In marketing, good e-book design isn’t just about making something pretty; it’s about enhancing your viewer’s experience with your content. When you turn a boring cover into a stunning calling card, or a cluttered layout into a visual treat, or a confusing data set into an elegant visualization, you make it that much easier to grab—and, most importantly, keep—your audience’s attention.
We love it when we see brands from all industries up their e-book game by applying A+ design, and we think seeing others’ good work can inspire you too. That’s why we’ve rounded up some of the most standout examples of e-book design we’ve seen lately.
7 Excellent Examples of E-Book Design
If you’re facing an e-book design project and need a little inspiration, we have just what you need. Here are seven great takes on e-book design from both B2B and B2C brands.
We’re suckers for a bold visual, and this e-book cover hits the mark for several reasons.
It’s a clever theme, demonstrating that LinkedIn has the literal secret sauce (bonus points for making it the only bottle with a label).
Its clean photography really pops, especially compared to most of the boring covers in the B2B space.
It reflects LinkedIn’s brand identity via their signature bright blue (a visual differentiator).
When you’re looking to make an impact, a visually arresting cover is the way to do it in an instant.
Note: While a cover is incredibly important, maintaining a design aesthetic throughout all of your content is equally as important. LinkedIn decided to promote the e-book by creating an infographic, which also carries the same visual theme. A+ all around.
Tip: Make sure your e-book design reflects your brand identity. To make it easier for content creators to replicate, find out how tocraft a strong brand’s style guide.
Gathering data is a crucial part of a marketer’s job, but you can feel like you’re lost in the weeds. Terminus does an excellent job of translating this metaphor into an exciting adventure guide. From the people and animals to the maps and trails, this interactive e-book is a perfect example of how a little creativity can drastically enhance a viewer’s experience. By giving it this unique twist, learning how to gather data feels like an exciting adventure—not a dull chore.
Tip: It’s easy to come up with obvious visual metaphors (e.g., lightbulb = idea), but challenge yourself to come up with a visual theme that is both relevant and interesting.
This is a perfect example of super creative e-book design for a subject that can be notoriously, well, boring. This interactive e-book is an explosion of color, pattern, and surprising imagery that is totally unexpected. From a screaming bear to a soda-drinking cat, it takes Internet meme aesthetic to a whole new level while delving into the ins and outs of B2B content marketing. We love an eye-catching interactive, and this brings the best of animation and information together in one easy-to-navigate package.
Tip: Since you don’t have to be literal in your metaphors, think about the real message you’re trying to deliver. Ceros wanted to prove that B2B doesn’t have to be boring, so they created a totally surprising and whimsical e-book design to prove just that.
Not all e-books have to be interactive adventures. Unbabel’s thoroughly entertaining PDF e-book proves you can make a big impression without a ton of bells and whistles. Its bright and bold color palette, playful illustrations, and beautiful typography make the subject matter that much more interesting. Whereas they could have taken the technical route, espousing their software benefits in a boring brochure, this technicolor approach generates excitement and curiosity about their offering. F yeah, Unbabel.
Any time a brand can transcend their product offering and show us who they are, it’s a win for brand storytelling. Feedzai is a perfect example of this. For an e-book about financial safety, which may seem rather droll, they do a good job of adding personality via people-centric illustrations (which feature a balance of genders and more than one skin tone—thank you).
Tip: Depicting diversity is crucial. Be mindful of who you’re representing through imagery (be it illustration or photography).
Good e-book design doesn’t mean you have to design a custom font, create hand-drawn illustrations, or conduct a 5-day photoshoot to get the best images. This guide makes great use of photography, typography, layout, and negative space to deliver the information in a straightforward, cohesive package. If you wanted proof that strong design can elevate even the simplest e-book, this is it.
Tip: If you don’t have a ton of design resources, simple typography treatments and callouts can do a lot to make content easily digestible.
Alright, so this one isn’t technically an e-book, but it is a clever piece of lead generation. You answer a few questions about what type of work you do, and this interactive guides you to the most relevant case study for you. This is a very clever way to create a personalized, guided experience through strong design. The Einstein character animation, the simple and clean navigation, and the brand colors make this a clearly branded experience.
Tip: Simple interactivity can make all of your content more engaging, whether it’s an e-book, guide, or questionnaire. If you’re curious to learn more, find out how to brainstorm great interactive content ideas.
How to Nail Your Own E-book Design
We want to see better e-book design in the world, so we’re always happy to share the tips we’ve learned from our own projects. If you’re looking for more tips to improve your e-books…
Blend’s digital platform streamlines the journey from application to close—for every banking product. For this project, Blend was specifically interested in a report that would explore the state of the industry as it relates to the application process for deposit accounts, the keys to a good process, and how institutions can best serve their customers.
However, this wasn’t a standard data design project. Before we could bring the data to life, we needed to get it. So we crafted custom criteria to outline the key factors you need to create a successful application experience and audited a list of 100 financial institutions (including banks and credit unions) to score each. Of course, the challenge with all data storytelling is identifying the most relevant information (aka the real story). Because the primary goal of the report was to help readers improve their own application practices, we focused on identifying industry trends and the most interesting insights to turn into relevant takeaways for the reader.
