What is website branding, and why does it matter?

Busi­ness­es today need a strong online pres­ence if they want to attract and retain customers.

One of the key com­po­nents to build­ing a suc­cess­ful online pres­ence, if not the most impor­tant, is web­site brand­ing. Busi­ness­es need to cre­ate unique iden­ti­ties for them­selves through design, con­tent, and mes­sag­ing if they’re to stand out from a crowd­ed mar­ket­place in today’s dig­i­tal age.

Web­site brand­ing mat­ters because it’s often the first point of con­tact between a busi­ness and its cus­tomers. Brand­ing can sig­nif­i­cant­ly influ­ence how cus­tomers per­ceive and inter­act with your brand, ulti­mate­ly impact­ing their deci­sion to pur­chase or engage with your business.

What is storytelling, and how does it relate to branding?

Sto­ry­telling is a pop­u­lar and effec­tive way of enhanc­ing brand­ing. While brand­ing always involves com­mu­ni­cat­ing brand val­ues, vision, and/or mis­sion, sto­ry­telling pro­vides nar­ra­tive tech­niques to ele­vate the effec­tive­ness of those messages.

If exe­cut­ed well, audi­ences will con­nect emo­tion­al­ly with the nar­ra­tive and under­stand and sym­pa­thise with the brand’s unique per­son­al­i­ty, cul­ture, and pur­pose. From there, audi­ences appear more engaged and loy­al, while brands appear more trust­wor­thy and stand out from the competition.

Brand sto­ries typ­i­cal­ly explain how, when, where, and why busi­ness­es were start­ed. Plus, they express the hoped-for future of the busi­ness, which is usu­al­ly an idea that con­sumers can get behind.

In this blog post, we’ll dis­cuss how you can incor­po­rate sto­ry­telling into your web­site brand­ing efforts and over­come some chal­lenges you might face along the way.

How can storytelling enhance website branding?

There are many ways sto­ry­telling can enhance your brand­ing. Here are five ben­e­fits you can achieve and how to obtain them:

1. Building emotional connections with customers

By giv­ing your audi­ence a rea­son to care about your brand (beyond just its prod­ucts or ser­vices), you can forge an emo­tion­al connection.

You can do this by shar­ing an emo­tive sto­ry that will res­onate with con­sumers, such as a home­grown busi­ness root­ed in hard­ship. Nowa­days, peo­ple are very con­cerned about the envi­ron­ment and inequal­i­ty, so any sup­port for caus­es like these can help cre­ate an emo­tion­al response too.

When peo­ple feel emo­tion­al­ly invest­ed in a brand, they’re more like­ly to become repeat cus­tomers and brand advo­cates. Their sense of empa­thy and loy­al­ty is what dri­ves engage­ment and sales, which is exact­ly what brand­ing sets out to achieve.

It might be that your skin­care brand was cre­at­ed by peo­ple who suf­fered great­ly from acne or that your Welling­ton boots com­pa­ny gives back to the pro­tec­tion of green spaces. Tap­ping into the caus­es that your tar­get audi­ence cares about will be cru­cial in craft­ing a believ­able and entic­ing brand story.

2. Enhancing brand recognition and differentiation

Brand sto­ries can help raise aware­ness by cap­tur­ing the atten­tion of audi­ences and gen­er­at­ing intrigue in a brand. When a brand’s sto­ry res­onates with cus­tomers, they’re much more like­ly to remem­ber it and seek it out in the future.

The key to achiev­ing this is hav­ing a sto­ry of gen­uine inter­est to your tar­get mar­ket and com­mu­ni­cat­ing it via eye-catch­ing design.

Fur­ther­more, a well-craft­ed brand nar­ra­tive can help dif­fer­en­ti­ate a busi­ness from its com­peti­tors by high­light­ing its unique qual­i­ties and val­ues. Today’s crowd­ed mar­ket­place means dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion is absolute­ly essen­tial for busi­ness­es to survive.

Brands can stand out from com­peti­tors by shar­ing a com­pelling and tru­ly unique brand sto­ry. Only then will cus­tomers remem­ber them and engage or return.

3. Increasing brand trust and credibility

Hav­ing access to a brand’s sto­ry can mean a lot to new leads. When they’re research­ing your prod­ucts or ser­vices, they want to under­stand more about your business.

So, it’s a good idea to give them some­thing to learn about your busi­ness from. Even hav­ing a brand sto­ry can demon­strate trans­paren­cy, which is essen­tial if you’re to come across as cred­i­ble and authentic.

But by being open about your brand’s his­to­ry, val­ues, and vision, you can show poten­tial cus­tomers that yours is a trust­wor­thy com­pa­ny with a per­son­al­i­ty and back­sto­ry of its own.

