2. Website

Content Considerations

Beyond selling products and communicating basic product information, one of the most powerful uses of a brand’s website is story telling. A website can provide consumers a genuine representation of the brand, allows them to foster personal connections, can begin to move consumers toward purchasing products and develop an affinity for the brand.

Your brand story could contain any number of facets of your brand including business history or the inspiration behind the business, its mission and vision, how you interact with your marketplace and consumers and how your products meet consumers’ needs.

When thinking about telling your story, it’s useful to consider your brand’s positioning statement; or write one if you’ve not already done so. A basic framework for positioning is:

For [the target], this brand is the one [product frame of reference] that provides [unique benefit] because [reason to believe].

Think about your business’ target consumer, what your product does for them that no other product does (or what problem does it solve) and what are the facts or data points that you would use to support the claim to providing the benefit. This framework can lead to creating website content that uniquely supports your brand.

A Hypothetical Example:

Consider the example for an imaginary local juice company, Great Northern Farms, making unique juice blends in a vertically integrated operation.

For health and flavor seekers, Great Northern Farms is the one juice blend that provides moments of daily adventure because our “juice-ologists” create a unique rainbow of juice blends that deliver a rich source of vitamins from organic vegetables grown on our farms in Minnesota.

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Rather than target a specific demographic, or even all juice drinkers, Great Northern Farms is made for people looking for healthy flavorful choices.

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The frame of reference is juice blends; creating a distinction for who they compete against.

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Great Northern Farms’ core benefit is an emotional one: to offer moments of daily adventure. Often emotional benefits create a stronger positioning than product focused ones.

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Their claim is supported by the facts that they have an expert creating the products and they come from Minnesota organic vegetables.

Some other key considerations for telling your brand story:

Your mission, vision and brand values. What motivated me to start my business? Why does our business exist? How do we contribute to our customers or to the world? What’s important to our business and is that sentiment shared by our customers? Determine your brands’ “why, how and what” and share it to make a powerful connection with consumers.

Understand how your product fits into your story. The brand story and product should naturally reinforce one another. Is your product quality and price point reflective of other brand image elements? Is the origin of your business clearly connected to how your product helps consumers solve a problem or how it makes them feel?

Understand your target audience. Not only who they are from a demographic standpoint, but who you see as your ideal customer and how your product will enhance their daily life.

These Minnesota food businesses do a great job of telling their story through their website:

City Girl Coffee

This coffee roaster is dedicated to supporting women-owned coffee growers.

Seven Sundays

A certified B-corp making breakfast cereals and focused on regenerative agriculture and small grains.

Peace Coffee

A local coffee roaster that does a great job of providing usage tips and connecting their consumers to their growers.

North Mallow

This gourmet marshmallow maker promises a better marshmallow and tells their background story to engage consumers.

Jonny Pops

A frozen treat manufacturer that quickly tells their story of ingredients, taste and kindness.

Step One Foods

A provider of foods clinically proven to improve health demonstrates how their product is science-backed.

Grandma’s Gourmet

A local small batch food manufacturer that puts homemade and local ingredients at the forefront of their offerings.