How Storytelling Can Help You Reconnect With Customers and Reinvigorate Your Business

By Janine Kurnoff and Lee Lazarus

With the economy opening back up, many small companies are asking what it’s going to take to transform their business to adapt to new consumer behaviors that McKinsey predicts have fundamentally changed forever.

What we know for sure, especially in times of crisis, is that storytelling—going all the way back to ancient drawings on a cave wall—is a uniquely human trait that we use to connect and create trusted communities. As you develop your plans to reinvigorate a business that may have been struggling lately, consider these four ways to leverage storytelling to help reconnect and rebuild trust with your most valuable customers.

How to use storytelling to reconnect with customers

1. Don't stop with storytelling, start “story-doing”

The pandemic only accelerated a growing shift in how consumers evaluate a brand from the traditional product/benefit/value equation to one around a brand’s perceived purpose. This expanding definition of purpose includes everything from a company’s sustainability and manufacturing practices to how they operate, treat their employees, and support local communities. In fact, 71% of consumers recently surveyed by Porter Novelli said they’d buy from a purpose-driven company over the alternative if cost and quality were equal.

The opportunity this presents, especially for businesses that serve local communities, is to consider incorporating purpose into the core of everything you do—and then do it. Consumers are looking for companies to take action before they communicate about it, and they’ll look for evidence of a company’s values on their website and social media pages, in their press communication, product packaging, and, yes, even how they show up as people.

Use the power of storytelling to advance your company’s purpose and put it into action, including the narrative you want your employees and customers to be saying about you.

2. Use stories to communicate why you are special

Think of the companies you admire the most. Chances are you can describe them in a few words.

How would you describe yours? Sometimes in our efforts to maintain and grow a business, we forget the core focus of our own story—the WHAT in the storyline that helps consumers understand WHY and HOW they should patronize our business.

The BIG Idea is the one thing you want your customers to remember. But in a world where we want to convey everything, communicating just one thing is sometimes easier said than done, right?

The key to developing your singular big idea is to walk in your customers’ shoes. Let’s face it, consumers today are inundated with marketing messages (over 10,000 per day!), and most will tune out anything that isn’t immediately relevant to them.

Understanding what makes your customers tick, their challenges, and what they’re possibly looking for from a company like yours (see tip #1 for one possible idea) holds the secret to finding this relevance and connection.

Maybe you’re all about customer service. Or you’re convenient (with free delivery). Or you have the broadest selection, the longest hours, the lowest prices. Discovering and communicating your WHAT becomes the mental bridge your customers need to help them navigate through the paradox of choice and choose you.

More articles from AllBusiness.com:

• Why Storytelling Is So Important for Successful Content Marketing
• Humanize Your Company With the Power of Storytelling
• The Art of Storytelling in Branding and Marketing
• 15 Essential Skills for Content Marketers—Do You Have Them?
• Once Upon a Brand: Learning the Art of Business Storytelling

3. Invite customers into your story through their mobile devices

Big box store, coffee chain, small independent boutique ... regardless of size, all are run by people from the neighborhood, and are a vital part of the local economy. With this community mindset, consumers are increasingly turning to their mobile devices to shop from local businesses (in fact, there was a 44% jump in growth just last year).

And now that they can do product research, check store inventories, buy online and pick up in store, or have beauty products, groceries, or even a new car delivered to their front door, there’s no going back. If you want to reach the post-pandemic local consumer, you need to reach and connect with them through mobile.

If you’re not there yet, don’t panic! Getting your business on mobile is as easy as setting up a free business profile on mobile platforms like Facebook and Instagram. User-friendly tools allow you to tell your business story, showcase products, store hours, locations, and with the help of third-party mobile shopping and delivery solutions, provide your customers with the ability to purchase products or services right from the palm of their hands.

Think of it as your new digital storefront, and an amazing opportunity to serve customers who want to share and connect with you on their smartphone. You can do this!

4. Transform your store into an immersive storytelling experience

Consumers are more than ready to get out and spend with local businesses. And despite the explosive growth of digital commerce, eight out of ten purchases are still happening at traditional brick-and-mortar businesses.

But, like everything else that has changed during the pandemic, the expectation consumers have about the role of things like retail stores and restaurants in the omnichannel mix is rapidly evolving. In what McKinsey recently dubbed the “phygital” (physical and digital at the same time) experience, most consumers are blurring the boundaries between offline and online.

If your customers are going online for the basics, including replenishing their supplies, having food delivered, or connecting with your service people, how can your offline physical business become an additive experience for them?

Many, like design strategist Kate Machtiger, are predicting that physical stores will become an escape and sensory retreat for consumers, where we touch, feel, smell, and experience a brand as a uniting and holistic storyline. Think Tesla being sold at Nordstrom, or the Nike concept store in New York City where consumers are literally immersed into the brand narrative, can design and fabricate their own shoes, and walk out with a completely personalized experience.

What would be the equivalent for your business, and how could you take your physical spaces and transform them into a showroom to tell your brand’s biggest and most important experiential stories?

Stories create purpose and drive action

Today, it's difficult to find a successful brand that doesn’t have a good story behind it. Stories provide meaning, create context, and communicate a sense of purpose. As we gear up for the new post-pandemic economy, use storytelling as your secret weapon to help connect and build trust with customers and drive your business forward.

RELATED: 6 Tips to Manage Media Relations in the Digital Age