The result was a high-value piece of content that establishes Blend’s authority and expertise in the industry, and positions the brand as a trusted resource to their customers—a content marketing win-win.
5 Easy Ways to Turn Your Old E-Books Into Fresh Infographics
Content takes time, money, and resources to produce, which is why we believe you should get as much mileage as possible from anything you create—especially with cornerstone content like e-books. Unfortunately, marketers are usually sitting on an archive of great content that’s just gathering dust, either because it never had much traffic to begin with or because it’s been forgotten. This is a huge waste.
You can get a lot more from your existing assets by using them to create fresh content. This approach is called a divisible content strategy, and not only is it economical but it expands your reach, takes less work, and helps you promote other content, helping strengthen your entire content ecosystem.
One of the best ways to breathe new life into old content is to create infographics. Things like e-books, reports, guides, research, and surveys are filled with valuable information and interesting data insights that can be used to tell many different types of stories—and infographics can help bring those stories to life in unique ways.
5 Ways to Create Infographics
If you’re not sure what types of infographics to make from your e-books, here are some of our favorite ways to extract stories and come up with new ideas.
1) Expand on a Topic
E-books and reports are full of valuable information, but they can only cover so much on a given topic. By exploring a related subject or doing a deeper dive into a single topic, you can create an interesting infographic that educates your reader—and encourages them to learn more by checking out the original e-book. Pro tip: Comb through the sidebars or callouts in your e-books or reports—those are often great subjects to explore.
Example: To promote their What DDoS Attacks Really Cost Businesses survey, we helped Incapsula create an infographic on the anatomy of a DDOS attack. While the survey covered how the issue affects businesses, it didn’t precisely explain how these attacks happen. Creating this infographic allowed Incapsula to further educate people while promoting the survey.
2) Create a How-To
People are always eager to learn something, and if you can provide them with practical information that makes their lives easier, they will love you for it. Turning your best tips and tutorials from e-books or other cornerstone content into compelling infographics is a great way to provide value—in a highly shareable format.
Example: We partnered with LinkedIn to create a fun infographic that offered tips on how to create a great marketing machine. The infographic was used to promote the brand’s e-book, The Marketing Skills Handbook, which included many more great tips.
3) Summarize a Chapter or Topic
Infographics are an effective form of storytelling because they help people process information visually, making them a great way to communicate concepts that may be complex orchallenging to explain. Also, not everyone has the time to dive into an e-book or research report. Creating a condensed infographic version that includes the most important, interesting, or relevant information provides a great service.
Example: Education company Course Hero is dedicated to helping people learn online, so we partnered with them to create a series of infographics that summarize famous works of literature. These infographics are useful study materials for busy students, helping them learn in less time.
4) Find a News Angle
Newsjacking can be a great tactic to give older content new relevance, as long as it’s done appropriately. (Follow these tips to make sure you do it the right way.) Think about the trending topics in your industry or in the larger media landscape. Do you have data that might shed light on an industry trend? Is there a social tie-in that might make your content more interesting?
Example: To promote their Definitive Guide to Digital Advertising, we helped Marketo create an infographic on the “Mad Men” of the millenium, showing the major trends that define today’s marketing landscape—contrasted with those of the Mad Men era. Thanks to the popularity of the show, it was an interesting, unique, and relevant angle that helped Marketo join the conversation in an organic way. It was also picked up by Ad Week, helping Marketo expand their reach.
5) Tell a Surprising Story
Data and research often contain interesting, unique, or surprising insights and discoveries that tell a very interesting story. Turning that type of information into a compelling infographic is an easy way to repurpose content and get more attention.
Example: We helped High Five craft an infographic based on their 2015 Workplace Culture and Communication Report.The story revealed the negative effect that tech has on the workplace—a surprising take that is relevant to people in all industries.
How to Make a Truly Great Infographic
Coming up with a strong infographic idea is just the first step. Once you’re ready to start creating that infographic, you must follow best practices at every stage of the process. To ensure your infographic is as successful as possible, follow these tips to nail everything from copywriting to promotion.
How to Make E-Book Templates to Create E-books Faster
Providing people with high-quality, comprehensive content is a great way to build relationships, increase leads, improve SEO, and more. That’s why e-books are such a valuable tool for marketers. The problem is they are also one of the more difficult pieces of content to produce. From copywriting to e-book design, it can take a lot of time and energy to create something of quality. But there are always ways to work smarter, not harder. And we’re always on the hunt for the best tools, tips, and tricks to make your life easier. So let’s talk about one of the easiest ways to create quality e-books in less time: e-book templates. If you are a brand that produces a lot of e-books (or wants to), templates will change your life.
The Benefits of Custom E-Book Templates
When some people hear the word “template,” they think of a ‘90s PowerPoint slide. But well-designed templates don’t turn your content into a boring brochure. They are an efficient way to create content that is:
On-brand: An e-book design template is designed around your visual language, including fonts, colors, logos, etc. You don’t have to get approval from an art director, and you can be confident that you’re producing something that always reflects your brand.
