Brand storytelling: how to strengthen your brand with stories

Brand storytelling means turning who you are, why you started and how you help customers into a story, not a list of facts. A good brand story has a character, a problem and a result that people recognise. Try opening a bakery's story with a line such as "We started baking sourdough when we couldn't find a proper loaf nearby".

What is brand storytelling?

In practice, brand storytelling ties your company's history, philosophy, goals and values into one narrative your target audience can relate to. It's part of your branding, next to your name, your logo and the way your business looks.

You rarely tell the whole story in one go. It's a long series of smaller stories. You share them on your website, in your marketing campaigns, on social media and in your conversations with customers. Together they give your brand a personality and build an emotional connection with the people you want to reach.

Why is brand storytelling important?

Brand storytelling is important because it can make your business more memorable and help people connect with it. If you've ever sat through a presentation full of numbers without any context, you'll know how little of it stays with you. An advert with a character and a point of view you recognise works the other way. It can stay with you long after, even for a product you had no plans to buy.

A story can even change how people feel. In a study of children in hospital intensive care, some listened to a storyteller while others solved riddles. Afterwards, the children who heard stories had more oxytocin and less of the stress hormone cortisol in their saliva. They also reported less pain. It was a hospital study, not a marketing one, so take it as a hint of how strongly a story reaches people rather than proof that it sells.

For a small business, the payoff is practical. Customers remember you when they need what you sell, and they understand why you work the way you do. They also trust you more when your story matches what they experience as customers.

Brand storytelling examples

A small business can borrow the idea behind each of these three examples.

Innocent, a smoothie maker, started putting little knitted hats on its smoothie bottles in 2003. Thousands of volunteers knit and crochet the little hats, then send them to Innocent year after year. Today, Innocent still gives 30p to Age UK for every woolly-hatted bottle sold. The Big Knit, as Innocent calls it, is a community story that customers can take part in. You can borrow the idea on a smaller scale, for example by tying one of your products to a local cause.

Oatly's About page

Oatly, a Swedish oat drink company, shows what company storytelling with a sense of humour looks like. Its About page opens with its mission statement. Straight after, it admits it has been repeating that line for years, which is fine, since that's what a mission statement is for. After explaining why it makes oat drinks, it comes back, with a wink, to the same mission statement.

Many About pages are dry. Oatly's shows that a company page can have a voice of its own, and a little self-awareness keeps people reading. The facts underneath stay clear, which is what makes the humour work. What you can borrow is the tone: say plainly what you want to achieve, and let a little honesty about yourself show.

Lego's sustainability page

On Lego's website, the section on sustainability tells the company's progress on materials as a story in numbers. It starts in 2018, the year Lego first used a renewable material in its products: sugarcane from Brazil. It then moves to 2025, when 52% of the materials Lego bought for its bricks and elements came from recycled and renewable sources.

Each figure marks a step towards a goal, so the reader follows a journey instead of reading a report. You can do the same with your own milestones, even if they're much smaller.

Types of brand storytelling

Pick the types of brand storytelling below that fit what you do. They work just as well if you start a blog or run a website about something you love.

Your origin story

Your origin story explains how your business came to be. On your website, the story answers these questions:

• Why did you start the business?
• Who started it, and what did they do before?
• How did it happen, and what got in the way?
• What do you want the business to achieve?

Once your business is established, you can add the successes you've had and the obstacles you've overcome. If you get stuck on the first draft, write it as you would tell it to a new customer, then tidy it up.

A character who represents your brand

Character-driven storytelling means one character represents your brand. It can be a real person, such as you or someone from your team, or a fictional character or a mascot. Choose the character that fits your business, for example a mascot for a playful brand or your own face if you work as a consultant. When you use the same character in all your marketing channels, customers can start to link the character's personality with your brand.

Stories about your community

If your products or services do something good for a community, a neighbourhood or the environment, that is a story worth telling. If you make jam, try a line such as "Our jam is made from fallen fruit gathered around Manchester". A removal company could say that it moves your things by cargo bike. Show customers how your business contributes, with the real people and places involved.

Customer stories

Customer stories come from your satisfied customers, as a short testimonial or a longer case study. They show people who are still deciding that you live up to your marketing. They also add to your company's social proof.

