Your brand story — the key to scaling your business.

An essential component of the human condition is the development and intermingling of personal stories alongside stories we engage with everyday. Archetypes are not a coincidence, but rather offer a clue as to how you may expertly leverage your brand story to achieve success.

Breaking down your business and brand story — your evolution, your ethos, your reason for being — into shareable and relatable components are the key. Your brand story can help your business scale.

The marketplace is flooded. Research estimates that the average American consumer is exposed to more than 4,000 ads and messages each day! This level of saturation makes it almost impossible to discern a product or service’s quality over another, or to really compare price against value.

Enter human emotions. Brand stories create affinity and recognition through emotion. By leveraging your genuine story and delivering it in digestible chunks and relatable ways, your business is able to stand out in a crowded landscape.

A brand story builds additional layers of connection beyond the products and services. These layers help shine light on the motivations, inspirations and vision that drive your business, creating a deeper connection and loyalty to your brand.

Your brand story is the piece that connects with your audience — let’s use it.

You’ve got a story to tell. It just needs to be captured, and messaged, in your content and communications to the market.

Good stories consider the audience — in brand storytelling, your target audience is paramount.

It’s vital that you truly know your target customer - who they are, what their needs are and why they buy. Put your customer in the center of your story.

Most products and services fill a gap — a need — in the marketplace. Be sure to talk to your customers to understand precisely what their issues are. Your story can showcase how you can help and why it’s important.

Once you understand your customers’ struggles, you can build a better mousetrap. You can ensure that your product or service effectively meets their needs, solves a problem and improves things. It’s what you do.

Remind your customers and prospects that you care about their needs and that your business exists to help and support them. Your brand ethos — what you stand for, your mission, vision and values — should be part of your story.

Make the customer journey as easy and painless as possible. Make the process easy and clear. Your customer journey and supporting service principles should demonstrate why your brand is the preferred choice.

Go the extra mile to follow up, to thank them, to remind them of your value. Showing your customer who you are, how you care and that they can count on you.

To truly connect with your audience, your brand must make an emotional connection. Whether you are a B2B or B2C business, the people behind the decision to do business with you — or your competitors — are all humans. Humans, with emotions.