Keys to Writing Your Brand Story
By: Kimberly Grant
Connection. Conviction. Conversion. All three words are important to crafting a brand story in marketing. Even those these words sound like marketing terms thrown together to sound like an expert, they have a deeper meaning. These three words are the keys to start your brand story.
Connecting to Your People
A brand story should build an emotional connection with its audience (present and future). When a consumer connects with your brand, they’re more likely to engage with the brand and make a conversion. More on that in a second. For now, there are three ways to connect consumer emotions with your brand:
- How you started
- Staff experiences working for the brand
- Customer experiences
K. A. Grant Brand Story
As you can see above, I am the K. A. Grant brand. Since I am a writer and my own staff, I would probably do a combination of 1 and 2 above to connect with my audience. For example, I started my writing journey as an entertainment reporter who had high hopes of becoming a successful screenwriter. I wrote 10 screenplays and two short films. I even produced those two short films. Then, I realized that I hated all of the standing that is required when producing a film.
I almost gave up writing. At the time, my boyfriend was shipped to the Middle East by the US Navy and I found myself with a lot of time on my hands. To stay out of trouble, I decided to write my first novel. Fast forward six years later, and I’ve written 12 novels and two novellas, which lasted longer than my relationship.
My experiences working on my own brand have been eye opening. I’ve learned about the highs and lows of self-publishing, marketing myself, and inspiring others. While working to build my brand by myself, I’ve been humbled. I haven’t reached bestseller status, yet. At times, when I’m seriously humbled, I run into someone who wishes they could get out of their head and write their first book. To those people, I am an inspiration.
Convincing Your People to Pay Attention
Convincing someone to stop and pay attention to my brand is a different kind of story. Getting attention is always the easy part of any buyer’s journey. In order to connect with your audience and keep their attention, you have to tell people about the benefits of your product and why they should choose you. At this point, you’re just a brand, standing in front of a consumer, hoping that they like you. This is a good place to share your reasons to believe (RTBs). My RTBs include my 15 years of experience as an entertainment reporter, screenwriter, and novelist, as well as my bachelor degree in professional writing.
If you’re still not convinced to buy into my brand, I could tell you that my brand consists of me as a black female author who likes to tell stories about diverse characters who face moral and ethical choices. These choices will inform their fictional lives. These choices will lead them to a path of good or downright evil. Set in modern times with supernatural elements, my characters include angel/human hybrids, warrior angels, demons, and the regular humans who are impacted by their choices. I’ve also created a secret society of elites that operates in plain sight in the real world.
Converting Your People into Your Customers
Here comes the hardest, yet rewarding, part of storytelling in marketing: conversion. At this stage, you’re giving your audience a gentle nudge toward buying your product and hopefully talking about it favorably with others. In this stage of storytelling, you’re removing obstacles and using a call to action (CTA). My main call to action can be seen in my menu items: “Buy Novels”. You can get to my K. A. Grant Amazon author page by clicking the link, then adding the books to your Amazon shopping cart.
The best story I could tell you to get you to convert is that you can get my novels as digital downloads or in your warm hands as paperback editions; audio book versions are in the future. Not to mention, if you are a fan of science fiction/fantasy books, movies, and TV like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy, The Avengers, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. you’ll love my Order of the Slayers series. Not only do I write books about diverse characters, but my books pass the Bechdel Test for female empowerment and there’s a faith-based element for people looking for stories of overcoming adversity.
Finding Your Story
Now that you’ve read about my brand story in a nutshell, you have a better idea of crafting your own. It just takes a connection, a conviction, and a conversion to make it successful. Here’s another CTA for brand storytelling: Write. And, when you finish writing, write again. You can always fix your mistakes in post.
Interested in more posts about marketing yourself? You can read my latest post here.