Consistent: If you look through your archive, you will probably notice your e-book design reflects a range of styles and design aesthetics. This is problematic if you’re trying to build an instantly identifiable brand (and who isn’t?). Whether you’re working with a freelancer, an agency, or an in-house designer, templates ensure that everything you do will have a cohesive feel.
Easy to replicate: Building an e-book design from scratch takes a ton of time. But you can reduce that time tremendously with a comprehensive template. You just pick and choose the elements you need, then plug your content in. This makes it easy for novice designers (or even marketers) to create something of quality with a quick turnaround.
Economical: If you don’t have to create a brand-new design every time, you can reduce costs while increasing your output. That gives you a higher ROI for every e-book you create.
So, how do you create these magical templates?
How to Build E-Book Templates
We know marketing teams are usually overloaded, especially designers. But remember that a little bit of work up front can save you a ton of time down the road—and make designers’ lives a lot easier. If your team doesn’t have the time, you might consider using a content agency (or baking templates into an engagement you already have). But if you’re going to DIY it, here’s the simple 3-step process to create an intuitive visual design system that anyone can use.
1) Go Through Your Existing E-Books
You might only have a handful of e-books, or you might have a huge archive (in which case you can choose, say, 10). Go through each to identify the common elements that you will need to build into your e-book design template. The goal is to build something that works for any e-book subject, so it should be comprehensive and scalable.
This might include things like:
Cover design
Data visualization (charts and graphs)
Illustrations
Diagrams
Sidebars
Callouts and pullquotes
Images/captions
Chapter breaks
Headers/subheads
Iconography
Identify the most common design elements in your e-books.
To turn your visual system into a practical guide, build out your design files, providing mockups of actual pages that reflect best practices. (If you already have an e-book design that works well, you might adapt it to the guidelines.) Examples:
The important thing is to offer clear explanations and visual examples of everything. Whoever picks it up, whether a freelancer or in-house designer, should be able to understand it and replicate it without asking questions.
Look for More Ways Template Can Improve Content Creation
There are always ways to improve how you do things, so think about how templates might help in other areas of content marketing, including:
Infographic templates
Interactive templates
Social templates
Reporting templates
Ad templates
We know that not everyone has the resources to tackle design templates, though. If you need a little help or someone to help lighten your content load, holler at us.
Interactive E-book: The Content Marketer’s Guide to Brand Video
If you don’t have video in your content mix, you’re missing out. It’s simpler to make than ever, and people really want to see it. (A 2014 Levels Beyond survey found that 51% of millennials would rather watch a video than read.) Now is definitely the time to dive in.
But we know you might be a little intimidated (or overwhelmed) to start, and you probably have a lot of questions. We’re here to help.
Our new interactive e-book, The Content Marketer’s Guide to Brand Video, covers everything (seriously, everything) you’ve ever wanted to know about brand video but were too shy to ask, including:
Why are humans biologically wired for video?
How can brands use video to deliver a strong message?
What makes a truly great brand video?
How do you measure the ROI of video?
What does it take to produce video?
How should you act on set?
It’s all there, plus great data, pro tips, and great examples of brand video. We also made it interactive so you can skip to the stuff you want to know—and bookmark it when you want to come back. Click below to check it out now.
And if there’s anything we didn’t answer, we’d be happy to chat.
6 Easy Fixes to Makeover Your E-book Design
How’s your latest e-book doing? How’s your oldest e-book doing? Have downloads dipped? It’s frustrating, we know, but sometimes a few quick tweaks to your e-book design can really improve your readers’ experience, making them more eager to consume your content and connect with your brand. If the content in your e-book is gold, but people are tapping out before they get to page 2, consider how a makeover might help.
Does Your E-book Design Need a Makeover?
Design integrity has a lot to do with how content quality is perceived. First, print out your latest e-book. Take a critical look at what’s in front of you:
What catches your eye?
How does it flow?
What do you feel when you look at it?
These gut reactions and first impressions are what your reader probably experiences, too. We hate to see you give off the wrong impression, so we’re here to help. All it takes is a little creativity to turn a blah design into something beautiful. Here are 6 ways to do it.
1) Choose a Theme
The problem: Your design is totally generic or all over the place, mixing clashing styles, imagery, and visual metaphors right and left.
The fix: E-books are awesome because they give you a nice creative canvas to tell your story. The best, most effective e-books deliver a single story, and use every element of design to support it. Choose a single theme or concept to ground the design, then use your creativity to bring it to life.
2) Rehab Your Cover
The problem: The cover is the first thing people see, but too often marketers miss the mark. The most common mistakes: too cluttered, no imagery, irrelevant imagery, boring typography, generic design.
The fix: Let your content be the guide. Use high-quality imagery to catch the reader’s eye and draw them in. The cover should match the content theme and infuse a little brand personality into it. There should also be an intuitive grid-based layout and logical header hierarchy so that everything is clear at a glance.
3) Add Personality with Imagery
The problem: Your e-book looks like a PowerPoint: generic templates, boring iconography, etc.
The fix: Consider both the tone of the content and your brand personality. The images you use should help cultivate a feeling that supports your message. Is your e-book about employee collaboration? Let’s see people working together. Is it about increasing revenue? Let’s see some tasteful data visualization.
