In an efficient go-to-market motion, delivering the “right message to the right person at the right time” is easier said than done. In a world where buyers are more difficult to reach and customer acquisition costs are climbing, brands must find ways to attract new customers for less.
The StoryKernel and the Messaging Hierarchy it supports is the framework that makes this possible. By capturing the “story of change” your brand sees in its market, defining the value you deliver buyers, and articulating what makes you credible, the StoryKernel is the narrative from which you can derive your storytelling across the buying journey.
The messaging hierarchy provides memorable phrases, terminology, and storytelling tools your team can use to tell this story consistently.
What guarantees high conversion across a story-driven funnel is the alignment of the StoryKernel with each stage of the buying journey. Companies that build their go-to-market around story have the right message for the right person, and when they map it into their buying journey, deliver it at the right time.
From “Push” to “Pull”
The buying journey has five distinct phases:
- Awareness: Buyers have an identified problem to solve or opportunity to realize
- Consideration: Is there more to gain from making a change than doing nothing?
- Evaluation: What is the right decision? Who is the right partner to trust?
- Experience: Did the brand keep its promise to me?
- Evangelism: Customers share their success with others and pull in new buyers
The amount of information available to contemporary buyers means this journey is rarely linear. Buyers research their problem, competitors, alternatives and—by the time your brand knows who they are—are much further than in the past. The journey must evolve alongside this behavior change.
Companies historically designed this journey to “push” buyers towards a sale: they optimize for conversion by using strong CTAs and aggressive sellers to get to the next stage. Not only does this lead to people dropping out of the journey more often (“ghosting”), it pushes low-probability buyers forward, leading to deals “lost” much later than they really were.
A buying journey based in strategic narrative “pulls” buyers forward. It takes a value-forward approach that invites buyers to take the next step. As they progress and become more aligned with your brand’s belief, they become more likely to buy—because they want to.
Each of the nine steps of the StoryKernel maps to a specific stage of the customer journey. Your brand emphasizes distinct parts of the story at each stage. As a result, your story is both dynamic as it evolves across the buyers’ interactions, and consistently reinforces the same belief and value about your brand as it is derived from the StoryKernel.
And because the StoryKernel uses your customer as its protagonist, the buying journey is telling their story: like any good book, they want to hear what comes next and discover how the plot unfolds alongside you.
Awareness: Establishing Cost of Inaction
Every journey begins with your buyer becoming pain-aware. At this stage, many do not yet even know a solution to their problem exists: they are frustrated by something broken in their world, or an aspiration that seems depressingly out of reach. The goal of this stage in the journey is to make your buyer aware there is a solution to the problem, which invites them to begin their journey.
The StoryKernel’s Existential Threat and Shared Threat shapes the messaging in this stage. By building the story on an external threat, it allows buyers to confront the problems they are facing without feeling at fault for them. This view aligns the brand with the buyer and establishes trust early in the funnel.
Connecting that large threat to the shared threat creates cost of inaction. Buyers feel urgency because they see how the big change in the market impacts their business or other people like them; efficient buying journeys are built on loss aversion (as opposed to potential gain).
Research by LinkedIn has shown that only 5 percent of B2B buyers are “in market” at any given point in time. The StoryKernel is designed to pull the other 95 percent into the buying journey. Defining a unique problem for your brand differentiates you before the buyer is actively considering alternatives—the best versions of this are when you show someone a problem they’ve felt but haven’t put words to, or a different perspective on an established challenge (“it’s not this, it’s that”).
How to use your StoryKernel in this phase: Cold email outreach, sales calls, social media content, ad copy, speaking opportunities (webinars, conferences, podcasts), whitepapers, and other educational content
Consideration: Cultivating Empathy
Once a buyer decides to do something about the problems they face, they enter the Consideration stage. There are many solutions to any given problem, so buyers must consider what path is right for them. Buyers in this stage are looking to be educated and understand alternatives. In most cases, your brand is not yet aware they are in-market.
The Our Hero section of the StoryKernel is entirely devoted to this buying journey stage. The StoryKernel captures your buyer’s aspirations and how the threats earlier in the story impact them directly—this ensures you are aligned with your buyer and have empathy for them. Buyers want to be heard and understood.
It is during this phase that the buyer engages in a conversion activity, and it typically ends with a discovery call, initial demo, trial, a conversation at a conference, retail visit, or some other low-risk activity. The buyer is looking to answer, “does this brand understand what I need?”
In each of these instances, work to connect your buyer with the psychographic elements of your StoryKernel. Best-fit customers share your beliefs, the “meaning” that is captured in the StoryKernel.