Did it take a few years for your busi­ness to take off? Men­tion it! Was there a bit of tri­al and error with prod­uct devel­op­ment in the ini­tial stages? Don’t shy away from say­ing so! Is the own­er from hum­ble begin­nings? Be honest!

The key to achiev­ing a trust­wor­thy brand image is to be believ­able. And believ­able sto­ries aren’t with­out their fail­ings or neg­a­tive moments. So, don’t shy away from being hon­est because a 100% pos­i­tive sto­ry with rain­bows and uni­corns isn’t real.

4. Creating a consistent brand message

Con­sis­tent mes­sag­ing is key to gen­er­at­ing engaged leads that recog­nise your brand.

Cre­at­ing a brand nar­ra­tive can help achieve this because it can influ­ence every part of your busi­ness, from mar­ket­ing, ads, con­tent, visu­als, social media, email, and web­site. With a strong sto­ry run­ning through each of these chan­nels, your brand can present a unit­ed front and strength­en its strat­e­gy from every touchpoint.

5. Enhancing customer loyalty

Once an emo­tion­al con­nec­tion has been forged, audi­ences begin to build a sort of rela­tion­ship with brands. Their emo­tion­al response trig­gers an invest­ment into your sto­ry, almost as if they were becom­ing part of that sto­ry. So, their pur­chas­es from your web­site and inter­ac­tions with your brand can be viewed as them tak­ing part in your sto­ry, influ­enc­ing it and merg­ing with it.

This is how brand loy­al­ty is cre­at­ed. Sto­ry­telling can help busi­ness­es com­mu­ni­cate their val­ues and per­son­al­i­ty to audi­ences, which they can relate to or not. Those leads that do res­onate with a brand sto­ry are the ones that will stick around. By tap­ping into the cul­ture and val­ues of cer­tain groups, busi­ness­es can devel­op sto­ries that res­onate with audi­ences and form the foun­da­tions of com­mit­ment and trust between brand and customer.

Sto­ry­telling can be used to fur­ther brand loy­al­ty, too, not just in the ini­tial phas­es of the buy­er’s jour­ney. Email mar­ket­ing can be a bril­liant tool to update cus­tomers on the brand’s evo­lu­tion, deep­en­ing their rela­tion­ship with it.

These fac­tors can lead to increased cus­tomer reten­tion and word-of-mouth mar­ket­ing, as loy­al cus­tomers are more like­ly to rec­om­mend a brand to their friends and family.

Best practices for brand storytelling

Before your busi­ness can achieve the ben­e­fits of brand sto­ry­telling, you’ll need to know how to exe­cute one suc­cess­ful­ly. Here are some tips for devel­op­ing an effec­tive story:

1. Define your brand story clearly

The first step is, of course, defin­ing your brand’s sto­ry – but it must be extreme­ly clear. It’s easy to waf­fle at this stage, but it’s essen­tial that you don’t.

• How, where, when, and why did your brand begin? The answers to these points will form the skele­ton of your story.
• Gen­er­ate ideas by brain­storm­ing words that relate to your brand. Is it fun or for­mal? Young or wise? Lux­u­ry or accessible?
• Next, con­sid­er what makes your brand unique, as this will sit cen­tre-stage in defin­ing your com­pa­ny against the rest in its niche.
• What val­ues and mis­sion do you want to com­mu­ni­cate to evoke emo­tion­al respons­es in your audience?
• What words and phras­es are linked to these val­ues? E.g., “green” for envi­ron­men­tal values.

Use the answers to these ques­tions to cre­ate a nar­ra­tive that reflects your brand’s unique iden­ti­ty and per­son­al­i­ty. You might want to enlist the help of a writer or mar­keter to per­fect the details.

2. Use visuals to enhance your story

Once you’ve defined your sto­ry, it’s time to make it visu­al and bring it to life. Visu­als such as images, videos, and graph­ics can be pow­er­ful ways to express your sto­ry, and you’ll like­ly use all of them across your dif­fer­ent channels.

Ensure the visu­al ele­ments you choose, such as colour, words, style, and font, are unit­ed with your brand val­ues. E.g., bright colours for a chil­dren’s toy brand.

Once you’ve devel­oped a design theme that aligns with your brand nar­ra­tive, use it con­sis­tent­ly to strength­en your mes­sag­ing across all chan­nels and at every stage of the sales funnel.