4) Condense and Trim Down Copy
The problem: Someone got a little carried away in trying to build suspense, so you have to flip through 5 pages of “teaser” content before you get to the meat of a section. Conversely, they packed so much in that you’re facing a cluttered mess on each page.
The fix: Know two things: Negative space is your friend, and pages should be used economically. While chapter breaks may deserve their own page, condense content to deliver the message efficiently. Oftentimes this means trimming down content on a page. Removing an extraneous pullquote or sidebar can make a huge difference. Also look for opportunities to let design do the heavy lifting. A paragraph explaining a process can be visualized in a single diagram. A stat in a callout can be turned into a chart. These are great ways to break up the text. 5) Kill the Visual Junk
The problem: Some designers hear the word “visualize” and go nuts, packing every page with illustrations, photos, charts, or iconography.
The fix: Look critically at every visual element. Ask yourself:
Does this enhance the story? Things like illustrations are often added arbitrarily without much thought.
Can it be condensed? Data visualization can sometimes make things even more confusing if, say, you’re trying to compare three bar charts when a single grouped bar chart would do it better.
Does it make sense? This is especially true for icons, which can be far too abstract to represent anything meaningful.
If the answer isn’t yes, say bye.
In addition visual elements, colors can sometimes overwhelm. A helpful tip: Use 1-2 main colors and 2-3 accent colors.
6) Tame Your Typography
The problem: There are so many fonts and sizes it looks like a teenager’s notebook. The fix: Limit the number of type styles (the combination of kerning, leading, point size, etc.) to create consistency and harmony. Also, don’t use more than 2 typefaces, and do follow a grid. For more of our tips on great e-book design, here are a few posts you might like:
If you need an expert to help you out, let’s chat.
Free E-Book – How to Maximize Publishing with Microcontent
Content marketing is all about diversity: high-value evergreen content that informs, mixed with high-impact, real-time content to bring awareness to your brand. But content marketers are often pulled in every direction, tasked with creating a high volume of content to fill each bucket while ensuring that every piece feeds long-term brand goals.
With limited resources and ever-increasing demands, how do you create content that is economical and impactful? Enter microcontent—an effective approach to content creation that requires little effort and provides maximum value.
In this e-book you’ll learn:
What microcontent is: Learn about the different formats to get an idea of what you might want to experiment with.
Why microcontent supports your content strategy: From long-term goals to day-to-day publishing, learn how microcontent helps support your efforts
How to create effective microcontent: Whether you’re just starting to create content or have an enormous archive, find out how to produce a high volume of content with minimal effort.
Free E-Book: How to Build a Long-Term Content Strategy in a Real-Time World
How do you get the most results from your content marketing? With a killer content marketing strategy. Of course, in a real-time world, it can be hard to plan ahead. When news stories break or a product launch gets postponed, you have to adapt your content while keeping your long-term goals in mind. And no matter what you publish, you also have to keep everyone from your sales team to your social following happy. It often feels like you’re serving two masters—or five or six. But with the right planning, you can create a long-term strategy that saves your energy and your sanity.
A well-crafted, long-term strategy has built-in flexibility and a solid foundation, letting you fill in your content needs as you go—even if (and when) your larger goals change. It means you can stay agile enough to react to the latest trending hashtag while scheduling production for your next evergreen infographic. (Trust us, we did it last week.)
Why a long-term strategy saves you time, energy, and money
How to identify your objectives
What type of content will serve your objectives
How to map content to your objectives
How to effectively schedule content
Check out the e-book, and let us know your tips for creating a content strategy.
NEED HELP WITH YOUR CONTENT STRATEGY OR CONTENT CREATION? LET’S CHAT.
Free E-Book Download: The Ultimate Guide to Content Distribution
Though content marketing is the new frontier, marketers are still facing the age-old question: How do you get your brand’s content in front of an audience? Thanks to the proliferation of new media, with the right distribution strategy, you can reach more consumers than ever before.
Still, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Sure, you can create content, but how do you know if it’s serving your marketing goals? Once it’s created, where do you publish? And how do you optimize content for maximum results? Over the last few years, we’ve heard these concerns from all corners of the content marketing globe. And, in many ways, things have only become more confusing as more platforms pop up.
Because we’re in the business of making confusing things easy to understand, we thought it was time to help make sense of it all. At Column Five, we’ve assembled a pro Communications team to help some of the world’s biggest brands reach the right audience. We’ve also made friends over at Onboardly, a PR agency that specializes in content marketing for startups. Our brands have learned plenty over the years (both the easy way and the hard way), so we joined forces to create the new e-book, The Ultimate Guide to Content Distribution.
Whether you’re a PR pro or DIY content marketer, this e-book covers everything you need to know about content distribution, including all our insider tips and tricks. Want to make the most of your content? Download the e-book to learn about:
Crafting a killer content strategy: Get tips for strategic ideation to make sure your content serves your objectives.
Content formats and types: Curate your content marketing mix to include a variety of formats primed for different platforms.
Tips for making media contacts: Learn how to cultivate relationships with journalists and social influencers to expand your content’s reach.
Choosing the right distribution channels: Learn about how each channel can serve your goals and identify which channels to target.
Measuring your ROI: Find out which metrics help track your content’s success at every stage of the sales funnel.
