Who should tell your brand’s story?

The one thing I love most about working in digital is that I always feel like we’re moving forward at a rapid rate. We work in an industry where innovation has become the norm. What our clients buy into this month we can often improve on three months down the line because we’ve learnt something new ourselves. Good digital marketers understand the landscape. Great digital marketers challenge it.

Marketers spent decades trying to understand consumers and more importantly how they react to advertising. Although the digital revolution has flipped everything we know on its head, there is one constant that stands strong no matter what medium we’re advertising on – great story telling will always be remembered. What changed in the digital world is how we get consumers to watch, to listen, and engage with brand stories. You see, the internet changed more than just the screen size and resolution of advertising content – it changed the way people receive it.

If I think back to when things changed it was probably around the time Google came into our lives. You see, the moment people were given the option to search for a review, an image, even an advert – it took the power away from the broadcaster and gave it to the receiver. Google did more than just develop a search engine; it changed the way people would engage with content forever. They opened the door to an entertainment source powered by the end-user.

We know that online consumers gravitate towards communities. They follow and talk to people they chose to associate with, people with similar interests, people they trust. They aren’t waiting for commercial breaks, they don’t read pages in order, and the truth is – they often see brands as the outsiders.

This brings me to my next point. One inspired by Scott Cook and the quote below. Brands shouldn’t stop telling great stories online, but maybe they should consider letting others write a few chapters in their book?

The traditional model of placing advertising ‘in the break’ isn’t what people remember online, think about your Facebook sidebar, can you remember the last advert you clicked on? Good digital marketers will understand this problem. Great digital marketers will challenge it – and ask what they need to do to be remembered.

Lets use the Motoring industry as an example. Are your consumers more likely to trust a sidebar advert highlighting your new SUV as the best car for moms, or a Facebook post that highlights a feature unique to the mommy blogger your audience already follows?

It’s time for brands to start moving away from the hero mentality, and start moving towards the community mentality. That means brands need to work with others to create conversations, with the people their consumers trust most – the people who influence their target market.

Online is a place where a brand, and its community combined, will tell its story. The key to this method is finding the right social influencers that already speak to your brands target audience. And ensuring that the stories you create for these influencers are truthful and relevant to their already established audiences.

Influencer marketing is no longer a trend. It’s a reality.

Brands need to trust others to share their story in their own tone, they need to embrace audience feedback and learn from the insights social influencers can give to their business. After all, if we’re not challenging our approach to online marketing, then we’re not innovating.