Figure Out Your Damn Story Already

For anyone building and growing a business, all the tools in the world won’t help you until you decide to talk about why

Hey marketing person. Yah, you.

How many of these are you currently using?

1. Youtube / Twitter / Facebook / Instagram Ads
2. Google / Bing / Yahoo ( yes people buy ads on Yahoo )
3. Mailchimp / Constant Contact / Convertkit
4. Salesforce / Marketo / Hubspot
5. Buffer / Hootsuite
6. Squarespace / Wordpress / Wix / Medium
7. External PR / Influencers
8. Content Marketing ( words and / or video )
9. Moz / Ahrefs / SEMrush
10. Messaging bots

A bunch of them, right? The modern, mainstream marketing toolbox.

And yet.

So many of us are still searching for more. We continue to believe there is something better out there. That something extra. The one elusive tool that will lead us to the promised land, and automate our way to greatness.

I’ve got some hard truth, folks.

There is no tool. No magic solution. No silver bullet.

Furthermore, everything listed above, all those tools, that multitude of marketing magic, they actually aren’t that helpful.

No tool, no platform, no system will make your marketing efforts a thing of legend.

There is one thing, and one thing only that separates a great marketer from someone who knows how to use the tools and can spend money to get some manner of results.

Great marketers, great brands, great campaigns are differentiated by one single, solitary concept.

Storytelling.

So I beg you before you sign up for all those tools, all those systems. Before you spend a dime on an Instagram or AdWords ad, before you commit to writing an endless array of blog posts, or approach an influencer on Youtube, ask yourself one question;

What is the story we’re trying to tell?

Not, what does our product / service / platform / doohickey do?
Not, what are all the features we have that our competitor does not?
Not, how you think your customers will benefit from all the things your platform does ( why so many people insist on telling people how to feel is beyond me )?
Not, how can we hoodwink a segment of the population into giving us money?

The only place to start, the only way to truly maximize your returns, and the only way to build a loyal audience, is to answer why.

Why are we doing what we do, what makes our mission unique, what more significant thing do we believe in that motivated us to build / create / design / launch / grow what we did? Why are we committed to making you / the world / this vertical better? How do we believe we can change the world.

Until you figure that out. Until you can articulate that story in a way that demonstrates to everyone ( your employees, your partners, your customers ) the passion you have for the problem you’re trying to solve, the best tools in the world won’t help you.

It’s all just lipstick on a pig.

Next post, how do we begin telling great stories.

Thanks for reading.