Good content deserves to be shared. With a little bit of structure, planning and foresight, your content can make a major impact.
Of course, if you need a little help with your content, we’d love to chat.
HP 20/20 E-Book
Outlook for the future.
The Ultimate Guide to Tell Your Brand Story (Plus Examples)
In an era when everyone is tired of being talked at and sold to, people crave more genuine connections with brands. They want to know what brands care about, how they do business, who is behind the brand, and more. Ultimately, they want authenticity, honesty, and transparency—the core ingredients of a strong relationship. But how can your brand communicate these things? By telling a strong brand story.
Through the power of story, you can effectively humanize your brand, create connections, and build a lasting community. But telling a strong story requires more than an About page on your website. It’s an ongoing, multi-channel effort that takes thought and effort. Luckily, when you invest in telling your story, you get better ROI, cultivate stronger relationships, and help your brand grow over time.
Of course, this work takes practice. If you’re new to brand storytelling—or not sure what it looks like in real life—let’s take a deep dive into everything you need to know, plus our best tips to do it.
First, What Is Your Brand Story?
Your brand story is, in essence, the story of who you are, what you do, and what you believe—as a brand. Brand storytelling is the act of communicating that story through content.
68% of consumers say that brand stories influence their purchasing decisions. —The Brand Shop
The more you tell that story at touchpoints across your buyer journey, the easier it is to increase brand awareness and forge stronger bonds with your community.
Why Does Your Brand Story Matter?
As industries become increasingly crowded, and people have more choices than ever, story is the one thing that can help you stand out and maintain a competitive edge. When you can pique people’s interests, bond with them over shared values, or tell great stories that break down barriers between your brand and audience, you make your brand more exciting than your competitors.
But storytelling doesn’t just increase brand awareness; it can have a direct affect on your bottom line. A study by Origin and Hill Holiday found that people spent more on everything from hotel rooms to paintings when products or promos were paired with a story. Similarly, a study by neuroeconomist Paul Zak found that a character-driven story caused people to donate 56% more money to charity.
Perhaps most importantly, consumers actually prefer storytelling to more traditional forms of marketing and advertising.
92% of consumers want brands to make ads that feel like a story, and companies with compelling brand stories have a 20% increase in customer loyalty. —The Brand Shop
As much as storytelling benefits your consumer relationship, many brands forget that consumers are not their only audience. Your employees also play a huge role in your long-term success. Your brand story is a fantastic tool that can be used to both attract potential employees and connect with your current employees. This helps you retain the best and brightest people, create a better culture, and drive innovation—all of which are crucial to your business.
The Science of Brand Story
Now, we’ve talked about why brand storytelling is so helpful. But why is storytelling so effective at creating connections? Because it triggers a biological response. Whether it’s a video, a print ad, or a novel, a good story can trigger your brain to release cortisol (the stress chemical) or oxytocin (the feel-good chemical). This makes people feel more invested and connected to whatever story you’re telling. (It also explains why you feel anxious while watching a horror film or happy when the lovers finally get together at the end of a book.)
That said, different mediums and storytelling tools can affect us in different ways. For example, video triggers emotional contagion, a phenomenon where our emotions mirror what we see on screen (again, think of the horror film response). Similarly, when we hear someone speaking, such as a narrator in an animated video, it triggers neural coupling, an experience where our brain activity mirrors what a speaker is saying.
Combined, these factors increase our emotional attachment and recall.
55% of consumers are more likely to remember a story than a list of facts. —The Brand Shop
But packaging a message as a “story” isn’t the silver bullet solution to all your marketing problems. It isn’t just about seeing images or hearing a human voice; it’s the core story that matters. It needs to be interesting, intriguing, or captivating. To do this well, you need to understand what makes a brand story (specifically your brand story) impactful.
The Keys to a Great Brand Story
How do you know which stories will connect with your audience? Ultimately, it comes down to five specific elements. When you tell stories that fall into these categories, you can set your brand up for success from the jump.
It’s meaningful. Everyone is dealing with content shock. A million brands are vying for attention, hopping on whatever bandwagon their competitors are on. Thus, too many brands are focused on what they want to create (or what other brands are creating)—and not on what people actually care about. If you want to tell a good story, it has to be interesting and relevant to the people you’re trying to reach.
It’s personal.You can tell all sorts of stories. They can be entertaining, educational, or inspirational. But people need to feel personally connected to them. This is important not just to pique interest but to draw them into the story. How does your brand improve their life? Why should they take the time to invest in this story? Remember: If there is no place for someone in your story, there’s no reason for them to pay attention to it.
It’s emotional. A strong brand story is all about stimulating emotion and empathy. It’s not just about what you do but how you affect people. Sure, your software may automate emails, but it’s ultimately making people’s lives easier and stress-free. That’s the emotional hook of the story. If you can trigger that emotion in the first paragraph of a blog or the first few seconds of a video, you will have them hooked.
It’s simple.One of the most common mistakes in brand storytelling is trying to say too much. It’s far better to tell a very simple story and maximize emotional attachment than bombard people with different stories. You could tell a story about large-scale problems facing the healthcare industry, but showing how these issues affect a real patient gives the story a singular focus and makes it easier to connect to. In short, focus on one person or one problem at a time so you don’t confuse or distract your reader.
