How To Boost Your Performance Marketing With Brand Storytelling

Most of your brand marketing effort is about getting you noticed and remembered. Your performance marketing is all about converting your aware audience into customers for your business or supporters for your charity. But just because someone is aware of you, it doesn't automatically mean they'll make a purchase or a donation. That's where storytelling comes in.

What are brand and performance marketing?

Brand marketing is just that, promotional marketing that elevates your brand, bringing it to wider attention and making sure it's memorable.

If people don't know about you, they can't buy from your business or give to your charity. If they don't remember you when it matters, their patronage will go elsewhere.

Brand marketing therefore includes, amongst other activities:

• Running awareness ads

• Securing media coverage with PR

• Posting organically on social media

Performance marketing, on the other hand, is all about converting aware audiences into customers and donors.

It generally involves things like pay-per-click or PPC ads on search engines, designed to be triggered by people when they're in a buying or giving frame of mind and searching specifically for what you sell or the cause you exist to help.

A key difference is that brand marketing is all about fostering the conditions for results over the long-term, whereas performance marketing is all about driving immediate action in the here-and-now.

Beyond awareness: the importance of showcasing your credentials to earn trust

OK, you've run some ads on Facebook that have reached 17,400 new people that had never heard of you before. Great work. Better still, you're using retargeting ads to stay in front of this newly acquired audience to help make sure you stay 'front of mind', recognising that people only buy when they have an established want or need, or that they'll only give to charity when sufficiently motivated by a particular cause.

But you're not getting the conversions you were hoping for with your performance marketing ads that are also being shown to the people in this newly aware audience.

What's wrong?

Is the creative not attention-grabbing enough? Maybe. The copy not compelling enough? Perhaps. The call-to-action or CTA not the right choice? Also a possibility.

But there's also a good chance that you haven't done enough to remove or at least reduce people's fear of buying or donating.

There's a world of difference between someone that's aware of and can recall your brand, and someone that is convinced of your bona fides and trusts you enough to give you their money.

You bridge this gap with elements of brand marketing that are there to showcase your credentials and make people see that they can rely on you.

And this is best achieved with storytelling in various forms.

Building belief in your brand with storytelling

The most successful brands all have something in common.

Not only have they invested in getting known about, they have invested in getting known for something.

It might be the quality of their products, their customer service, their inventiveness and innovation, or their results. Or any combination of these and other attributes, such as their brand values and ethics, and the personality of their brands.

This can all be done through these elements of brand marketing:

Content marketing
Sharing how-to guides, blogs, ebooks, presentations and other content that highlights knowledge

Sharing product specifications
Downloadable PDFs that don't just describe features but also point to the quality of materials used and official approvals

Case studies
Describing successes that showcase skills and capabilities but also achievements, backed by supportive comments from others that were involved

Customer reviews and testimonials
Promoting a dedicated page on your website full of comments from people singing your praises, and including star ratings and testimonials on product/service pages

Social media dialogue
As well as organic posts designed to just make people aware of your brand, use social media to form deeper connections through conversations

Email nurturing
Keeping in touch with people once they're in your email list, and using this direct communication channel to share the content described above

Using brand photography
Whether it's photos of your team, your premises, or the work you do, sharing brand photos on your website and social media helps create a human connection

Video interviews and explainers
Video is a great way to convey personality, knowledge and authority, from interviews with key personnel or filmed round tables with assembled experts

Events and webinars
Presenting to a captive audience, in person or online, is a great way to let people see what you're all about, giving you a platform to promote expertise and personality

Together, these components of brand marketing and others enable you to weave powerful brand stories that give people reasons to believe in you.

Now, given the choice between yours and a rival brand that hasn't done enough to convince them, people are more likely than not to pick your business or charity when presented with a choice.

How storytelling with brand marketing boosts your performance marketing efforts

Whenever any of us is considering buying from a business for the first time, or donating to a charity, we all have an instinctive fear that lurks at the back of our minds:

"Can I trust them to deliver?"

It's a real and ever present barrier to action.

If it were a mathematical equation, we'd express it something like this, or a similar equivalent for charities:

Sales = (Need + Solution of Best Fit) - Fear

Brand marketing that ensures people are able to recall your brand at the point of making a purchase, and that makes sure they have either been repeatedly exposed to your storytelling efforts or can easily find evidence of them when considering their buying decision, are more likely to proceed with a transaction because they feel they can trust you to deliver or that you'll make good if you can't. Even if it doesn't entirely overcome their fears, it will help to assuage them enough.

If you don't invest in giving people reasons to believe in your brand, then they're always going to choose an alternative which has when one is available.

The acid test to prove it:

You want a new smartphone, these three models all have comparable features and suit your budget, which one isn't even getting a look in?

Apple iPhone 15
Samsung Galaxy S24
Oppo Find X8 Pro

Exactly^*.

Key takeaways: telling your brand stories to showcase your credibility, earn trust, and boost performance marketing results

Getting noticed and remembered are crucial to success, but your brand marketing needs to go much further if you're to stand a chance of being picked when it matters.

1. Use brand storytelling in all its forms to help people get to know you, what you stand for, and that you're worthy of their consideration

2. Focus on highlighting your expertise, quality, customer service, responsiveness, and after care

3. Show off your people and your brand's personality, authenticity goes a long way

4. Draw attention to the postitive experiences of others, even when things haven't quite gone right at first

5. Above all, show you can be trusted to deliver, whether that's by supplying a reliable and quality product or service if you're a business, or by using donations wisely and to make a real difference if you're a charity.

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_{*This is not a reflection on the Oppo brand or its products, just that it's not a well known and trusted brand in the UK compared with frontrunners Apple and Samsung.}