For contemporary brands to be successful in ecommerce, brand narrative needs to be genuine, community-driven, and scalable.
You, as a business, are responsible for creating and disseminating a brand narrative that people can relate to, and the most effective method to do this is through community-driven content.
While giving your marketing team useful information to repurpose in next efforts, this community focus in your brand storytelling has the potential to increase conversion rates. Storytelling in ecommerce can help businesses unlock massive potential when launching new products or starting new awareness campaigns.
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Brand Storytelling in Ecommerce Trends
In 2023, consumers will be looking for community-driven material that engages them emotionally, holds their interest, and explains how a good or service may directly benefit them.
The majority of ecommerce service providers, such as Kilowott, are aware of this, but they need to teach web store owners to find a scalable solution to develop a consistent brand story across numerous platforms.
Nowadays, consumers may consume media almost anywhere thanks to TikTok, podcasts, SMS marketing services, and other innovations in the digital sphere.
This tendency is supported by brand storytelling because stories may be told in a variety of ways.
Visual, vocal, and written communication of this type of content is possible through a variety of channels, such as social media and email.
By leveraging tales to produce advertising that connects with consumers and sticks because it places the customer at the center of the narrative, brands have the ability to stand out in a cluttered market.
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What Makes Good Brand Storytelling For Ecommerce?
Looking to create and distribute content that conveys the story of your company and community?
Think about these three suggestions at the very beginning of your campaign-planning process to appeal to 2023 customers.
1. Be Sincere With Your Offerings
Modern consumers are not duped by fake or imitation brands. Identifying your brand’s mission and values is the first step.
These values might not be unique to your business, but they should still be consistent with the online information you provide and your company’s mission and ethos.
Sharing user-generated content (UGC) from actual customers is arguably the most persuasive method to be authentic in brand storytelling.
Resharing such content to your business’s own channels expresses respect for your brand community and demonstrates to potential buyers how your products could benefit them in a similar way.
Consumers are continually posting positive experiences with companies and products on social media.
Pixlee TurnTo is used by companies to automatically gather, curate, and publish user-generated content (UGC) from delighted consumers across all of their marketing channels, from shoppable online galleries to social media posts highlighting these client tales.
This content strategy promotes trust and buy confidence in those who view it while requiring little effort from the brand side. Because of its emphasis on the community and narrative features, UGC is 35% more remembered and 50% more trustworthy than other media.
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2. Actively Learn About Your Customers
The best people to create brand tales are consumers. Customers should be able to relate to your brand and feel an emotional connection to you.
What do they find interesting? What kind of knowledge thrills them most, and why? What could you offer that your competitors aren’t offering?
Spending time communicating with your target audience on the platforms where they are most engaged is one method to learn about them.
Leading companies use social listening to monitor who is discussing them or their industry and to better understand their client base.
You can use this tactic to find possible brand ambassadors or supporters for upcoming storytelling efforts.
With this focused information, your marketing and e-commerce teams can successfully raise brand recognition.
The place and type of material your ideal client likes to connect with, as well as the optimal times to publish and interact with them on social media, should all be known to you.
You’re more likely to see an increase in success metrics like time spent on site and conversion rate if you use storytelling to demonstrate to customers how your products or services specifically cater to them because you’re interacting with a targeted audience who is more likely to relate to your content.
3. Place Your Customer at the Heart of the Narrative
Making the product or service the main character in your story is one of the biggest marketing mistakes you can make.
You have a much better chance of attracting and converting customers into brand advocates by making the customer the protagonist and responding to their wants and desires.
Consider resharing the experiences of customers in your community in addition to including how they talk about your business in your marketing approach.
4. Appeal to Your Audience’s Emotions
It’s important to tell a tale that entertains, inspires, and/or educates customers since they want to enjoy interacting with brand material.
Consumers are motivated to invest in a brand by emotional appeals contained in its messaging and content.
People tend to trust other people who are similar to them, and user-generated content (UGC) and ratings and reviews elicit an emotional response that makes your client feel more a part of your company.
A detailed video of a person is not necessary for content to arouse emotion; it can take many different forms.
By describing the measures it is taking in real-time to become carbon neutral in social media posts and on-site, Delta constantly communicates its own brand story around sustainability.