How to use your StoryKernel in this phase: Website copy, discovery calls, email newsletters, blog content, webinars, demos, trials, conferences, and events
Evaluation: Asserting Credibility
At the Evaluation stage, customers evaluate your brand against others as they actively seek the right solution. Buyers in this stage will make a decision about how to solve their problem, so your brand must assert why its solution is uniquely credible. Buyers always see maintaining the status quo or solving a problem independently as alternatives, so your brand must both speak to its value—and the need to continue on the journey.
Messaging for this stage is derived from The Mentor and Their Allies and the Call to Adventure sections of the StoryKernel. Essential brands keep the focus on their buyer in this stage; they show their credibility by emphasizing how they will unlock the buyer’s potential, and the other people they can surround them with to ensure their success. Focus on the buyer helps them feel empowered and confident taking the next step.
The brand uses its origin story and promise in this stage to show buyers why it is different than others. While buyers may not always be exposed to the company’s mission and values verbatim, it is important they feel their impact in this stage to cement trust and to be confident moving forward.
The StoryKernel captures the brand’s differentiators, which must be used in this phase. Buyers must see why only your brand can provide the solution you’ve promised, and have context for the experience, technology, or other unique value proposition that makes you credible.
The Call to Adventure concludes this phase by inviting your buyer to become a customer.
How to use your StoryKernel in this phase: Social proof (case studies, videos), demos, proposals, capabilities statements, social media content, references
Experience: Keeping the Promise
Post-purchase, the story continues. In the Experience stage, buyers—now customers—see how your brand keeps its promise. It is important that your brand continue to reinforce its value; this drives retention, increases lifetime customer value, and ensures the customer sees how their situation is actively improving with your help.
The StoryKernel captures this experience in The Talisman and the Obstacles to Overcome sections. Messaging to existing customers should reinforce how your product or service is an extension of the buyer’s own beliefs, so they can’t imagine a world without you in it. Companies should use interactions with customers to reinforce how they are using the solution to their benefit daily.
Essential brands design their customer experience to reinforce this. Customers may not always see the same impact you do, so touchpoints must be designed to retell the story to customers and connect it to what’s happening in their experience. Even something as subtle as the welcome message on a customer portal or the script used by the customer support team can focus the buyer on the value of the product and the utility it provides.
How to use your StoryKernel in this phase: Product messaging, customer communications (email, QBRs), conferences, social media content
Evangelism: Realizing Potential
Customers who believe and experience your story become more: Evangelists. The Evangelism stage of the journey is where people become advocates for your brand. Evangelism activates a customer-led growth motion that draws new buyers towards you, but is only effective when the experience shared by your current customers reflects the story you have in the market.
The Spoils of Victory in your StoryKernel capture the ROI customers receive from your brand. The Potential Achieved section captures the buyer’s own potential, unlocked with your help. This is where the importance of a customer-centric story comes full circle; people are much more likely to share their own story of success.
To spark evangelism, keep your focus on their customer. They must see their own transformation to share it with the world. Reinforcing the language from the StoryKernel is critical—when your customer advocates for you in the market using the same arc as your strategic narrative, expectations are set for those they refer and those buyers move even more quickly through the customer journey.
How to use your StoryKernel in this phase: Social proof (case studies, videos), social media content, activations, loyalty, and referral programs
An Efficient Customer Journey
The stages of the buying journey and their alignment to the StoryKernel provide a guide for what to emphasize in each touch point with the buyer. They’re not meant to be rigid; just as the buying journey often unfolds in a non-linear manner, each storytelling opportunity is an independent interaction with the buyer.
Integrating your strategic narrative across the buying journey is critical. A buyer who drops from the journey following a demo most likely was lost earlier: there was a mismatch between the threats described in the Awareness stage and the solutions offered in the Evaluation stage.
By differentiating in all stages, beginning with a specific threat only your brand is credible to address for a specific buyer, every stage increases buyer trust and your credibility.
It also simplifies the calls-to-action between stages. Each conversion is an invitation to learn more. That’s an invitation the buyer in a value-forward process designed for them will accept almost every time.
A Blueprint for Effective Storytelling
Woden’s StoryGuide is designed to map your StoryKernel onto the buying journey. We use the StoryKernel and the Messaging Hierarchy developed in your StorySeminar to create the content required to deliver the right story to the right buyer at ever stage of the customer journey.
The StoryGuide is a blueprint for an essential brand. It assembles diverse messaging components, sample content, and tactical guidance organized for each buyer persona and journey stage. Go-to-market teams use the StoryGuide to develop their own content and strategies—creating a more efficient funnel that drives down the cost of customer acquisition and accelerates growth.
Our clients’ own storytelling journey evolves alongside their brand. In StoryAccelerator, brands partner with Woden to refine their own capabilities: editing, coaching, and support makes them more compelling storytellers on their own.
Story is the strategy behind every essential brand. The buying journey is where that story comes into practice, and your brand’s own potential is unlocked.
