What Is the Importance of Curating Your Own Brand Story?

Nobody knows your brand better than you. You’re the expert on your products, history, and who you serve — so why would you get a third party to write your brand story? In reality, this is something many brands do. They bypass in-house product data and instead work with an outside company to create a narrative around their brand.

But the idea that this saves time and frees up your internal team is a myth, especially considering the back-and-forth needed for a third party to fully understand your brand.

So what’s the alternative? Curating your own brand story.

Why You Should Curate Your Own Brand Story

Your brand story isn’t just about who you are, your values, your history, and your audience. It also includes your product catalog and how you present your products online.

The last thing you want to do is spread misinformation about your brand and products, which is exactly what’s at risk when you rely on third-party providers.

When you entrust these external providers with your product information, there’s a chance they’ll share inaccurate, outdated, and inconsistent product information that gets passed on to customers.

It’s tempting, though — it can feel like using these providers will save time. After all, you don’t have to do it yourself, which means you can spend your time and effort elsewhere. But the idea that this is the quicker option is a fallacy.

It can take longer to publish and update product information for two reasons:

1. A middle person adds a step to the process: You need to send the product information to a third party before passing it on to the retailer.
2. The third party doesn’t care about your brand image: This removes the level of urgency and efficiency — you’ll often get put on the back burner, which again increases the chance of putting out inaccurate, outdated product information.

When you curate your own brand story and take charge of updating and refreshing your product content, you remove this risk entirely. Plus, there’s no back-and-forth with external entities, so you’re free to do it on your timescale.

Most importantly, curating your brand story means you’re in total control of how you present your brand and products to customers.

As someone who has deep knowledge of how you want people to perceive your brand, you’re in the best position to do this — you care the most about connecting with customers. 

Take Back Your Brand Story With a Product Content Syndication Solution

Product content syndication, a process that sends product data to retail endpoints while complying with each retailer’s requirements, helps you curate your own brand story and ensure accurate, complete, and high-quality product content across your digital shelf.  

The process maps existing product data to each retailer’s standards and requirements. For example, one retailer might need 10 bullet points and a two-paragraph description, while another might need a maximum of five bullet points, a longer description, and at least seven product images from different angles.

Instead of creating new product descriptions for each retailer, content syndication maps the data stored in your product information management (PIM) solution and populates templates with the model you’ve mapped out.

It’s all done automatically, so you don’t have to spend hours manually populating a spreadsheet with different product description versions.

The Benefits of Taking Control of Your Brand Story With Product Content Syndication

Using a product content syndication solution to transmit brand-supplied content helps you retain control of your story, but there are plenty of additional benefits.

Maintain Good Retailer Relationships

You want to keep the retailers you work with sweet, which means adhering to their guidelines. A content syndication solution helps you maintain existing retailer relationships by providing them with accurate, complete, and high-quality product information.

Support Customer Relationships

It’s confusing if a shopper sees a different description for the same product across retailer websites. Maintain consistency and build trust by sharing accurate, similar product content across all your retail channels.

This not only adds credibility to your brand but also makes your products more recognizable.

Improve Operational Efficiency

No one wants to spend hours manually cross-referencing the needs of different retailers and updating a spreadsheet to reflect those needs.
Product content syndication lets you assimilate product content in bulk for each unique retailer environment. It takes data from your PIM solution and maps it to retailer guidelines.

Realize Optimization Opportunities

More eyeballs on your products usually lead to more sales. When you syndicate product content across retailer platforms, you can identify potential optimization opportunities based on individual guidelines. This can increase your search rankings and lead to increased digital shelf presence and growth.

Stay On Top of Changing Requirements

It can be hard to stay up-to-date with the latest retailer requirements. They often change without much notice, leaving brands scrambling to update their product descriptions and listings. A product content syndication solution keeps track of these changes for you and automatically updates your descriptions based on the new requirements. 

Control Your Brand Story Across Multiple Retailers

Your brand story is what sets you apart from your competitors. It helps customers choose your products in a sea of others on retail websites — and why you need to share the right information.

Many brands hire a third-party provider to share their product data to a retail website, but this can lead to inaccurate, outdated information, affecting customer perception of your brand.

Instead of relying on these third-party providers, use a product content syndication solution that automatically maps your existing product data to retailer guidelines. You can update and edit product data in bulk and instantly apply the changes to the relevant retail websites.