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Your marketing and sales teams have the same goal: to generate leads, close deals and make you money. When they're in sync, it's good news: marketing and sales alignment can boost sales by 67%. However, it's all too common for these teams to be working independently, or even at odds with each other. This can impact your marketing ROI, sales productivity and top-line growth.

People are hardwired to connect with stories. Storytelling gets attention, creates empathy and fosters a sense of belonging and alignment. And importantly for brands, it's humanizing.

If your business is doing well but no one really knows your story, now is the time to change that. Storytelling is the secret sauce that can take you from good to great.

Here's how to use storytelling to drive brand success.

So you’ve spent time creating the best product on the market, it has everything your customers want, and now it’s time to get out there and sell it. Naturally, you want to create content and shout to the world about the product’s amazing features. 

It makes sense. Product features are tangible, quantifiable, and create value for your customers—that’s what they want … isn’t it?

Not exactly.

Have you ever thought about the path that someone takes to become a customer? From the moment someone comes into contact with your brand – whether it's through a banner ad or a Twitter post – they're starting a journey. Once a potential customer is aware of your company, the hope is that they will seek out more information via things like your website, social channels, or online reviews. 

But ask yourself this: What does their experience look like? One of the best ways to figure this out is to understand and map your customers' potential paths of engagement with your company, otherwise known as their customer journeys.

If Samuel L. Jackson and Jennifer Garner recommend Capital One, are people more likely to consider it? Or if George Clooney tells you to drink Nespresso, will you? It's very possible.

Advertising that uses celebrities to endorse their products or services are part of what's called influencer marketing – and it's quite effective. In fact, influencer marketing is currently the fastest growing consumer acquisition strategy.