It’s authentic. When you share your brand story, people should know it’s your story. That means being open, honest, and transparent. It means letting your personality shine through.
You also need to be consistent in your storytelling so that people can not only identify but trust your content.
How to Tell Your Brand Story
Whether you’re telling the story of how you built your business or the story of how your product improves people’s lives, there are so many ways to connect with people across the buyer journey. Here, we’ve outlined the steps to help you create stories that accurately reflect your brand—and align to your long-term goals.
Step 1: Document your core story.
One of the biggest barriers to telling your brand story is not really understanding your own brand—who you are, what you do, what you care about, and why it matters. Without this clarity, it’s difficult to tell the right stories in the right way. So, before you start brainstorming ideas, it’s important to go back to basics.
Define your Brand Heart. Use our free guide to identify your core principles (purpose, vision, mission, and values), so that you understand what your brand is really trying to achieve.
Articulate your brand messaging. Consistent messaging is crucial if you want to tell your brand’s story. Use our brand messaging framework to articulate your tagline, value prop, and brand messaging pillars. (Those pillars can be a great source to brainstorm unique stories.)
Once you have a clear idea of who you are and what you’re trying to do, then you can begin to examine the stories that will help you communicate that.
Step 2: Brainstorm brand story ideas.
No matter your product, service, or industry, you have an interesting brand story. (In fact, you have a few.) Sometimes you just need to take a step back and look at your day-to-day business. We find there are often many great stories that are waiting to be told—brands just don’t always know how to uncover them.
When you’re trying to come up with ideas, we find it helpful to brainstorm around specific aspects of your brand. We like to ask ourselves a few questions to help jumpstart these ideas.
1) Who Are You?
You aren’t a faceless corporation. A real person (or people) started your brand. Real people work in your office, make your product/service, and run your social media. Putting a face to your brand is one of the best ways to cultivate a connection, so consider ways you might peel back the curtain to show people who you are, what your culture is like, and what you care about. (This is what we call your showcasing your employer brand, and it is a great way to engage potential employees.)
This type of content is especially fun to create because it offers a chance to inject your brand personality—think of things like behind-the-scenes spotlights, employee showcases, favorite things, etc.
Think about the product or service you provide. There are many ways to talk about or showcase these highlights beyond traditional sales materials.
Are there unique features that make your product particularly useful or effective? Are there surprising ways people have benefitted from your service? With a little creativity, you can create interesting content that showcases your brand in exciting ways.
Note: Telling a brand story that starts with a challenge or problem is a smart way to do this because conflict creates a bit of stress or intrigue. If you can show your product as the “hero” and provide a satisfying resolution, your story can also provide feel-good oxytocin. Explainer videos are an especially popular way to tell these types of stories. (If you want to see this in action, see our roundup of 50 creative explainers.)
Example: We helped Hummingbird share the story of how they’re making financial compliance sexy with a sleek animated explainer video that highlights their tech-led solution.
3) Who Do You Do It For?
Think about the people you want to help. These are the people whose business you’re trying to win. Why do you care about them? How do you want to help them? Think about not only what you do but how it improves people’s lives. For example, if your app helps people book vacations easily, it’s ultimately so that you can help people truly relax and enjoy life.
People want content that educates, entertains, inspires, or even celebrates them. (Remember relevancy!) So think of brand story opportunities that incorporate them into your brand story. For example, you might make your brand the helpful sidekick in a customer’s story (“This brand’s comfy shoes helped me cross the finish line!”). Or you can use things like personal anecdotes as storytelling tools.
Example: We collaborated with Charles Schwab to create a mini-documentary series about female investors. This helped combat the stigma that investing is a men-only game, while encouraging everyday women to “invest like a woman.”
4) Why Do You Do It?
No matter your product or service, whether you’re a tiny startup or an established brand founded a century ago, there’s a reason you exist—and, most likely, a higher purpose. If you’re a home security company, you protect property to give people peace of mind. If you’re a granola bar company, you provide healthy treats to nourish people’s bodies.
Using content to share or fulfill this larger mission is a great way to both promote your brand and show people what you really care about. Think about ways to tell stories about your Brand Heart (purpose, vision, mission, values) or the causes you care about.
Remember that this type of content can be especially helpful for your recruiting efforts.
Example: We helped Dropbox increase their brand perception 7% by creating a storytelling strategy to attract talent away from top competitors. By promoting Dropbox’s core belief (“We believe the world can work better”) through interactive experiences, video, and social content, we showcased Dropbox’s culture and connected with a larger pool of applicants.
Much like your mission, people want to know not just why and what you do but how. Telling a brand story that provides visibility into your product, production, or process can be especially impactful.
Do you use a unique technology? Are your materials sustainably sourced? Do you use an innovative manufacturing technique? This type of content both educates and provides insight into the way you run your business, providing the transparency that people crave. (FYI, beyond the B2B or B2C sphere, this type of storytelling is particularly effective for nonprofits.)
Example: Our annual report for the Telluride Arts council in Telluride, Colorado, shows donors how their funds were allocated across community initiatives. Annual reports can be dry and dull, but telling a simple story that highlights the work in a clear and meaningful way, along with clean and compelling visuals, is much more effective.
