Build a hero's journey for your brand story

Business benefits

Create a narrative that resonates with your audience.

Build a high level marketing plan for your product.

Map a hero’s journey using your marketing plan and brand strategy.

Memorable storytelling is often more about using a structure that people are familiar with than creating something new or shocking. By framing customer pain points and your brand’s radically differentiated solution with a straightforward story structure, you can build trust and understanding with your audience.

Formulate your brand story structure as follows:

  1. The hero: someone who represents your minimum viable market.
  2. Wants to defeat the common enemy: the principal pain point that defines your strategy.
  3. Meets their guide: your brand.
  4. Receives a plan: your radically different solution.
  5. Which calls them to action: to test your promise.
  6. And helps them defeat the common enemy: solves their problems.
  7. To reach their goal: finds success in your radically different solution.

Review your outline, focusing on radical simplicity, confidence, and truth.

  • Radical simplicity: Focus on one message and use simple words to say complex things. Decide and commit!
  • Radical confidence: Bold edginess breeds confidence and authority. Share your opinions and admit your flaws. Use social proof, don’t assume your scale is known. Prove it.
  • Radical truth: Stay on-truth and don’t lie to yourself or your market. Don’t hide behind empty words or lean on your market for a gut check.

Consider the following questions:

  • Is your story simple?
  • Is your story consistent and connected with your radically differentiated strategy?
  • Does your story represent something your minimum viable market is likely to experience with your brand?
  • Does your strategy confront the common enemy of the market?
  • Does the story represent a radically different product, service, or experience?
  • Does your strategy help your minimum viable market achieve its goals?

Fill out your brand story. Check that it’s still simple, confident, and true.

Create your value proposition, making sure it is specific, uses simple words, and focuses on only one pain, one goal, and one unique aspect.

Good examples of value propositions are:

  • HotJar: Understand how users are really experiencing your sitewithout drowning in numbers.
  • Bin Buddy: Keep bins fresh and clean for days.
  • EHM Program: Make your product or service radically stand out.
  • Marilyn and Smith: Don’t sit on the fence.

Test and ship your brand story regularly to learn which narrative works best.

Don’t live in your own head or over-science it. Update your sales deck, talk to your customers, run copy or messaging tests. Don’t spend weeks and months thinking and thinking, test and keep it simple.

Last edited by @hesh_fekry 2023-11-14T10:06:22Z