It's likely a daily occurrence. You visit a website. You immediately become confused. You leave the site and never look back.
If you had bothered to stick around for more than a few seconds, you might have found yourself asking:
But why would you stick around? There's not enough time in the day to read unclear value propositions, decode confusing processes, stumble through industry jargon or—worse yet—deal with companies that talk at you and tell you about how amazing they are.
The sad truth is, behind most of these quickly abandoned websites, and buried under the countless corporate platitudes, are companies that sell great products and employ talented, smart people.
Yet there's still a sadder truth: The fix is simple. And the fix is simplification.
When a company can clarify its marketing message and structure it in a way that's effortless for people to consume, that company succeeds in the game of simplification.
But where do you start?
With a simple script.
A script provides structure to your brand's story.
Stories themselves are one of the most effective frameworks for logically organizing information.
And, according to Gabriela Pereira, founder of DIY MFA, people are scientifically hardwired to demand story—stories grab attention unlike any other mechanism. I saw Gabriela speak at length about the power of story at INBOUND 2019 and how when compelling storytelling is paired with a logical buyer's journey, your marketing becomes that much more impactful. (Spoiler: I'll be speaking with Gabriela about this in my next post in a few weeks.)
Using the logical and effective framework of story, companies can position themselves as guides who help their customers become the heroes of their personal narratives—not as braggadocious experts who self-aggrandize. Through story, you can use simple messaging to empower your ideal customers to take action to achieve their goals and overcome their fears.
With a corporate story script in place, you'll have a strong backbone that can be used to create all of your website messaging and marketing content so that it showcases the benefits of using your products or services in an easy-to-understand, digestible way.
At its most basic, your script should contain five elements in this order (we're creating a story after all):
Start by defining who your ideal customer is and what they want. Important (!!!): In your story and brand messaging, you need to position your ideal customer as the hero your brand is leading to success. Readers don't want to hear about how amazing your brand is (unless they navigate to sections of your website that should be about you; "About" and "Careers" pages are great examples).
Great stories contain conflict and someone or something that needs to be defeated. The trick is to define this primary source of conflict, personify it (even if it's not a person) and identify the three levels of problems (external, internal and philosophical) it creates for your ideal customer.
You need a character in your story that helps your hero succeed (i.e., the Yoda). You guessed it—it's you; you're Yoda. This means in your messaging you need to explain why you should be trusted to lead your customer to success, without making it entirely about you. To do this, you need to be empathetic to the plight of your customer and demonstrate authority—but don't go overboard—using testimonials, impressive statistics, awards you've won and notable associations you're apart of (Tip: Look at the main headlines on your website and put yourself in your ideal customer's shoes. Are you seeing statements that speak directly to you [that use "you/your"] and list compelling benefits? Are you seeing too many statements where your brand is patting itself on the back?)
Now that you've identified your hero's problems and how to earn their trust, you need to tell them exactly how you'll help them succeed. This is when you eliminate any confusion by clearly laying out a plan that explains how your hero should be doing business with you (Tip: Lay it out as a process with a few easy steps). You should also help your hero overcome fears by stating the agreements, or guarantees, you'll make with them (an example of this would be a quality guarantee).
If you've done your job above, your messaging should make your hero feel compelled to take action. They should be looking to "buy now" or "schedule an appointment" (depending on the plan you've already laid out for them). The reality is, not all customers will be ready to do business with you. But they still should be inspired to take action. This is why it's important to provide customers options to conduct additional research, whether that be to download educational whitepapers and case studies or to sign up to receive free product samples and trials.
For those of you who are visual, here's what this corporate story script framework looks like:
Before you start creating content marketing campaigns, you need to make sure your corporate story script framework is locked down. A well-thought-out script can easily be rolled out into an effective content marketing campaign.
Here's an example of what that could look like.
Say you're a transportation and logistics company that has a less-than-truckload (LTL) ecommerce solution that's innovative in the space. You:
In the above example, you can start to see how easily a corporate story script can be integrated into your content and marketing efforts. It can serve as the foundation you need to develop a content marketing strategy that delivers tangible benefits.