A lot of people think that stories don’t apply to their business or industry. The truth is, every brand has a story worth telling and how you tell it can be a critical factor toward a healthy brand sentiment, organic reach, and an overall higher conversion rate in sales. 

This post will explore ways in which you can creatively tell your own business story to help growth and will include examples of some businesses that are doing it best.  

You can learn on the go by creating an account on Piktochart and exploring the variety of templates it offers for presentations, reports, and infographics for your business.

Stories are so much more powerful than sharing statistics or other forms of communication. In fact, a study from Stanford University showed that stories are 22x more likely to be remembered than statistics alone. 44% of marketing leaders recognized storytelling as mandatory for success in 2019. 

There’s no denying good storytelling’s importance to businesses and their growth. But why does it have this effect? Well, Neuroscience confirms that 95% of our purchasing decision takes place subconsciously. Which leads businesses to question: How can we reach the subconscious? Through evoking emotions that access that part of the brain. 

Successful storytelling has the power to release cortisol (the stress chemical) or oxytocin (the feel-good chemical). Science shows that we make purchasing decisions based on emotions, and we justify our decisions with logic later. We know visual storytelling in sales is important, but how can we incorporate this science into telling the story of our business. 

If we evoke these subconscious emotions we can influence buying decisions before we’ve even introduced a product. In short, good stories have the power to chemically alter the brain’s mindset and create a subconscious positive business affinity which will help you to acquire customers online once you introduce a product to the market. 

#1 Let your staff tell your business story for you

When you develop a company culture that your staff truly believe in, you end up creating a team of brand ambassadors that tell your story for you. This form of telling your business story has an organic feel behind it and relies on strong culture-building tactics for it to flourish. 

It’s also not a one-off piece of content but something that is ever-green and constantly being added to over time. Daniel Dumig, New Business & Innovation Manager of ASICS, talks of the core principles any business needs in order to build an authentic company culture. He focuses on five core principles: 

• Happiness
• Strength 
• Mental Health 
• Community 
• Empathy 

He concludes that these principles need to be exemplified in leadership for them to cascade throughout the rest of the company. 

Examples of Business Storytelling through company culture

One business that has done this exceptionally well is Remote Year. Their leadership team hosts monthly, internal, Town Hall’s in which they celebrate members of staff that are living their core values: 

• Work-life flexibility 
• Community
• Being Present
• Global Perspective
• Dreaming
• Empathy. 

These values are not only rewarded within their business but promote lifestyles that glorify them. 

What’s the result?

Remote Year has it’s team travelling the world, living, breathing and having genuine conversations sharing the business’s core value. This generates an organic interest in not only working for the company but buying into the product as well. This is business storytelling done with true authenticity. 

In a time in which people are more and more reluctant to place their trust in brands, they turn to people. Hence the constant rise in influencer and micro-influencer marketing which was valued at $8 billion in 2019 and predicted to be valued at $15 billion by 2022. 

There’s no doubting the need for communities to be able relate to people rather than businesses. So, let your staff tell your business story for you, let consumers relate with them and in turn your business. You’ll build a sense of trust with your consumer that is unparalleled. 

#2 Tell your business story with empowering copy

Sometimes it’s good to just strip things back to basics and rely on powerful copy to tell your business story for you. Holded, the project management tool, has done exactly that with their “About us” page. They write: “We’re a young, dynamic team with dreams of creating the world’s best software.” Simple, powerful and engaging. 

They’ve managed to define their company culture and their mission within one sentence:

It may seem like a simple one-liner but Holded not only manages to solidify their mission but they also manage to place the customer first, in a playful way. Never underestimate the power of strong, concise copywriting and the wonders it can do tell help you tell your business story. 

If you need help with your copy, one option is Godot Media. They provide a copywriting service with the goal of increasing sales.

#3 Use a Twitter thread to tell your business story

Twitter is often an overlooked platform for many businesses. People just don’t consider that their demographic are sitting on Twitter and think there’s no point wasting time on placing efforts there. Twitter has around 330 Million monthly active users with the average user following around 5 businesses. 

If you think your audience is not on Twitter, then think again. It could be an avenue to a whole new market that you’ve overlooked. 

What’s a Twitter thread?

The chances are you already know what a Twitter thread is. But, just in case… It’s basically a series of tweets that are connected. It’s a fantastic ongoing resource that you can build on and a person only needs to find one tweet, for them to be connected with every other tweet within that thread. 

A Twitter thread enables you to churn out longer pieces of content over a series of bitesize snippets, rather than your tweets being lost in the crowd and having to repeat yourself to make sure you’ve been heard. 

Examples of great Twitter threads that tell stories

Twitter threads can go two ways, educate or entertain. Either way, they can be fine examples of storytelling and should certainly be a place for you to consider telling your own business story. Remember, a business story doesn’t have to be a linear timeline of events, it can also help to convey the overall style, mindset and quirkiness of your business. 

@Innocent tells their business story every day with the attitude and authenticity of their tweets. Check out their Twitter thread below, promoting their dairy free milk range. 

The thread goes on as they reply to most people questioning their use of custard and perfectly encapsulates their playful nature alongside granting more and more exposure to their Dairy Free Range.

#4 Tell your business story with visual blogs

Blogs and articles are still one of the most popular content marketing strategies to date. With 70-80% of search engine users solely focusing on organic results and ignoring ads, it’s vital that your blogging strategy is at the top of its game. 

That being said and bringing science back into the equation 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual and the brain process visuals 60,000X faster than any text. Our copy can get us to rank, but it’s the overall presentation that keeps a visitor on your page and keeps them engaged. 

Get visual with your blogging efforts. Visual storytelling can really help to bring your business story to life. Want to display your growth numbers in an engaging way, consider using infographics in your blog content, turn quotes into shareable social snippets and scatter your blog content with visuals that enrich it and are not merely there to break up the text. 

Create beautiful infographics for your blog using Piktochart’s online infographic maker. Sign up for free.

#5 Use video to tell your business story

Video content marketing can really boost your audience reach as well as your business sentiment. Visual and audio triggers play a hugely influential way in how we feel. Emotional contagion is triggered by visuals and means we reflect the emotions of others we see on screen. With video storytelling, we can couple this with neural coupling, which is when our brain reflects the emotions someone is talking about or with. 

Think about watching a film, or reading a good book and finding yourself holding your breath in times the lead character is going through great stress, mirroring their emotions with yours. There’s a science behind that. Now, think about how you can use this science to generate emotions that you want to elicit among your potential buyers. 

If you’re creating video content around your business that showcases and evokes feelings of warmth, calm and trust then there’s a high chance that, should you have an engaged viewer, they’ll feel the same. By means of association, the next time they see your brand or logo those feelings will be reignited and will generate a positive brand sentiment.

Examples of business storytelling with video

Casper

There can not be a better example of neural coupling than Casper. The mattress brand understands the psychology of sleep and is applying that to their marketing efforts. 

Head over to their Youtube channel and watch their video introducing you to the Casper: Sleep Channel. The narrator of the video uses ASMR like tactics to evoke a sleepy, calm nature from the viewer. 

This narration rings true the next time you see the brand logo and will evoke the same emotions again. What does this mean? When you’re drowsy, Casper comes to mind. Conveying who they are and what they do through the emotions you associate with them. 

NIKE

This is a fantastic example of emotional contagion. Not only is the video great storytelling at its core but it generates the exact feelings that Nike wants its consumers to feel when they think of the business. Watch it for yourself, feel empowered, inspired and like anything is possible. 

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