Once a business has successfully used emotion to capture a portion of its intended audience, it must maintain its hold by telling an engaging and simple to understand tale.
There’s a reason why TikTok’s “story time” trend is so well-liked; users pique viewers’ interest from the beginning of the tale and maintain it through to the conclusion.
Brand social media and other marketing content can also benefit from this same way of thinking.
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Content Types That Tell a Brand Story
Use real people’s experiences as the foundation for your stories when you’re ready to begin conveying the story of your brand, whether it be on social media, your website, emails, or another medium.
This demonstrates to potential customers that you share their concerns and cherish your local community. The product will then start to sell.
The story of your brand may be told using a variety of community-led content formats across a number of platforms and marketing touchpoints.
User-Generated Content (UGC)
As was already said, UGC is a very effective yet underused strategy for brands trying to tell their stories.
These tales personalize your brand community and act as a form of social proof for potential buyers.
Without the proper technology in your toolkit, it can be challenging to source, obtain permission for, share, and evaluate the impact of UGC on your marketing channels like social and on-site content.
Leading companies like Nixon, Puma, and Radio Flyer rely on Pixlee TurnTo to scalably source top-notch UGC and automatically fill their social media feeds and website displays with user-generated content that is guided by a narrative.
Each piece of user-generated content (UGC) featured on Radio Flyer tells a different tale of satisfied customers using the company’s products with their children.
On the brand’s website, these postings may also be purchased, fusing brand storytelling with a simple purchasing process. Radio Flyer saw a 7X boost in conversion rate as a result of implementing UGC on-site.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing and creative collaborations, in addition to user-generated content and reviews, offer a useful opportunity to practice brand storytelling while highlighting a real person.
Influencers may help you grow and engage your online audience by posting their own experiences about working with your company on social media and by resharing that material on your own channels.
To find out what seasoned influencers from the Pixlee TurnTo Creator Network desire from brand relationships, get our free 2022 Influencer Trend Report.
It is in your business’s best interest to expand your approach to influencer marketing with the appropriate technology in order to both find more diverse influencers that are in line with your brand values and manage campaigns with those you end up partnering with.
Brands may find future influencers within their existing fan bases using Pixlee TurnTo’s influencer marketing solution. They can also manage their connections with current influencers and track specific metrics to determine the effectiveness of their campaigns and content.
In order to identify which influencers are the ideal candidates for your collaboration, brands may even link particular revenue to influencer content to see what’s effective and what isn’t.
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Employee Content
Consider sharing your brand’s narrative through original material created by your workers to take user-generated content a step further.
This could take the form of behind-the-scenes videos that illustrate how your product is manufactured, material that demonstrates how your team members utilize your product in their daily life, or information about the values and mission of your business.
Delta routinely features team members like pilots and flight attendants to provide its consumers an inside peek at the individuals that fuel the firm in addition to providing UGC and influencer content on Instagram.
This gives team members an excellent platform to communicate their passions with customers and makes them feel more a part of your brand.
Ratings & Reviews
Reviews and ratings play a crucial role in brand storytelling, particularly when it comes to the content of e-commerce websites. Even a few real-world client testimonials can persuade consumers to add your goods to their shopping carts.
Similar to this, community Q&A and checkout comments provide customers extra chances to discuss their justifications for buying and personal experiences with your company or product.
Prioritize post-purchase communication as soon as customers have purchased and received your products in order to get thorough feedback.
Think about expanding your text-based consumer feedback’s reach outside your website. When Converse used Pixlee TurnTo-powered Ratings & Reviews for popular products in a campaign, email open rates and engagement increased.
In closing
How you create tales in your content can have a significant positive impact on your company.
Showing your community how your brand may have a beneficial effect on their life will inspire and inform them.
As a result, people begin promoting your company’s name and goods or services, and it goes without saying that word-of-mouth advertising is the most effective strategy available.
Building a following of brand supporters requires effort and time. This includes offering regular content to consumers that is valuable and enhances the user experience. Your ecommerce strategy will be more effective if you incorporate these marketing aspects into your brand story.
This will also help you attract more clients and make more sales. Need help with an end-to-end ecommerce solution for your product or service? Let’s talk!!!
