If you’re a technical founder, chances are you tell stories about your product on a daily basis— whether you realize it or not. Many technical founders have little experience in branding, marketing, and storytelling, limited resources for outside hiring, and a pressing need to raise funds and gain traction — both of which require storytelling. The goal of this downloadable guide is to give you effective tools and actionable steps to build stories around your product — whatever your current goals.
Storytelling can:
- Make complex products more understandable and appealing
- Create emotional connections to engage audiences
- Add an extra layer of differentiation from your competitors
- Shape the product's identity
- Simplify the user experience
Tool #1: Defining your target audience
By knowing your target audience and mapping out their exact touchpoints, you can build in elements of narrative that entice them to continue interacting with your brand throughout their journey.
Tool #2: Building a story arc
Humans love stories with conflict and resolution. By following this simple template, you will keep your audience engaged throughout your presentation, explanation, or content piece.
Tool #3: Going from features to benefits
Benefits are clear and require no interpretation, unlike features. By keeping things relevant and real for the audience, you will effectively demonstrate how your product will improve their lives.
Tool #4: Going from stories to data
Different people can interpret the same data points differently. By taking the guesswork out of interpreting data you can effectively showcase the value and effectiveness of your product. It will also help your audience remember and retain the information better since people connect with stories better than with numbers.
Storytelling is not a one-and-done process; you can use its principles across your whole product lifecycle: from creating user stories to developing effective pitch decks, writing compelling website content to putting together reports. In this downloadable guide, you will find actionable steps you can take for each of the tools outlined above for any of your audiences.