Your Story: The Hardest Working Marketing Investment

Story isn’t often a deliverable you see in the bill of materials agency partners use to launch a brand or product. It’s the biggest missed opportunity to create something hard-working that continues to return on the investment.  

I’ve had two clients in the last few months work with me AFTER investing big dollars with agency partners to establish a new brand. When the work was done and ready to go to market, these clients found themselves unsure of how to use the foundational marketing pieces the agencies created. 

“What do we SAY? How do we translate this to actionable messaging our team can use?” 

They walked away with a lot of jargon. They were missing their story—a narrative arc that brings audiences through an understanding of the challenge these orgs were setting out to tackle, the pain points they were addressing and deep rooted consequences on their business with a detailed explanation of the impact their orgs could create for their constituents and how. 

Stories bring people through a journey of understanding. Something a vision, mission or values statement can’t do alone. 

When you invest in crafting your story–time, energy or financial–that investment fuels marketing messaging across your channels and assets. It becomes your video script, your web copy, your entire pitch deck. You can pull punchy statements for social copy or longer form details of your solution for sales assets. 

It’s not a common deliverable in the marketing mix, and it’s time marketers and agencies got familiar with it. It’s a noisy market out there and connecting with your audience is more critical than ever. 

Connect with them in the information format that is old as time for a reason. Stories are scientifically proven to bring your audience in and through deep understanding and move them to action. 

Take a look at the messages you’re putting out in the world. Do they start with a solution, without any context? If so, start to ask yourself, what situation or pain is my audience experience and how can I speak to it to meet them where they are, first, before celebrating my solution.