The news: As economic and competitive challenges prevail in the banking sector, financial institutions (FIs)—especially those with smaller budgets—struggle to keep up with competitors. In a Finovate Fall session, Flipstik CEO and entrepreneur Akeem Shannon summarized how storytelling can help businesses successfully navigate a tough environment. 

• Many banks already showcase their customers’ stories on social media, but the art of storytelling is still largely underutilized in the banking sector.

Why storytelling should be a bank marketing priority: As The New York Times puts it, storytelling helps to “form an emotional and personalized connection between a brand and consumer.” It recommends these steps for businesses wanting to start or expand their storytelling abilities:

• Define and structure your brand’s story: Start by identifying a compelling narrative around your brand’s origin, values, or purpose. Authenticity and a clear message are key. When ABC replaced Shannon’s Shark Tank scheduled episode with a presidential announcement, his brand’s compelling story helped him persuade the showrunners to air it again. 
• Leverage visuals when possible: Graphics, videos, or pictures help enhance emotional connections with your audience and make your story memorable. Given the opportunity at an industry event to ask rap artist Snoop Dogg a question, Shannon used creative visuals in an impromptu Flipstik product demo. The impressed rapper helped Shannon get on Shark Tank.
• Plan and distribute consistently: Develop a content calendar to organize content and ensure a cohesive brand narrative across all channels. Distribute your stories across various platforms like blogs, social media, and email to reach your audience where they prefer to engage. After Shannon’s Shark Tank episode aired, he knew he had to build on the momentum. At another industry event, he asked Mark Cuban a question. Amazon executives in the audience were impressed enough to offer to showcase his product.

As Shannon showed, having brand stories at the ready can help companies convince key stakeholders of a brand’s value when it matters most.

Next steps for FIs: Shannon recommended that FIs focus on developing stories about a business’s start, mission, and customers. And if they don’t have the bandwidth internally, he recommended considering hiring a story architect or third-party consultant to assist. 

• To explore hiring a marketing agency for this purpose, here are criteria that can help them evaluate the options within their budgets.