Storytelling
4. Brand Storytelling (Authenticity):
- Share your "why": Articulate how your firm's values align with social responsibility and community well-being, beyond just profit.
- Showcase community impact in your marketing: Use case studies or testimonials that highlight the positive social or emotional outcomes of your work, even for commercial clients.
- Be transparent about your local roots: Emphasize your commitment to the New Brunswick community.
Links
What is a story?
Types of narratives
- "War" stories
- Personal memories or
- experiences
- Lessons learned
- Historical accounts — societal,
- cultural, organizational, etc.
Purposeful storytelling
- To make or reinforce a point
- To inspire
- To educate
- To clarify
- TO connect
A story is the telling of an event, either true or fictional, in such a way that the listener experiences or learns something just by the fact that they heard the story. A story is a means of transferring information, experience, attitude or point of view.
Storytelling is one of the most powerful ways to position yourself as an expert
- tell a great story. merits of the product.
- Everybody has a story, everybody has been through hardship and success and has come out the other side stronger with advice to give
- Think about your own personal struggles and successes and think how you can use these to tell a story that positions you as an expert and differentiates you from others
Steps to write an engaging business founding story / leverage your company's journey as a compelling hook
- How you came about your product? (Basically YOUR story)
- Write down what you've learned
- What problem does it solve?
- Write down your struggles
- Why should they buy from you?
- Write down your successes
- Testimonials from people who have bought from you (if applies)
- How can they apply it themselves?
Identify the key elements
Start by identifying the crucial elements of your business founding story. What challenges did you face? What inspired you to start the company? What problem does your tech startup aim to solve? Reflect on these aspects and distill them into a concise and impactful narrative.
Craft a compelling narrative
Weave your story into a narrative that highlights the journey, struggles, and triumphs of your tech startup. Emphasize the problem you set out to solve and how your unique vision and approach differentiate your company in the market. Include key milestones or pivotal moments that shaped your startup's growth. Ensure that the narrative is authentic, relatable, and showcases your passion and determination.
Focus on impact
Connect your business founding story to the positive impact your startup aims to make. Highlight the value your product or service brings to customers, the industry, or society as a whole. Illustrate how your company's vision aligns with the aspirations and values of job applicants, emphasizing the opportunity for them to contribute to something meaningful and make a difference.
Incorporate personal anecdotes
Personal anecdotes can add a human touch to your business founding story. Share moments of vulnerability, pivotal decision-making, or even failures that you encountered along the way. These anecdotes can demonstrate resilience, adaptability, and the willingness to learn from mistakes. Job applicants will appreciate the authenticity and relate to the challenges you've overcome.
Use visuals and multimedia
Enhance your storytelling by incorporating visuals and multimedia elements. Create a visually appealing presentation, video, or website section that brings your business founding story to life. Use images, infographics, and videos to illustrate key moments or showcase the impact your startup has achieved. This multimedia approach will make your story more engaging and memorable.
Communicate your vision
Clearly articulate your company's vision and how it aligns with the aspirations of job applicants. Help them understand how their role within the organization contributes to the larger picture. Explain the growth potential, the exciting opportunities for innovation, and the potential for personal and professional development within your tech startup.
Share success stories
Highlight success stories of employees who have joined your startup and made significant contributions. Showcase how their individual journeys have aligned with the company's vision and resulted in personal growth and career advancement. These success stories can inspire job applicants by demonstrating the potential for growth and the supportive environment your startup provides.
Remember, authenticity, passion, and a clear vision are key elements for creating a compelling business founding story. By effectively communicating your journey and the company's vision, you can leave job applicants inspired and eager to be a part of your tech startup.
| Storytelling | Acroynm |
|---|---|
| Verify | something the reader has experienced or observed |
| Validate | their internal reaction or response to it |
| Vantage | introduce your intended point of the email/webpage etc |
| Values | connect your point to values you share |
| Villains | illustrate how this opposes a common villain or obstacle that is counter to your values or desired outcomes |
People will do anything for those who:
- Encourage their dreams
- Calm their fears
- Confirm their suspicions
- Justify their failures
- Help them throw rocks at their enemy's
Example
by equipping business owners with cutting edge web development, e-commerce, and analytics, we're on a mission to advance local businesses through web 3.0 technology.
Ordinarily world
A career in mining day in day out swinging a shovel
Call to adventure
Lost significant amount of money on shares in the global financial crisis. Wife wishes to go back to work now that our son has started school. We have an idea for an iPhone app that will facilitate a business for her to run
Refusal of the call
I quickly find out that I can't just pay someone to build the idea for me. I am forced into growing my knowledge of the computer and design. After great effort and significant progress on development my wife becomes pregnant again so because she will be unable to work in the business I'm forced to do strip the components of the app down to something useful but not profitable.
Meeting the mentor
Feeling defeated as I scroll through my Facebook newsfeed sometime later I come across an advertisement title "who's got the balls to show you the inside of their Business, we do." I find that it is a behind-the-scenes access to the marketing for a software as a service business training course so I invest the $2000 and signup.
Crossing the threshold
I entered the world from software development to marketing and I'm intrigued. I learn that some value can be found for my mobile app by building its user base. So I begin applying some of the techniques I learn towards growing my user base for the app. As the techniques begin to work, I become hooked on marketing.
Tests allies and enemies
Because I am now aware that it's my user base that has some chance of value, I am armed with only very low budget or free marketing options.
Ordeal
I was targeting a very specific niche though and before long I had pretty much exposed my product to the entire industry. Even though I had nearly there entire fly in fly out industry using my app I was still $40,000 down. I had developed some kind of reputation and I had plentiful ideas so I began approaching the mining company that I worked for to solve the problems that I could see. Unfortunately conflict of interest would eventually halt any progress along that path, even after being given the go-ahead at one point and spending three months scoping it out.
Reward
With my reputation and around 65,000 people using my app, I was approached by a business automation company in Perth who was building an idea for the mining industry and they wanted to buy my app because of its user base. Their idea was remarkably similar to what I had recently shown at work and so I was interested in being a part of this project. After contemplating the offer that they presented to me which was reasonable I decided that I was ready to leave mining and pursue my own interests in marketing. I quit my job and counted their offer with an additional three months consulting to build out the marketing plan for them.
They happily agreed having seen the efforts I had already made to grow my own app. I was now very excited to be building marketing systems without the restrictions of having no budget to play with.
Resurrection (climax)
I had already learned how important it was to remove any kind of guessing from a marketing strategy. I had already learned that tracking everything, split testing and optimising for conversions was The most important component of success in marketing and when I applied it to AdWords I knew I had found the sweet spot.
Return with the elixir
At the end of the three months contract that I had with this tech company they wanted to put me on as a marketing manager to run the strategy I built for them but I declined. I decided I could have a much bigger impact by helping other businesses in a similar way that I helped them. I had identified PPC advertising as a way to have the highest amount of impact on helping businesses succeed.
Backstory
Describe the genesis of your idea, how it evolved, and the opportunity you saw as it was emerging. The backstory of the idea is always interesting to the target. Once this story is told, everything you say in your pitch will be legitimized by it. As you craft your backstory, think in terms of how it came to be where it is today and how you found it. Describe the steps in its evolution, and show how it evolved-how it moved-to finally become the opportunity you have now identified and captured.