If you run a dog hotel, for example, you could ask one of your regular guests' owners to take part in a short video. With the dog beside them, they tell viewers why they keep coming back.

Data stories

Numbers, graphs and data can tell a story too, once you show what they meant for a real customer. If you work as a freelancer in UX and UI design and several clients have sold more after your work, those results are your story. With your clients' permission, turn the figures into an infographic or a short video. Walk through the problem, the work and the result, rather than showing a graph on its own.

How to build your brand story: 5 tips

Apart from your origin story, most stories you tell work best with your customer at the centre. These five tips take you from research to a finished story.

1. Know your audience

Before you write anything, find out who you're talking to and what they need. The best way is to carry out market research. It shows you which problems you solve for your target audience, how you solve them and how your offer differs from your competitors'.

2. Make your customer the hero

Make your customer the hero of the story and your business the guide that helps them. Build the story in this order:

• Start with your customer as the character, someone your audience recognises.
• Describe the problem that stands in their way, the way they would describe it.
• Say plainly how you help them solve it.
• End with the result for your customer.

For the bakery, the character might be a parent who wants bread without additives. The problem is the supermarket loaves, and the result is a sourdough loaf the whole family eats. Put together, the story could read: "Sam wanted bread for the kids without a long list of additives, and the supermarket loaves went stale in two days. We bake our sourdough with flour, water and salt, and it stays fresh for days. Now it's the loaf Sam's whole family asks for." A few sentences like these are enough for a service page or a social post. Your About page can tell the longer version.

3. Be truthful and specific

Authenticity means that your story tells the truth about your company and your products. Readers should also sense there are people behind the logo. Empty words like "great", "top quality", "practical" or "sustainable" won't convince anyone on their own. Explain why the quality is high, and show how the customer uses the product in everyday life.

4. Find your own angle

Your competitors' websites are a good place to look for ideas. Once you start writing, though, add your own touch rather than repeating what everyone else in your market says. Standing out doesn't mean shocking people. Look for an angle only you can tell, such as how you started, where you work or who you work for.

5. Be consistent

Once you have your story, tell it in the same tone of voice wherever customers meet you. Your tone of voice is the way you write and speak to them. A character or a theme can help build lasting relationships with customers when it comes back again and again. You'll need to share practical information too, but the story and the tone stay the same.

Where to tell your brand story

Start with your website. Your About page is the natural home for your origin story, and the rest of the site can carry the same voice. A builder can show finished projects in each client's words to attract more clients to a construction business. A photographer can tell the story behind each series and sell photos online on the same site.

When you build your website, plan room for the story from the start, with an About page, service pages and space for customer stories.

Describe your business in a short chat and get a first version of your website. You decide what gets created and published.

Your story then works in almost any format. Start with the ones your customers already use:

• Tell the story in the text of your About page, your service pages and your product descriptions.
• Show how you work in short videos, or let a customer tell their story on camera.
• Use image series and infographics to show a change over time.
• Use blog posts for longer stories about how you work and what you've learned.
• Let customers hear the people behind the business in podcasts and webinars.
• Share small, frequent pieces of the bigger story in posts on social media.
• Tell stories in email marketing to people who have already chosen to hear from you.
• Try a comic if a playful style suits your brand.

In every format, show a person and what changed for them, rather than a list of features.

Questions about brand storytelling

Do you need brand storytelling services?

Usually not at the start. Begin with what you already know about your business, your customers and why you started. Agencies that offer storytelling for brands can help when you plan a larger campaign or a video production. They're also useful when you find it hard to see your own business from the outside.

What is the difference between a brand story and brand storytelling?

A brand story is what you tell: who you are, why you exist and how you help. Brand storytelling is how you tell it, through smaller stories on your website, in your campaigns and on social media. Your brand story changes slowly, while the stories change with each post or campaign.

Turn the five tips into your first draft

Start with one customer you helped. Write down who they were, the problem they had and how things changed, then read it aloud to check it sounds like you. If you don't have a website yet, create your website with the Aida AI Website Builder first. Then publish the story on your About page, and add the next customer's story when you have it.