Differences between brand storytelling and content marketing
They're complimentary, not interchangeably, and how to save budget on both
The concept of brand storytelling and content marketing often are used interchangeably. Both sound sexy and a bit mysterious. And I get it; you want to shine and use the buzz and jargon to impress others.
In reality, both are complimentary – not interchangeably. And I’ll explain to you why, what, and how to apply this to get more for your budget.
The differences are in
- Objective: storytelling versus conversion
- Audience building: tell your brand story and follow up with marketing to get the most for your buck. A warmed-up audience always converts better
- Execution: proud and long versus short and sexy
- KPIs: if you go individually, go for reach and conversion in clicks or sales
- Owner: in short, it’s corporate and marketing. Yet the ideal is a designated department with both as stakeholders
Why it matters
As said, both are used interchangeably. The first, however, is more on building the brand and showing who you are. The second drives conversion and sales. First is more corporate, second is marketing.
This results in different content objectives, focus in the execution, and KPIs used to measure the success.
Long story short, if done right, both amplify each other. If done wrong, you might look like an expert to outsiders, yet you’re wasting your budget and efforts.
Know the differences
If you know the differences between both, you can act accordingly.
Brand storytelling (← left)
versus content marketing (right →)
1. Objective
All content efforts should contribute to your business objectives. That said, there’s a difference between capturing your customer’s heart and how to monetize that. There’s nothing wrong with making a sale, as long as you combine brand-building with activations.
According to Les Binet and his 15yrs of research, this should be around 60-40%. Give or take a few single-digit percentages depending on brand maturity, market maturity, B2C, B2B, B2B2C, non-profit, etcetera. See also number ‘4. KPIs’ for the reporting metrics.
| Show and tell who you are, why you do what you do. Your mission, vision. Your license to operate. And your values. By the way, you can have some minor content about your products yet focus on your brand – that’s already in the name, isn’t it? | Conversion. Getting the clicks and sales in. Also, here it’s in the name ‘content marketing.’ Bring your product to the market to sell. Therefore, the focus is on products, not on brand. |
2. Audiences
Who to touch when with what?
| This brand storytelling is about brand building (and an audience) — the softer side of communications and content. | Once you got an audience that likes your brand, you can retarget them to seduce them to click or maybe even buy your products. |
3. Execution
With the devil in the details, it’s the execution (read: production and creative brief) that makes high-quality the difference that makes you shine – and create efficiency on your budget.
| Brand storytelling is timeless; you can re-use and re-publish this content over and over again. Depending on the channel, this content usually is also a bit longer form as content marketing as you can take the time to engage and emerge others in your brand story. The prerequisite is that your content is high-quality and. and crafted with care and pride. It’s about eyeballs. | Hot. Sexy. Short and engaging. It’s about the balls. Your content marketing execution should line up with your objective: conversion. And it’s still the sex that sells. This content is more campaign-y, temporary, and more difficult to re-use without looking like a cheap ass. |
4. KPIs
To measure is to know. All content efforts should contribute to the business objectives in the long-term. So best measurement is content efforts plotted against overall sales (online and offline). Yet, I do realize you need some short-term metrics for daily management and stakeholders.
| Reach, eyeballs. | Clicks, conversion, sales. |
5. Owner
I don’t like to have one silo ‘owning’ specific content. It’s the combination that creates the magic and amplification. Not the silo’ed ego. Yet, if you do have to choose…
| Corporate Communications, Public Relations, Human Resources, Employer Branding, a bit of Customer Care (for input and review), and sure, add some Marketing to the mix, yet they’re last in line. | Marketing. If any department knows how to market a product, it should be Marketing. |
Act accordingly
Now that you know the differences, how to bring this to practice? As often, it’s easier said than done — a few tips.
Share AI knowledge and experiment together
As AI is hot and it's still unknown how to use it for content production and distribution… join the efforts to share knowledge, experiences, and experiment together.
This is really a no-brainer, yet often overlooked in the daily business.
Work together, get more content for less budget
In an ideal world, you have a designated content department (or silo) to take care of all content efforts – their sole objective is to make the best content possible for your customer, with the individual departments such as Marketing, Corporate, PR, and HR as stakeholders in the Editorial Board.
That said, you can also work together. Have frequent meetings, celebrate, and share successes. Tap into the other department before you start a new content project.
Maybe you can piggyback, or they can piggyback on you. Both of you can save money.
In the end, you both have a shared objective: create content that contributes to the business (not the departments’ ego).
Smarter audience building, and saves budget as well
Share your audiences. It’s easier to convert someone who’s seen (and likes) your brand-building content than starting from scratch. Next to that, it’s cheaper as well.
Use your media agency or media buyers to set this up for you. It is important that you share the brief and knowledge between departments to realize this.
Joint reporting
Probably you both have the same stakeholders that guard next year’s budget. Why not have a joint reporting? Zoom out, set up managerial KPIs, and save the details for daily management. Read more on reporting.
Read more
More information and related topics, check out these links.
- Brand storytelling and how to use AI
- Content planning made easy
- Use ChatGPT to define your brand voice
- Create a brand persona for better content
- Why a brand voice matters
- Why you need a (brand) POV for content
- Content ownership
- ‘They ask, you answer’ for content that works
Wrapping up
Brand storytelling and content marketing are complementary and can amplify each other. They are not interchangeable, however savvy that may sound for non-content people.
The differences are in
- Objective: storytelling versus conversion
- Audience building: tell your brand story and follow up with marketing to get the most for your buck. A warmed-up audience always converts better
- Execution: proud and long versus short and sexy
- KPIs: if you go individually, go for reach and conversion in clicks or sales
- Owner: in short, it’s corporate and marketing. Yet the ideal is a designated department with both as stakeholders
Want to know more?
Don’t be shy, and drop me a DM. I’m happy to help to get things sorted and get you started.
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