6) What Does Your Future Look Like?
Think about ways to talk about how your brand is evolving, what you’re working toward, and how you plan to grow into the future. Sharing these types of stories generates excitement, and invites people into your brand story.
Plus, when people know you’re invested in their future, they’re more likely to build a long-term relationship with you.
Example: In this motion graphic, JetBlue explains the steps they’re taking to offset carbon emissions and adopt fuel-saving technology, demonstrating their commitment to making air travel better for the planet.
One last tip: If you’re not sure what type of brand story might resonate with people, map your buyer’s journey. This helps you see what types of messaging people need to hear at each stage—and can help you identify gaps in your brand storytelling. You can also take a look at these 15 awesome examples of brand storytelling for more inspiration.
Hopefully, having brainstormed around all of these topics, you’ll have a list of story ideas to comb through. If that’s the case, you’re ready to move on to the next step.
Step 3: Vet your ideas.
It’s easy to get carried away with cool, creative ideas, but if they aren’t an authentic extension of your brand story, they won’t help your brand. That’s why it’s important to have marketing personas that clearly detail your audience’s wants, needs, and emotional drivers. The sweet spot of brand storytelling is where your brand story and their interests overlap.
Example: Course Hero is an online learning platform that helps students access course-specific study resources contributed by a community of students and educators. To help their audience learn more effectively, they asked us to translate the complex material of classic novels into easy-to-digest study guides. This infographic series empowered students to learn while positioning the brand as a helpful resource.
Step 4: Choose the right format.
The most important goal for every piece of content is to communicate your brand story as efficiently and effectively as possible. Therefore, choosing the right format is vital. You might get caught up in trying to produce the flashiest, trendiest types of content, but this is a disservice if it doesn’t fit your story. (In some cases, it can seriously detract from the story.)
Identify the best format for your story before you dive into content creation, as the format will influence the way you craft copy.
Example: Happy Money is a personal loan company that empowers people to take control of their finances. To engage their Millennial audience on social, they revamped their strategy by focusing on three core brand story themes: financial education, wellness, and mental health. By transforming these stories into colorful, eye-catching content (including motion pieces), they were able to grab attention, provide value, and reinforce their brand story with every post.
Step 5: Craft a narrative.
Once you have your story idea, you need to hone in on the angle and construct a compelling narrative that captures people’s attention. Research has found that people are particularly attracted to a familiar narrative structure. So let’s go back to English class for a second. Remember Gustav Freytag’s pyramid? A great brand story crafts a narrative that follows that arc—and ends with a resolution (or solution—ideally, your product).
(Interestingly, a Johns Hopkins study examined popular Super Bowl ads and found that the most popular ads weren’t those that were the silliest, most outrageous, or most hilarious. It was the ones that followed a familiar dramatic arc.)
Regardless of your story, think of ways to take your readers or viewers on a journey. Some of the most popular ways to do that:
Problem/solution
Before/after
Tutorials
Underdog stories (think of a small mom-and-pop business disrupting an industry)
Every piece of content should accurately reflect your brand, from the way it looks to the words you use. And while branded content shouldn’t be overly branded (e.g., a million logos slapped everywhere), people should know who it was created by. Thus, make sure your content reflects your brand story in:
Personality, Voice, and Tone: Don’t know what your brand voice is? It sounds like your company conversations, Google chats, and water-cooler jokes. Follow our guides to find your voice and personality if you haven’t clearly articulated this before. Also, once you complete a draft of content, give it a second pass for word choice and such. These are the easiest ways to color up your content.
Visuals: Your visual language is the aesthetic experience of your brand. Everything from your logo to color palettes can affect how your content is interpreted. Whether it’s a brand video, infographic, or interactive, a consistent, on-brand visual language creates a cohesive experience. Follow our step-by-step guide to build a powerful visual identity.
That said, maintaining consistency in your content can be a challenge if you have multiple content creators working for you (whether in-house or outsourced). It can be helpful to create brand guidelines to keep everyone aligned, or check out our tips to keep your content on brand.
Step 7: Share your brand story.
Once you’ve completed a piece of content, you don’t want to be the only one talking about it. Encourage your people to share your story by making it easy to do so. Publish to your blog or email list, test your social sharing buttons, optimize your content for SEO, etc.
Telling your brand story isn’t a one-and-done thing. Figuring out which stories resonate is an ongoing task, especially if you’re just starting out. As you continue to experiment, focus on setting your team up for success at every stage.
And, of course, don’t be afraid to bring in support if you need it. Whether you’re stuck on strategy or having trouble getting content out the door, a creative agency can be a huge asset. Follow our tips to find the right creative agency for you, or holler at us. We’d love to help you tell you bring your brand story to life.
7 Strategies to Do More With a Small Marketing Budget
According to Gartner’s Annual CMO Spend Survey, average marketing budgets have fallen 15%. Now, marketers have to do more with less—with more pressure than ever. Worse, marketing is a never-ending carousel of tasks, from content creation and strategy to distribution and reporting. How do you handle them all when you have a small marketing budget? Luckily, we’re here to help you maximize your budget and make the most of the resources you have.
