Build Credibility by Telling Your Customers a Story

With so alive with companies operose to build their online bottom line, your business needs to find a way to stand out from the crowd. Not onliest so you can upping your prospect ' s attention but you besides have to manifest that you ' re a legitimate company.

Most online prospects are mistrustful thanks to they ' ve either heard or experienced firsthand how easy it is for a company to look authentic but ended up being disappointed. They also need assurance that whomever they do business with is not unrivaled a real company but that they are also going to deliver on their promises.

So how do you build credibility to prospective customers, especially when you ' re an online business?

You tell them a great, compelling story about your products or services.

By providing your customers with a case study, you tell them a story by showing them how your product or service specifically helped one of your customers solve a problem. It takes your prospects step - by - step through the process of what problem your customer was faced with, why it was crucial for them to find a solution, why they contacted you specifically, what your product or service did for them, and what the overall outcome was.

In addition, quotes from your customer as well as yourself will add verification and personality to the case study and will explain how the whole process worked and where things stand now. This gives your prospects a detailed account in your customer ' s own voice of how you helped them improve their business by solving a difficult problem.

Once you ' ve prepared the case study, you ' ll want to provide it to prospects as soon as possible. You can use it as part of a lead generation campaign and offer it as a free download on your website but make sure to collect contact information so you can follow - up with them later. The best way to do this is through an opt - in box on your site.

You may also want to distribute it to existing customers, especially those who haven ' t bought from you in a while. It will remind them of your company, show them you ' re a respectable business that cares about helping its customers, and you give them the opportunity to share it with others in their network.

Everyone loves a good story. Tell a compelling and interesting one that prospects will remember and soon you ' ll be known as a respectable company that cares about the success of its clients.

How to Use the Core Story Principle to Build Brand Value

What is a core story?

If your communication doesn ' t match up with your brand values, your stakeholders will not kumtux your brand ' s offering, and there will be a hole between your brand ' s outward facsimile and your company ' s internal individuality. Using a core story is a planned way of order your communication to create a consistent message about your brand.

Your core story is your central brand message and the basis of all your communication. The aim of using a core brand story is to close helping space there might be between your brand ' s over match and your company ' s internal ego and sometime residency your brand ' s value. The story should be relevant and appealing to all of your stakeholders, so they are strained to it and want to connect with you, your brand and your company.

What are the benefits of using a core story to communicate your brand values?

The benefits of using a core brand story include:

- A platform for basing the rest of your storytelling ( and other ) communication on, resulting in consistent communication of brand values

- An easy and efficient way of communicating your brand values and your company ' s mission and vision

- Stakeholders easily understanding and becoming drawn to connect with your brand values and company

- A way of aligning, enhancing and communicating your marketing and communication strategy

- A way of differentiating your brand and business and standing out from the competition

- A way of engaging your stakeholders in the brand story, resulting in more positive psychological co - creation and word of mouth

Where do you " find " your core story?

The most important criteria for your core brand story is that it must be authentic - either based on an authentic personal story ( like what motivated you to start your own company ), or an authentic problem ( like using fictional characters to illustrate the problem you are solving through your services ). A good start on a core brand story for a small company or solopreneur is why you got started in the first place, what your values are and what your mission is with your company - basically your about page on your website.

However, for bigger and / or older companies, more people have had an influence on the brand and have helped co - create the brand through interacting with it. Therefore, the bigger the company, the more stakeholders you want to involve before creating your story. Consumers, customers, employees and others can be involved in creating the story. Through listening to these stakeholder groups ' stories about their experiences with the brand ( for example customer reviews ), you can create an authentic co - created story that includes the internal culture and external experiences with the brand. Involving a lot of stakeholders in creating your core brand story will also be effective in lessening the gaps in external image and internal identity.

How do you use your core story to communicate your brand values?

Think of your core story as a way to direct the rest of your communication. The articles you retweet on Twitter, share on Facebook or LinkedIn are more valuable to your brand if they have something in common with it ( making retweeting web design articles more valuable if you are a web designer ). The blogposts you create should establish you as a form of expert in your field of service, in turn making your brand and service more valuable and attractive. Your goal should be to communicate valuable, meaningful and interesting messages about your brand, that your stakeholders can connect with. Basically, before communicating with your stakeholders, you want to make sure that your message is consistent with your story and brand values, so as not to confuse your stakeholders about your brand.

By the way

Fog, Budtz and Yakaboylu ( 2004 ) have written a whole book ( Storytelling - Branding in Practice ) about how to find and use your core brand story, written for larger companies.