How to Tell a Product Story (and Get an Enthusiastic Response)

Two white-collared professionals were in an animated conversation discussing the highs of a newly minted SaaS product. While discussing the marketing strategy, they only discussed the storylines that essentially gave the product a facelift. They were blown by how quickly the product resonated with the audience.

No stats, no lists of facts, no big numbers, only STORY.

Putting a compelling story behind the product is getting oh-so-popular among businesses and marketers alike.

Both the professionals in the story were intimidated by how much a well-knitted story can drive the marketing path forward. And they made sure to bring this perspective into their subsequent product launches.

Summarily, product storytelling is the new star of the show.

Take the words of ace psychologist Jerome Burner

"Stories are facts wrapped up in context and delivered with emotion, they are more memorable."

If you're a product owner, marketer, or manager and product storytelling has not been in your wheelhouse; I will cover why your SaaS business needs it immediately.

Product Storytelling Explained

Product storytelling is the simplest and most effective communication that you can offer to your consumers to drive your chosen narrative.

You narrate the idea behind your product, why it exists, the complications, and the problems it solves. And in a nutshell, it instills an emotional appeal into your business, making everything more real.

A product that has a compelling backstory is more likely to be remembered and shared.

Goals Of Product Storytelling

Good storytelling is defined by how well it communicates value to your customers and how strong of a connection it forges with them.

It has been said by the Famous Author Simon Sinek,

"People don't buy what you do. They buy why you do it."

As a product owner, you must work more on whys and hows.

The practical plan of any product storytelling campaign is to instill emotions into a product from its infancy. The story should be well structured and uniform across the board.

Memorable Product Stories do the following:

Explains the Product Strategy

As mentioned earlier, the hows and whys are always enticing. Your product storytelling simplifies how a product took off to where it determines to position itself. It explains clearly the target customers and how they can benefit from the product.

Sets The Vision

Another vital component for any product positioning is its core objective—the whys of the product. Why it was developed to the complete development process. An emotional connection crafted by a punchy story keeps the audience hooked to your product for the longest time.

Practical Steps to Crafting Engaging Product Storytelling

You often think your decisions are based on logic and solid convincing but actually, humans are story-oriented. By seeing a commercial on TV or being subject to a sales pitch, you can be convinced to buy a product based on the perception of it that stories create, rather than its functionality or features. Today, startups pitch their businesses to their respective investors using product storytelling like never before.

The Shopify story exemplifies how compelling storytelling can shape a thriving startup into a unicorn brand.

Let's learn what it takes to craft the most immersive product storytelling experiences, even if you're not conversant with this art.

1. Craft The Buyer Persona To Cement The Message

A buyer Persona is a fictional character that allows you to know the ideal product audience. It defines specificity with the target audience's job role, authority, challenges, and the need for your product. Having a buyer persona in place not only shapes your product storytelling but it helps with your brand messaging.

A buyer persona is of incredible value in the core messaging of your product to know who you are selling. If it is difficult to identify, dig into numerous user stories of your product.

2. Keep Feedbacks At High Value

   
   

When negative product feedback lays the ground for improvement, positive feedback opens doors for product storytelling to sell.

So simple! Ask questions to your customers because gating communication is no good.

Ask your users

• Why are they using the product?
• How's the experience?
• Is it able to solve their problem?

For example, Ubersuggest is an SEO tool, and to keep the experience top-notch, it keeps sending feedback survey forms like this.

3. Drive Urgency with the Pain Points

   
   

Product storytelling is compelling if it 100% promises to be a problem solver. If you want your product storytelling to be quick and effective, address all the buyer personas' pain points and give an immediate solution.

It’s ideal to hold their attention with effective communication and spark urgency. The art of product storytelling lies in offering rewards on the personal and professional front through your product.

Example: Wipster is a resource that helps creative professionals get their media approved seamlessly by stakeholders. It understands the pain points and delivers the solution with Urgency.

4. Make Product Storytelling Empathetic and Relatable

   
   

Lean into the emotion of why you developed this product and how it can help you with a touch of relatability. People engage with content when it hits the spot. Romance novels from an established author and a restaurant with passed-on authentic recipes always have a cult following. What makes them unique? A reasonably good relatable story. And that's what you need to work on creating in your product storytelling.

Include more dynamic visuals and human interactions to make your product more real and raw. It automatically makes customers feel they are part of your product.

5. Select Your Medium to Deliver Stories

   
   

Next, look at how you want to portray your product story. Technology has leaped, and thankfully, there are numerous ways to present your product story as your audience consumes.

You can opt for:

• Text: Texts are words that offer the audience stories, in the same manner, they have been consumed forever. Ebooks, blogs, newsletters, everything falls in here.

• Audio: The recorded speeches describing the product story in an audio format are relatively famous today. It leverages the human voice for product storytelling.

• In-app: Storytelling integrated with apps in the form of checklists, banners, and toolkits deciphering the product's story via easy app interaction.

• Digital: It is the most popular format that supports almost any media format from video marketing, animations, and gamification, considered highly used and easily applied.

  
  

6. CTA To Take Action

   
   

Your ultimate goal of product storytelling is to make your consumers take action. So, make it happen and infuse an appropriate call to action (CTA). A CTA informs your audience and what steps they need to take.

For instance, you want your audience for free trials after an informed story or perhaps sign up for the free Bootcamp.

PS: Don't forget that CTA must adhere to your brand messaging and tone. It should:

• Not Too pushy
• Use actionable language
• Play up with time sensitivity
• Match the brand tone
• Easy to fulfill

A brilliant example of product storytelling with an apt CTA is Trello. This CTA is hard to ignore, comprehensive and drives to action.

5 Key Tips To Execute Product Storytelling Like A Pro

1. Start with a clear purpose before drafting your story. Why am I writing it? What problem do I intend to solve?

   
   

2. Benefits over features, but in a story. Keep the story for users, not comprehensively highlighting your product's features. Your audience may get muddled up in the long list losing the story you're trying to knit.

   
   

3. Don't blend too much technical documentation while knitting your story. Your storytelling should be solid and persuasive. Data points and facts are incredible only if scarcely put.

   
   

4. Make the narrative sweet and short. Write the story in a conversational tone to breathe life into it rather detouring your audience from the message.

   
   

5. Never lose focus on the protagonist of your brand story, i.e., the product. Make it a superhero amidst 7000-odd SaaS tools for your product to function in motion.

   
   

Conclusion

Now you know it all starts with a product, and there is always a story. Products are forgotten, but stories stay forever. While you tread this path of storytelling, it need not be complicated.

Take a leap of faith and break away from the traditional marketing setup to the unexplored pathways of product storytelling.

Feeling inspired? Read more about how to change your product's image!

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