Okay. So the final section of this module is all about storytelling.

So first, let's take a look at what storytelling means in the world of product marketing.

Store retelling is the process of using fact and narrative to communicate something to your audience.

Some stories are factual and some are embellished or improvised in order to better explain the core message.

That's one definition, and here's another.

Brand storytelling is their cohesive narrative that weaves together the facts and emotions that your brand evokes.

And here's one more. Storytelling is a powerful technique for building relationships.

It's an age old concept that brings people together and keeps them engaged.

It doesn't matter where in the world you're based or how much funding your startup has.

There are lots of different definitions of storytelling out there, but they're all tied by the same thread.

They convey your product's message with meaning and impact.

There are a number of reasons brands tell stories and here are just a few of them.

Number one, stories are easy to remember.

People are much more likely to remember something they are emotionally invested in, and you want people to remember you.

Number two, stories simplify complex concepts.

Some products are more complicated than others. But even when they're not, they can be tricky to articulate succinctly without jargon and in a way that resonates with end users.

But stories eradicate each.

They skip past the technical mumbo jumbo and present people with the facts that matter how it benefits them.

Number three, stories unite your audience.

Whatever a person's religion, race, language, location, age, or wealth, the right story can speak to everyone.

Your market has shared pain points and aligned end goals and a solid story makes each and every prospect feel that emotion and understand what's in it for them.

Number four, Stories inspire Action.

You know how great your product is. How simple it is to use and how much easier it's going to make your market's day to day because you live and breathe for a job. But they don't.

Until they've witnessed the benefits firsthand, your customers will never truly understand this impact and storytelling is the next best alternative.

So by showing versus telling people what the future could look like, you'll entice them into taking that all important first step.

Before we move on to our storytelling framework, There's one thing we want to get you to keep front of mind and that's that storytelling isn't about your company or your product.

It's about your customer and what they get out of choosing you.

So let's take a look at our twelve step storytelling framework.

Step one is your audience, which is a snappy overview of your market or persona followed by step two, which is a snapshot of what their life looks like now without your solution.

Step three is the villain.

AkaA, the customer's current workaround that perhaps solves the problem in part, but not completely.

In slack's case, the villain is never ending emails, and for calendly, it's back and forth emails to set up a meeting for example.

Following on from that is the disruption their work around currently causes.

Using slack as an example again, That could be emails getting lost or hard to keep track of, which leads us on to steps five and six where you introduce some of the other characters involved and how this villain is impacting their lives too.

As the story passes the halfway point, we turn our attention to that utopia vision.

So what are your audience's goals?

And what is it they're looking for in a vendor?

In Calendly's case, That could be an easier and quicker way to book meetings.

In every story though, there's an antagonist who gets in the way of that fairy tale ending.

And this could be anything from a physical person to cost, time, or resource.

And then that's where your product steps in, the hero.

Here's where you go into how your solution not only solves their problem, but of pieces their antagonists too.

As we switch to the final few steps, we start to paint the picture of how watching better life with your solution could be. So what are the benefits and how will those benefits make them feel?

Step eleven focuses on the moral of the story I e. What lessons can be learned from your customer's journey?

This model should help compel future prospects to take action sooner.

And then the twelfth and final step is about establishing the new norm using real words from real customers.

So let's put all this together using a fake digital campaign reporting software company. And our Make Belief persona Jane.

To set the scene, Jane's responsible for delivering and reporting on her team's campaign metrics.

However, she struggles because she can't currently get all her apps to talk to one another in one place.

Here's what we're left with when we piece all those twelve steps together.

Jane is a campaign manager who's responsible for building, sending, and reporting on the marketing departments, customer, and prospect facing email activity.

At the moment, she struggles to get all the insights that she needs from various simultaneous multi touch campaigns.

She tries to overcome this by integrating external apps, but it's unreliable and often confusing.

As a result, she is not confident her numbers are accurate and campaigned optimized.

This also impacts the wider marketing department and sales teams because leads are occasionally being lost.

Her dream is to rely on just one tool and have complete confidence in its reporting suite.

However, her manager is getting in the way for fear of downtime due to migration.

Our email platform puts an end to all of this by delivering a single source to send and see campaigns from without any downtime.

Also you can focus on optimizing your efforts without worrying about daunchy data getting in the way.

Achieve email success doesn't have to be difficult.

And we've shown that time and time again.

Don't just take our word for it though. See what John know campaign manager at awesome example limited had to say.

Within weeks of adopting the email software, I easily saved hours each week and after seeing how seamlessly it aggregates data from multiple platforms I had one hundred percent confidence in the accuracy of my reports. I would never go back.

That's not to say you use that word for word of course, but it can be weaved into various elements of your website, marketing, and sales collateral to paint that emotionally driven story over the traditional logic based one. And that's really important because at the end of the day, people tend to make most of their decisions based on emotion and then justify it with logic afterwards.

People like to put themselves on that hero's journey to get the solution they need and selling your product story in such a way can be a real differentiator, especially if you're in a crowded market.

There's a quote out there that says the most human company is going to win and we wholeheartedly agree with that. So keep that in mind throughout your entire story building process.

