If businesses want to gain a competitive advantage, they must be prepared to develop a brand narrative that resonates with their target audience. The University of West Alabama revealed that 92% of consumers want advertising to come in story form, with engaging and stunning images that will make an impact on a customer’s mind. In fact, 55% of consumers claimed that they are willing to make a purchase when they love a brand’s story.
But brand storytelling is not simply delivering messages to your target audience. It requires understanding your customers’ wants and needs so you can authentically connect with them and grow your business. This is what Donald Miller wants to convey in Building a StoryBrand. According to Miller, the secret behind every successful company is the strategy of making customers the hero of the story and not their brand. They do this by analyzing the real reason consumers make purchases and creating simplified brand messages that people can easily understand. Although this might seem like a lot of work, customer relationship management (CRM) tools can help you craft brand narratives effortlessly that put the spotlight on your customers and not on your products.
Here are three ways CRM solutions can assist with your brand narrative strategies:
Segmenting Customer Groups
An article by Matt Moran explained that 66% of consumers today expect brands to recognize their individual needs. Without the right software, performing this task is simply impossible in a short time. But with CRM tools, you can conveniently segment customer data into groups according to various characteristics, such as demographics and consumer activities. This will enable you to create defined customer profiles of your target audience and develop specialized messages to the preferences of your consumers.
You can use these tools with the sales report application we shared in our article on ‘Time-Saving Microsoft 365 Features’ since it breaks down important KPIs to improve performance and increase sales. Ultimately, CRM will help you streamline your marketing efforts, including your brand narrative, and get a better idea of what each of your target audiences prefers.
Listening to Conversations on Social Media
Knowing how your customers perceive your brand online is essential when developing your brand’s story. This is because social listening helps you understand conversations surrounding your brand on social media, allowing you to gain insights for improvement and gauge customer brand awareness. Because of this, Andrew Hutchinson shared that almost 61% of businesses today have an established social listening system and are using them to monitor keywords related to their brand.
With integrated CRM software, you can easily listen to and track conversations on topics relevant to you on various social media platforms. Using this information, you can create better and more personalized content online that will be relevant to your target customers. This will also enable you to build trust and brand loyalty since they will more likely remember your business.
Rebuilding Brand Image
Sometimes, your brand narrative may not effectively connect with your target audience. Instead of using the same ineffective approach, it’s better to rebuild your brand image to make it more relevant to your consumers. To do this, gather feedback to understand what consumers expect from you and which aspects of your businesses are not working out. Using CRM software, like Dynamics 365, you can effortlessly identify the relevant issues you need to resolve to craft an improved brand story. This is because CRM lets you collect customer data and analyze trends and patterns in consumer behavior that will be useful when rebuilding your brand image and story.
However, it would help if you didn’t rebrand without a justifiable reason. Most of the time, you’ll only need to rebrand when you’re targeting a new demographic or when your current mission or values are no longer aligned with your brand.
Rivka Jenken
