Who is the hero in your business?

When we think about who to position as the hero in our business… we’ll often think about ways to raise our own brand profile… and about what else we need to do to prove that we’re leaders (or ‘thought leaders’) in our field.

But, whatever our ambition, we should never forget that the person who matters most to our customers is, quite rightly, themselves, not us.

So, whilst Heather Small is absolutely right to say that you need to ‘Search for the hero inside yourself’ – and ‘Search for the secrets you hide’ …in business, we need to focus more of our stories on another hero, our customers.

Just love Heather Small’s voice in that AND this song too

Turn up the volume – and enjoy!

How to build your story brand

Stories are a powerful way to communicate – probably because we evolved to listen to stories long before we learned to read and write.

What’s more, a story with a hero on a journey is the proven best formula for engaging your audience. It’s said that this story model is behind a great many best selling books and block buster films.

And ‘Building a story brand’ by Donald Miller (a book I’ve just discovered thanks to Matt Eldridge of Melt Design) can help us to develop the marketing messages for our business around this most powerful idea.

It can help us to focus on the stories our customers would be happier listening to; stories that say less about us – and the facts of our proposition – and more about how they, our customers, can achieve more of what matters to them.

Here’s a neat video outline of the book.

I recommend you buy it and follow the exercises inside.

Yes, I know, I need to follow the guidance here myself… more often too. But I have, at least,  just changed a few messages on the top of my website homepage as a result of revisiting this. So, I’m working on it  🙂

The story outline

Frankly, if you’re in business you’re probably aware of this story – but it’s always worth repeating because it’s so valuable.

The idea is to focus our marketing ‘story’ on three things:

1. The customer, who they are and what they ‘need’ – the problem they’d like fixed or the ‘wants’ they’d like satisfied.
2. How our product or service helps help them transform their life – by meeting those needs.
3. And what this good outcome looks like for them; the benefits they enjoy and how it feels to move from a position of pain to gain.

Keep this in balance

Finally, let’s remember that for any significant purchase, whilst this form of (customer based) storytelling can generate more initial excitement about what our product or service could do… our prospective customers will likely then switch into a logical mode of thinking – to check that we’re the right supplier for them.

So, you still need those testimonials about your work and a solid ‘About page’ to help your customers see you as their potential hero in this story too.

I wish you good luck with your brand story building and marketing generally.

Give me a shout if you’d like further help

And thanks for dropping in,

Paul

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