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How Brand Storytelling Increases Revenue [Case Study]

Every wonder how brand storytelling can impact the success of your business? Or how to share your story in a way that attracts your dream clients? Tune in to my personal case study on how I've used storytelling to build a 6-figure business.

How Brand Storytelling Increases Revenue [Case Study]

BY MICHELLE KNIGHT

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Today, on the blog we are bringing it back to storytelling. Our focus at Brandmerry is on branding and marketing and how storytelling plays a crucial role in every single aspect of running your online business.

In some recent episodes of the Brandmerry Podcast, we've started to dive in and talk about the principles of storytelling.

In fact, episode five was all about the three key factors for telling better stories in your marketing.

Then in episode six, we talked about writing your ‘About Me’ page, which is one of the first pages that I recommend my audience write because it's a really great practice in writing your brand story.

Today I want to share with you a case study that just so happens to be my story.

They often say that sometimes you are the best example, right? That sometimes your story is the best connection piece.

My intention in sharing this with you is that you can look in with your marketing lens and listen to the story, pay attention to how I'm structuring the story, pay attention to where I'm connecting with my audience, offering value, offering education, and offering inspiration.

You're going to get an opportunity to hear my story and then you're also going to have an opportunity to dissect it and figure out how you can improve yours when it comes to your marketing.

Now, this particular example is pulled from my free on-demand training, the Build a Better Brand Method.

In this free training, I share multiple facets of the branding process. I talk about the six phases of what I call the Better Brand Method. This is the same method I teach inside of my program You! Branded. We also dissect storytelling, and I offer up this case study, which we’ll get to in just a minute.

We talk about your ideal customer. I offer advice for getting core information about your ideal customer that will improve your branding and ultimately your marketing, and we jump into messaging.

So this is a small piece of that on-demand training. If you haven't listened to that training yet, you could head to betterbrandmethod.com and get signed up after you listen in to this.

Brand Storytelling: Case Study

I want to share with you how I've used storytelling from the very beginning of my business, once I figured out this whole branding thing, and how I've used that to create over half a million dollars in cash revenue and become a digital nomad.

I spent eight months building a website and a “brand”.

In the beginning, I honestly didn't do the work. I struggled for eight months to brand myself and to sign a single client.

It's not that I wasn't doing things. I was doing things. Many of you are also doing things, but not the branding work.

I spent a lot of time building a website. I had a logo, I chose my colors. I chose my font. I had a Facebook group back in the day. I had all the backend ready to go. My client onboarding, my emails, all of those different things.

I was also showing up online. I was on Facebook almost daily. I was slowly trying to grow my email list. I was showing up in other people's groups. I was posting on social media. I was doing “the things.”

But as you guessed it, I was not profitable.

I didn't make any money. Then right when I was getting ready to leave my 9 to 5, I had a moment where I was like “I'm going to scrap the whole thing and I'm going to rebuild it.” And that's when I accidentally implemented what is now my six-part framework.

All of that started from my story, every single piece.

So let's take a glimpse into what that process actually looked like with storytelling.

So at first, my story allowed me to rediscover my strengths and my mission, my values and my authentic voice. So I already had some good content to start showing up with because I could start sharing these things with my audience. It was a small audience of like 15 people, but you know what? There were 15 people!!!

Then storytelling helped me get to know my ideal customer on a more intimate level. This was very important because I was able to then create stories that would resonate with them and where they were on their journey.

From this, I was able to determine how I wanted my audience to feel, tie in that emotional piece, because I knew who they were and I knew who I was.

Then I rebuilt my website. I rewrote all my copy. I updated all of my visuals. Redid the entire website that took me eight months in just one week because of these pieces that I had already implemented with my story.

Then I worked on really refining my message.

I didn't have testimonials at the time.

I hadn't had a client.

So I used my story to connect more deeply with my small audience. I started showing up, I started sharing more about the things that were happening in my life. I started talking about the power of storytelling. I started to share my mistakes with branding.

I just kept showing up, but I knew who my audience was this time. Before I was guessing. Now I had done the work and I knew who they were so I could craft my messages for them.

People started to notice.

The same audience I had before began to take action and the only thing that changed was what happened on my end.

My clarity on who I was, who I was serving, and the connection.

Within three months of having my new solid brand built, I made $15,000 in my business.

Then I booked out my one-on-one.

Then I made $100k within a year.

Now here's what I want you to notice. My email list size did not change.

I still had about 15 people on my email list. In fact, the first $20,000 that I made in my business, $15,000 was within those first three months, and then I signed another client at the beginning of January the next year.

That first $20,000 in my business came from those initial 15 people.

They weren't new people.

I was showing up in a different way.
I was connecting more deeply.
I understood who they were.
My offer didn't change either. I could just message it better.

All that changed was my brand clarity and my approach to communicating with them.

Sometimes it's as simple as one sentence that they just hear differently.

I was able to do that because I had taken the time to really get in touch, not just only with my story, but their story.

Who the heck were they?
What were the struggles?
What were those desires?
What was standing in their way?

Storytelling plays a role in everything.

It plays a role in your specific niche and your selling position, and ultimately what you offer to solve your audience's problem.

It plays a role in how you communicate the benefit of your offer with your audience through brand messaging.

It plays a role in building a deeper, emotional connection with your audience, leading to more conversions.

It plays a role in showcasing your authenticity. 86% of consumers say that authenticity is a key factor when deciding what brands they like and support. Storytelling will help you stand out in a saturated or crowded market. It is in fact, the only thing that will.

Because again, you can have the exact same offer as somebody else. What makes you different?

Your story.
Your connection.

And storytelling will give you content to share when you are just starting out, that won't be a waste of time or energy, because it will be focused on building.

CONCLUSION

Your next step, to gain more information on the exact branding process I used and now teach my clients is to watch the Build a Better Brand Method training.

This on-demand training will give you the signature six-part framework, a look into the ideal client process, and my step-by-step process for building core brand messages in your business.

Watch it now at betterbrandmethod.com.