Telling your business’ story
This post is continued from last week’s blog about storytelling.
Excerpt from last week’s blog:
Stories are powerful. They can change the way we think, act, and feel.
When told well, stories can capture our imagination, compel us to act, create empathy, and make things real in a way that cold, hard facts cannot.
Story-telling is not limited to children’s books, radio dramas, ballads, theatre and film. It extends to business.
How can you use storytelling in your business?
- Communicate who your business is and what it does through clever story-telling.
- Make sure your business has a clear personality. Are you sophisticated, wise, tongue-in-cheek, old-fashioned, cutting edge? A messaging workshop is design to discover your business personality and communicate it in a way that positions your business well.
- Liven up your bio, history and ‘about us’.
- Use elements of story-telling to explain concepts. For example, one of my clients Rick Mapperson describes uses the image of oxygen masks to describe forward planning for small business here.
- Tell stories in your marketing material, media interviews, advertising etc. Here is a example of story-telling in advertising from Chevron: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=di0b3Cz-vfk&feature=related
- Make sure every aspect of your business communicates the same story, from your customer communication to your branding to your sales process.
When starting out with a new client, I like to run a messaging and storytelling workshop with them before even considering their marketing and public relations.
The result from the workshop is a matrix of clear core messages and stories about them and their business. It is like answering the age-old question, “Who am I?” but for your business.
Since it is Christmas time, I thought I would be generous and give you some questions from the Good Business Consulting storytelling and messaging workshop that you can use to start clearly articulating your business story:
- Describe the products/services that you offer
- What does your business offer? Why does your business exist?
- What’s the story behind starting your business?
- How do you deliver your products/services?
- How are your services/products priced?
- Which public personality (e.g. Tony Abbott, Michael Moore, Helen Mirren, Richard Branson, Bill Gates) would you like your business to most be like?
- 3 words that you want your business to be known for:
- Who is your audience? Demographics?
- What keeps your clients up at night, what makes them tick? What are their pain points?
- What problems are you solving for these people?
- What do they need to hear?
Answer these questions and you are on your way to discovering your business story and unique selling proposition.
The next step is to have this clearly articulated and for these clear, tight, meaningful and compelling messages to be communicated in everything you say and do. This is where it really does pay to consult a professional.
I’d love to hear how you go. Feel free to share some of your business story in the comments below.
Thank you for this detailed post, Phoebe. I really appreciate it. Do you have a couple of examples/links of business stories that show your ‘post in action’?
Thank you.
Have a great week.
Robin 🙂
Nice one, Phoebe! I love a good story and if I can get a sense of the people and history behind a brand, I find it all the more appealing. Often, business owners neglect to add the human side when talking about their companies but to do so can open far more doors than the dry, corporate information.
During a briefing consultation with my clients, I enjoy prompting them to tell me more about what’s behind their business because it helps me to humanise their website content, newsletters or blog posts. It’s great to see a blog post that mentions this valuable piece of advice. Well done 🙂