Your brand story touches off a story in the mind of your audience that involves them and sets you apart as the only one they'll trust to solve their problem. But if that's true, why are so many stories lacking empathy, focus, values and seriousness? Today, we'll talk about these things as well as 4 areas your brand story will come up big.

Too many people are caught by surprise without any kind of brand story. Ask them what they do, and they give you a weird and confusing story about what they do with almost no indication of why they do it.

We wrote a post that goes over the creation of a brand story. But before you get started, let's talk about why you'd want it and how you'll use it.

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What’s a Brand Story?
Great brand stories do actual, real work. They give your hearer focus. If you can do that, you can take them down a path. And if your path makes sense, you might even use that valuable attention you got (read: earned) from them to offer your solution.

A brand story, like any story, needs tension. So usually there's some kind of problem that exists for your customer or client. The story needs characters and those characters have to make sense to the hearer. And it needs a solution that involves you.
Two Ways Your Brand Story Helps You
This is how you create consistency in the communication of your brand throughout your organization.
Deliver with Confidence
People who lack confidence fail to impress. But it's really a matter of trust than anything else. Because if you fail to impress, people may still like you. They may even feel sorry for you. But since everyone's dealing with their own issues, when they need someone to help, they're looking for someone strong, reliable, focused and dependable.

Your brand story, if delivered confidently, shows others they can trust you. It impresses them with the commitment you show toward good values and a real, actual plan to help others, not because you're out for cash, but because it's a way you can make money and help people based on your values.

The funny thing is, when you're the kind of leader, in the kind of brand, whose values reside not in the opinions of others, but in the fact that you live according to your values, it at the same time doesn't matter as much what they think, and, on the other hand, makes them more inclined to trust you. This opens the door for more opportunities for you to serve others.

Not because you need them, but because you live out a commitment to help.
Spur Interesting Conversations
Your clarity of goal -- your ability to know what you do, how you do it, and how it helps others -- captures the imaginations of other people, sometimes even reminding them of why they first started their business.

After all, most people don't go into business thinking "this is gonna suck, but at least I'll make some money." Usually, you have some pretty cool visions of what's possible. But then you get busy. And work starts to become transactional — a little more about getting the work done and getting paid than about feeling satisfied with your work.

But your brand story feels deeper, because it is. Your brand story is bursting with your "why," even when you don't directly talk about your values.

And when people think you're talking about their problem, and you really understand their problem, it shows that you get it. It also shows that it matters to you. And while lots of people can claim they care, when your concern is anchored in your deeply held values, then you become a real, viable solution to their problems. At that point, who else will they trust as much as they trust you?
When to Use Your Brand Story
There are a few things you do in business that provide amazing leverage. They're things with low investment, but extremely high long-term value. Your brand story is one of them. Here are a few ways your brand story pays off in the long run.
1) Pitching a Product

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