7 Strategies to Work with a Small Marketing Budget
We’ve been in the game for over a decade, and in that time we’ve helped our clients clean up their messy marketing, optimize their infrastructure, and create repeatable processes to improve efficiency, so we know how to hack our way into working smarter, not harder—and getting better results. If you’re looking for ways to improve your market (even with a small budget), here are seven successful strategies you should try ASAP.
1) Put AI to use.
One of the best things about AI is its ability to automate or absorb tedious tasks that eat up time. When you’re struggling to solve big-picture problems, you don’t need to waste precious brainpower on this type of labor. Instead, consider ways you can implement AI at every level of your marketing organization to save time and build a better brand experience for your customers. Whether it’s A/B testing subject lines, synthesizing data, brainstorming ideas, or outlining content, there are so many ways AI can boost your marketing.
AI tools are the hot new kid on the town, but there are many additional tools that can help you streamline your work, outsource labor, and create content (especially when you have a small marketing budget).
We’ve experimented with a variety of tools for a variety of tasks over the years, which has empowered our team to work quicker and more efficiently.
Tip: To avoid making your whole team go through the learning curve when working with a new tool, it can help to assign a small team to become proficient and build out a handy user guide. This makes it easier for everyone else to adopt it.
3) Use a divisible content strategy.
Any content takes time, energy, and resources to produce, so you want to maximize every new piece of content you create. A divisible content strategy is one of our favorite ways to do this.
With this approach, you create a hero piece of core content intended to be broken into smaller content pieces and formats, such as blog posts, social media content, infographics, or quotes. These smaller pieces can delve into different aspects of the core content, present the info in a different package, or start different conversations with different audiences.
Most importantly, this approach helps you expand your reach, maximize resources, and create a larger volume of content with less investment.
Tip:To do this effectively, you need to carefully plan out each piece of content before you create it. This means you start with a more detailed outline for the core content, then identify what content you will flesh out into supporting pieces. For a more detailed guide on how to map this content, find out more about how a divisible content strategy works.
(BTW, you will also want to periodically refresh and update your core content to make sure it’s relevant.)
4) Repurpose and recycle existing content.
While a divisible content strategy hinges on the creation of new content, you probably have a ton of existing content that can be reimagined, recycled, repackaged, or repurposed for use. (Again, anytime you’re investing in content, you want to make the most of it.)
Comb through your archive to find pieces you can update or, even better, translate into different formats to expand reach across channels. For example, you might…
Convert a blog post into a video or podcast episode.
There is so much untapped talent in your company—outside of your marketing team. Not only should this talent be used but it should be celebrated and spotlighted. If you are struggling to create content (thanks to a small marketing budget), get support from people outside the department.
Who are the experts developing your product/service?
Who has a unique perspective on the industry?
Who extracts interesting insights from your data?
What interesting conversations have salespeople been having?
There are plenty of opportunities to translate their thoughts into interesting, relevant, and even newsworthy content.
Tip: You can certainly recruit people to write articles for you, but there are also low-effort ways to turn their thoughts into high-quality content.
Do an expert Q&A via email.
Record a podcast conversation with a thought leader.
Ask your team for their best tips on a specific subject and publish them as a roundup.
Additionally, although thought leadership is great, you can also use other employees to showcase your brand’s culture. (This is a great way to humanize your brand to potential customers and potential employees.) See our guide to culture marketing, and try these ideas to showcase your culture on social media.
6) Experiment with agile marketing.
There’s nothing more frustrating than wasting money on campaigns that flop. (We know this firsthand.) That’s why we’ve been experimenting with an agile marketing approach that relies on simple test-and-learn experiments to gather market insights.
By deploying these simple, constructed experiments, you can better adjust your spending, optimize your content, and improve your campaigns—with better results.
Tip: Allocate a portion of any paid media spend to agile campaign testing. For more detail on how to implement this strategy, see our guide to agile marketing.
7) Leverage User-Generated Content (UGC)
In addition to your own internal resources, your own audience can be a great way to generate low-lift content that increases engagement. This can take many forms:
Polls
Quizzes
Contests
Tips
Customer Success Stories
Social Takeovers
You can also piggyback off of content you’ve already created by encouraging your audience to create their own version, add their perspective, etc.
Not only does this reduce the amount of content you have to personally create but it gives you a chance to build stronger connections with your community. (For more ideas, find out how to incorporate UGC into your content strategy.)
How to Improve Efficiency Overall
We hope you can incorporate these tips into your existing marketing practice, but remember that maximizing your budget is, ultimately, about maximizing your investments of everything: time, money, and energy. A few more things that might help:
That said, if you’re doing the most but still getting subpar results, you may have a larger content strategy issue. If you need any expert guidance, consider bringing in the right partner. If you need a good agency, see our tips to find the right content marketing agency or find out what it’s like to work with us.
Either way, one of the best ways to work smarter is to experiment more. Whether it’s trying a new tool or testing a new strategy, be flexible. Use what works and forget the rest. And if you stumble across any life-changing marketing hacks of your own, our inbox is always open.
3) Add Personality with Imagery
5) Kill the Visual Junk
