{"id":14875,"date":"2018-03-21T17:02:35","date_gmt":"2018-03-21T17:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.intercom.com\/?p=14875"},"modified":"2020-07-30T12:57:01","modified_gmt":"2020-07-30T11:57:01","slug":"start-with-why-getting-your-story-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/start-with-why-getting-your-story-right\/","title":{"rendered":"Start your marketing with why: Getting your story right"},"content":{"rendered":"

No matter how good your product is, if you can\u2019t tell a cohesive, compelling story about it, you\u2019re going to have a very hard time getting people\u2019s attention when you actually do take it to market.<\/p>\n

Companies like Amazon understand this well and are rightly famous for their \u201cwork backwards\u201d philosophy. You start by writing the press release, to articulate how the world will see your product, and then work backwards until you get to the minimum set of technology requirements to achieve your goals for the product.<\/p>\n

Our approach to crafting a story begins with asking \u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n

Why are you building this product, and why does it matter? People don\u2019t typically discover and buy a product just because of its features. They buy a product because it solves a problem for them and delivers value<\/a> in doing so. That\u2019s why it\u2019s really important to think about the end-to-end story you need to tell to capture attention and motivate action, before you build anything.<\/p>\n

People don\u2019t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.
\n\u2013 Simon Sinek<\/p>\n

For decades software was sold using feature-based marketing: start with what the company wants to sell, and then tell people why they need it.<\/p>\n

But SaaS has changed that. It\u2019s easier than ever to build a product, which means the market landscape is increasingly competitive. The result is that differentiating yourself on product alone is harder than ever. To succeed, you need to reverse your marketing.<\/p>\n

\"Sinek's<\/p>\n

The \u201cwhy\u201d<\/h2>\n

Why does your company exist other than to make money? Many people can\u2019t succinctly answer that question, which is a problem for marketing. In order to tell a compelling story about your product, you need to have a crystal clear idea of what your company stands for.<\/p>\n

Make internet business personal
\n\u2013 Intercom\u2019s why<\/p>\n

This story starts long before you\u2019ve designed or coded anything. It\u2019s written as soon you decide you’re going to build a company. It\u2019s the pitch deck you\u2019re giving to investors, the application you\u2019re sending into Y Combinator or the story you\u2019re telling to the person next to you on the plane. When I joined Intercom, the first thing I did was to sit with the founders and try to understand the mission and vision of the product: Why did they create Intercom? What problem were they trying to solve? Why does that problem exist?<\/p>\n

Marketing, at the end of the day, is not just about a company\u2019s mission. It\u2019s about understanding why a customer would care about that mission, and translating that understanding into a story that will compel someone to start a trial and ultimately make a purchase.<\/p>\n

The \u201chow\u201d<\/h2>\n

As the Harvard Business School marketing professor Theodore Levitt put it, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.” People don\u2019t care about you, \u200apeople care about themselves and their problems. A good story is a lot like the strings on a piano: when it hits something of the same frequency, it resonates and your story sticks.<\/p>\n

\"Jason<\/p>\n

To start with, you need to have a clear understanding of who your target customer is. From there, you need to understand what problems you can solve for them. These have to be real problems they are looking for solutions to, and you need to be able to clearly articulate a world in which using your product or service solves those problems for them, in a manner better than anyone else has.<\/p>\n

For example, around the time Apple launched the iPod, MP3 players were a dime a dozen. The problem was marketing. Everyone else was saying \u201c1GB storage on your MP3 player\u201d \u2013 falling into the feature-based marketing trap we discussed above \u2013 but nobody was talking about how their product would make customers\u2019 lives better.<\/p>\n

Apple went ahead and focused on the customer benefit: 1,000 songs in your pocket. By deliberately avoiding talking about the tech (the storage capacity), they enabled people to avoid having to figure out what 1GB actually meant for them. At a time when MP3 players were competing with CD players and 1,000 songs on a device was a novelty, customers could clearly see the advantage the iPod would bring.<\/p>\n

\"Jason<\/p>\n

The \u201cwhat\u201d<\/h2>\n

Once you’ve sold someone on your story and shown them how your product can solve their problem, you should back it up with hard claims about how effective your product will be in solving their problem to accelerate their decision making.<\/p>\n

Take buying a car: You might understand why you need a car spacious and safe enough for your family, but when it comes down to a split decision, you might select the one with the heated leather seats, or the one that gives you 100 miles to the gallon. Features can often connect the dots and put a story into a greater context. They do this in two important ways:<\/p>\n