“Once upon a time there was a ……”
Does your eyes get wide and your back relaxes when you read or listen to the words above? Well, you are normal and it’s a very common behaviour among homo sapiens.
Stories are something that make people pause and think, combine good stories with a master storyteller, you can conquer the world.
A lot of ambiguity is present when drafting a go-to-market strategy when it involves communication and positioning for a new product or service. Even among the established firms, flow of critical communication takes a hit for lack of narrative direction. In this digital era, where the average attention span of an adult is dwindling year on year, it is imperative to inject the information and ensure that the critical details are retained.The question still remains as to. “How can I increase the attention span and information retention rate when I present the information?”.
A lot of Tech based SMEs lose out on business storytelling for 2 reasons,
- Encountering roadblocks while positioning the offering brandwise
and
- The thought of being sidelined by bigger business stories that curbs the enthusiasm to draft your own business story.
A lot of founders feel this way and we are here to say that it’s a myth. Users engage on stories that connect with them, irrespective of the size of the brand. However, the business story as such should have components that has the ability to pull the users. Let’s look at the Storytelling recipe.
Storytelling – The Recipe to Engage
In an article published on CMI, Mike Murray quotes Business Storytelling as “Brands sharing their messages in ways that engage audiences and drive them to take a desired action ”.
It is necessary for you as a CMO/ Marketer/ Influencer to jump into the Business Storytelling bandwagon with a communications plan along with a list of hypotheses to be experimented upon.
Ingredient 1 – Drive with Purpose
In the branding language, we ask this question while framing the brand architecture,
“What is the emotional benefit of my offering?”.
Likewise, identifying the philosophy behind the offering helps your audience to relate and respond better. It is effective to connect with them on a subconscious level, triggering their irrational behaviour. It paves way for quick thinking as opposed to a rational and logical catchphrase which induces logical barriers thereby giving the user enough time to pivot out of the thought process.
Ingredient 2 – Build the Character
“Personify” your brand.
By incorporating attributes to your brand, you are successfully drafting a person from which various other attributes can be derived. Character attributes such as likes, dislikes, reaction to success & failure, opinionated standings, analyzing competitor communications are just some of the benefits of giving life to your brand.
Ingredient 3 – Have a Sequence
Every good story would have an underlying sequence, irrespective of their order. Here is one of the common tried and tested sequence,
Problem – Suspense – Solution – Surprise
Don’t we all love happy endings. Likewise, while crafting your business story, ensure you project your aspirations towards the climax. Make sure your audience feels good and gets hopeful to make that transaction.
Although it is necessary to have all the components to draft a successful story, the format is not a one style fits all. At We-Storytellers, we help to identify the philosophy, build the character and create a sequence in your business story. And for all the SaaS founders, yes, curating an amazing business story is possible even for tech offerings and our team is awaiting your call.