, in your own voice which should create progressive questions in the mind of your customers like: Really? So what happened? How did you do that? How can I do that too?
However, you shouldn’t forget that only a brand with a personality can get customers emotionally attached. This is why we always say… “create a human brand, being human never gets old” Your brand is more than just a logo, it is a set of experiences unique to your business. Making your audience experience them as well leaves an imprint on the choices they make the next time they are at the shelf making a purchase decision or even evangelizing your product, that’s how to win at storytelling. So why have you not created a brand for your small business yet?
“Your brand story must create sufficient intrigue that it yanks your reader out of his routine” — Robert McKee.
Do you remember that Vicks advert that brought ‘Baba Blue’ into limelight some years back? Since we find the story line and plot twist hilarious yet brilliant, we think you should take a look at it too, oldie but a goldie.
What story can you tell?
Storytelling is an ongoing process as long as your business breaths, it never ends. You can tell stories related to your brand, product, employees and more. As a business, you must understand that people are your greatest assets so give them content that make them feel important rather than shoving your products in their faces on a daily. Apart from stories that concern your brand, you might want to consider stories like customer testimonials. When a customer says something nice about you, share it, people would trust and get to do more business with you when they see that other people trust you. This is the reason why we check for the ratings of online stores before we buy from them, it is classic peer pressure; “what are other people saying about this vendor?”. Customer testimonials are considered the most effective content marketing tactics, identified by 89% of B2B marketers.
You should read our story on how we started Triift Africa.
Storytelling is not a one way street, respond to people, this is not a megaphone effect, it is a conversation, get to know your customers, care for people online as much as they care for you, keep it genuine at every twist and turn. Get some brand storytelling ideas here.
We should talk some more, but we leave you with this; at Triift Africa, we provide access to low interest loans for your small business, increase your profit, track your costs and provide you with resources for a better understanding of your business finance. Sign up for our next online business finance class here, Will you?
We would also love to keep in touch with you. Send Triift Africa a DM on Instagram or Tweet at us. We’re also on Facebook and you can send a mail to hello@triift.com, we are always happy to listen and help!
Before you get started with sharing your brand’s story, let’s get this post 50 claps, shall we? Exhaust it on, you can’t deny we’ve done a good job putting this together for you.