3. Tell your story

Once your brand sto­ry is ready to be shared, con­sid­er the ways in which you’ll dis­trib­ute it and engage your audi­ence. You might share your sto­ry in the fol­low­ing ways:

• Email mar­ket­ing
• Social media posts (e.g., LinkedIn, Instagram)
• Web­site pages
• YouTube videos

Sto­ry­telling can be exe­cut­ed in a range of ways across these channels:

• Col­lab­o­rat­ing with oth­er brands and influ­encers or part­ner­ing with a cause-relat­ed organ­i­sa­tion can help dis­trib­ute your brand sto­ry to a larg­er audience.
• If you want to cre­ate a com­mu­ni­ty around your brand, you might ask fol­low­ers for user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent (UGC).
• You might launch a mar­ket­ing cam­paign for a sub­scrip­tion ser­vice, invit­ing cus­tomers to engage with your brand while dis­trib­ut­ing your sto­ry via email.
• Some web­site ele­ments could be made interactive.
• You might offer spe­cial sales that match up with key dates in your brand sto­ry (e.g., the date the brand was formed or the own­er’s birthday).
• For more immer­sive sto­ry dis­tri­b­u­tion, you might like to try pod­casts, webi­na­rs, and vir­tu­al events.
• Those con­fi­dent in tech might con­sid­er util­is­ing new tech­nol­o­gy, such as aug­ment­ed real­i­ty (AR) or vir­tu­al real­i­ty (VR), to cre­ate immer­sive expe­ri­ences that bring your brand sto­ry to life.

If you want to focus your resources when you’re just get­ting start­ed, we’d rec­om­mend pick­ing just one or two of these dis­tri­b­u­tion meth­ods. The one you choose should be a chan­nel your audi­ence will most like­ly engage with, so make sure you do your mar­ket research.

Incor­po­rat­ing sto­ry­telling into web­site brand­ing takes time and effort, but the ben­e­fits can be sig­nif­i­cant. Cre­at­ing a trans­par­ent brand nar­ra­tive that res­onates with your cus­tomers can enhance your brand loy­al­ty and cred­i­bil­i­ty, dif­fer­en­ti­ate your brand from com­peti­tors, and cre­ate a mem­o­rable iden­ti­ty that stands out in the crowd­ed online marketplace.

Potential challenges of using storytelling in website branding

While sto­ry­telling can be a pow­er­ful brand­ing tool, there are some poten­tial chal­lenges to be aware of. Make sure you mit­i­gate against the fol­low­ing issues:

Finding the right story

Find­ing a sto­ry that res­onates with your cus­tomers can be chal­leng­ing. It requires a deep under­stand­ing of your tar­get audi­ence and the val­ues and emo­tions that will res­onate with them. This can be over­come with thor­ough mar­ket and con­sumer research.

Balancing creativity with authenticity

It’s impor­tant to be cre­ative and engag­ing with your sto­ry­telling, but you must also main­tain authen­tic­i­ty. If your brand sto­ry feels inau­then­tic or forced, cus­tomers will be able to sense it, and it may harm your brand rep­u­ta­tion. At the very least, you won’t have a sat­is­fy­ing engage­ment rate.

To main­tain authen­tic­i­ty, it’s essen­tial to stay true to your brand val­ues and mis­sion and avoid exag­ger­at­ing or embell­ish­ing your sto­ry or mis­rep­re­sent­ing facts and figures.

Consistency across platforms

To be effec­tive, your brand sto­ry needs to be con­sis­tent across all your web­site brand­ing efforts and oth­er mar­ket­ing chan­nels. Ensur­ing cohe­sion can be a chal­lenge, espe­cial­ly for larg­er organ­i­sa­tions with mul­ti­ple teams involved in brand­ing and mar­ket­ing. How­ev­er, it is pos­si­ble to inte­grate the sto­ry through­out the com­pa­ny over time.

Measuring the impact

Mea­sur­ing the impact of brand sto­ry­telling can be dif­fi­cult. It’s not always easy to quan­ti­fy the emo­tion­al con­nec­tions and brand loy­al­ty that it can cre­ate, and tra­di­tion­al met­rics like web­site traf­fic and sales may be swayed by oth­er efforts.

Nev­er­the­less, you can still gauge the effec­tive­ness of your strat­e­gy with the help of met­rics such as engage­ment rate, social media sen­ti­ment analy­sis, and cus­tomer feedback.

Avoiding cultural appropriation

Busi­ness­es will need to be sen­si­tive to cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion when cre­at­ing a brand sto­ry. Using sto­ries or ele­ments from a cul­ture that is not your own with­out prop­er under­stand­ing, respect, or per­mis­sion can be insen­si­tive and offen­sive to cus­tomers from that culture.

It’s impor­tant to do thor­ough research and seek expert guid­ance to avoid appro­pri­at­ing ele­ments from oth­er cultures.

Aware­ness of these poten­tial chal­lenges can help you to be more suc­cess­ful in your sto­ry­telling efforts. By tak­ing the time to devel­op a clear brand nar­ra­tive, stay­ing true to your brand val­ues and iden­ti­ty, and being con­sis­tent across all plat­forms, your busi­ness can over­come these chal­lenges and reap the ben­e­fits of storytelling!

If you’d like help devel­op­ing your brand’s sto­ry, the team here at pur­ple­plan­et would love to help! Fol­low the link below to learn more about our services.

Get in touch