‍

Okay. So the final section of this module is all about storytelling.

So first, let's take a look at what storytelling means in the world of product marketing.

Store retelling is the process of using fact and narrative to communicate something to your audience.

Some stories are factual and some are embellished or improvised in order to better explain the core message.

That's one definition, and here's another.

Brand storytelling is their cohesive narrative that weaves together the facts and emotions that your brand evokes.

And here's one more. Storytelling is a powerful technique for building relationships.

It's an age old concept that brings people together and keeps them engaged.

It doesn't matter where in the world you're based or how much funding your startup has.

There are lots of different definitions of storytelling out there, but they're all tied by the same thread.

They convey your product's message with meaning and impact.

There are a number of reasons brands tell stories and here are just a few of them.

Number one, stories are easy to remember.

People are much more likely to remember something they are emotionally invested in, and you want people to remember you.

Number two, stories simplify complex concepts.

Some products are more complicated than others. But even when they're not, they can be tricky to articulate succinctly without jargon and in a way that resonates with end users.

But stories eradicate each.

They skip past the technical mumbo jumbo and present people with the facts that matter how it benefits them.

Number three, stories unite your audience.

Whatever a person's religion, race, language, location, age, or wealth, the right story can speak to everyone.

Your market has shared pain points and aligned end goals and a solid story makes each and every prospect feel that emotion and understand what's in it for them.

Number four, Stories inspire Action.

You know how great your product is. How simple it is to use and how much easier it's going to make your market's day to day because you live and breathe for a job. But they don't.

Until they've witnessed the benefits firsthand, your customers will never truly understand this impact and storytelling is the next best alternative.

So by showing versus telling people what the future could look like, you'll entice them into taking that all important first step.

Before we move on to our storytelling framework, There's one thing we want to get you to keep front of mind and that's that storytelling isn't about your company or your product.

It's about your customer and what they get out of choosing you.

So let's take a look at our twelve step storytelling framework.

Step one is your audience, which is a snappy overview of your market or persona followed by step two, which is a snapshot of what their life looks like now without your solution.

Step three is the villain.

AkaA, the customer's current workaround that perhaps solves the problem in part, but not completely.

In slack's case, the villain is never ending emails, and for calendly, it's back and forth emails to set up a meeting for example.

Following on from that is the disruption their work around currently causes.

Using slack as an example again, That could be emails getting lost or hard to keep track of, which leads us on to steps five and six where you introduce some of the other characters involved and how this villain is impacting their lives too.

As the story passes the halfway point, we turn our attention to that utopia vision.

So what are your audience's goals?

And what is it they're looking for in a vendor?

In Calendly's case, That could be an easier and quicker way to book meetings.

In every story though, there's an antagonist who gets in the way of that fairy tale ending.

And this could be anything from a physical person to cost, time, or resource.

And then that's where your product steps in, the hero.

Here's where you go into how your solution not only solves their problem, but of pieces their antagonists too.

As we switch to the final few steps, we start to paint the picture of how watching better life with your solution could be. So what are the benefits and how will those benefits make them feel?

Step eleven focuses on the moral of the story I e. What lessons can be learned from your customer's journey?

This model should help compel future prospects to take action sooner.

And then the twelfth and final step is about establishing the new norm using real words from real customers.

So let's put all this together using a fake digital campaign reporting software company. And our Make Belief persona Jane.

To set the scene, Jane's responsible for delivering and reporting on her team's campaign metrics.

However, she struggles because she can't currently get all her apps to talk to one another in one place.

Here's what we're left with when we piece all those twelve steps together.

Jane is a campaign manager who's responsible for building, sending, and reporting on the marketing departments, customer, and prospect facing email activity.

At the moment, she struggles to get all the insights that she needs from various simultaneous multi touch campaigns.

She tries to overcome this by integrating external apps, but it's unreliable and often confusing.

As a result, she is not confident her numbers are accurate and campaigned optimized.

This also impacts the wider marketing department and sales teams because leads are occasionally being lost.

Her dream is to rely on just one tool and have complete confidence in its reporting suite.

However, her manager is getting in the way for fear of downtime due to migration.

Our email platform puts an end to all of this by delivering a single source to send and see campaigns from without any downtime.

Also you can focus on optimizing your efforts without worrying about daunchy data getting in the way.

Achieve email success doesn't have to be difficult.

And we've shown that time and time again.

Don't just take our word for it though. See what John know campaign manager at awesome example limited had to say.

Within weeks of adopting the email software, I easily saved hours each week and after seeing how seamlessly it aggregates data from multiple platforms I had one hundred percent confidence in the accuracy of my reports. I would never go back.

That's not to say you use that word for word of course, but it can be weaved into various elements of your website, marketing, and sales collateral to paint that emotionally driven story over the traditional logic based one. And that's really important because at the end of the day, people tend to make most of their decisions based on emotion and then justify it with logic afterwards.

People like to put themselves on that hero's journey to get the solution they need and selling your product story in such a way can be a real differentiator, especially if you're in a crowded market.

There's a quote out there that says the most human company is going to win and we wholeheartedly agree with that. So keep that in mind throughout your entire story building process.

‍