Your Customer is the Hero, Not You: A Fresh Approach to Storytelling in Product Marketing

Despite what years of marketing may have taught us, many businesses make the mistake of positioning themselves as the main character in their marketing narratives. They often focus on their own success, products, and innovations. However, the most effective marketing strategies recognize that the customer is the true hero. As a business, your role is to act as the trusted guide who helps the customer achieve their goals.

This storytelling approach not only empowers your customers but also creates a powerful emotional connection. By shifting your narrative focus and using strategies that engage both the emotional and logical needs of your audience, you can transform your marketing into a compelling story that leads to growth and customer loyalty.

The Storytelling Framework: Making Your Customer the Hero

A fresh take on the StoryBrand-inspired framework offers a step-by-step approach to building customer-centric marketing strategies. The core principle is that your customer is the hero, facing challenges that your brand helps them solve.

Here’s how my take on this framework unfolds:

1. The Hero’s Problem: Understanding Customer Pain Points

Every story starts with a problem. In marketing, the hero—your customer—is facing challenges that go beyond the need for a product or service. They often have both external and internal problems.

• External problem: The tangible, practical issue, such as needing a better website or more traffic.

• Internal problem: The emotional struggle, such as feeling overwhelmed, insecure about business performance, or fearing failure.

For example, if you’re offering a product marketing strategy, don’t just focus on the service. Emphasize how it can solve the customer’s internal struggle, such as reducing the stress of keeping up with competitors. This connection taps into their emotional needs, making your marketing more relatable and powerful.

2. You’re the Guide: Offering Empathy and Authority

While your customer is the hero, you are the guide. Your role is to help them navigate their challenges and find success. To do this effectively, you need to demonstrate both empathy and authority:

• Empathy: Show that you understand your customer’s challenges and feelings. For example, if your target customer is a small business owner struggling with consistent freelance income, acknowledge how tough it can be to juggle multiple roles while maintaining steady revenue.

• Authority: Use testimonials, case studies, or proven track records to showcase your expertise. Share customer success stories to illustrate how you’ve helped others overcome similar challenges.

When your customers see that you not only understand their problems but also have the expertise to solve them, they’ll trust you to guide them through their journey.

3. A Simple and Clear Plan for Success

Once your customer sees you as the guide, they need a clear plan to follow. The goal here is to remove confusion and outline the steps they need to take to succeed. Simplifying the journey helps your customers feel confident about working with you.

For example, if you’re helping customers with managing freelance payments, your plan might include:

1. Consultation: Discuss the challenges they face with invoicing and billing.

2. Strategy Development: Create a tailored payment management plan.

3. Implementation: Set up tools and processes for seamless payments.

By providing this roadmap, you empower your customers to take action without feeling lost or overwhelmed.

4. The Call to Action: Inviting the Customer on Their Journey

No story is complete without a call to action—the moment when the hero is invited to take the next step. In marketing, this translates to offering your customers a clear, compelling way to engage with your brand.

Your calls to action should be direct, actionable, and easy to understand:

• Direct CTA: “Start your free consultation today.”

• Transitional CTA: “Download our guide to improve your cash flow.”

Offering both direct and transitional CTAs gives your customers the option to engage immediately or gather more information, allowing them to make decisions at their own pace.

5. Overcoming Obstacles (Avoiding Failure)

In every great story, the hero must overcome obstacles to succeed. For your customers, these obstacles are the challenges that stand between them and their desired success. To motivate your customers to take action, you must address these challenges head-on and show them what’s at stake if they fail to solve the problem.

For instance, if a business is struggling with its online presence, the obstacle might be a poorly designed website that drives away potential customers. Failure to address this problem could mean losing out on valuable leads, revenue, and market relevance.

Paint a clear picture of what could go wrong if your customers don't act. This sense of urgency will encourage them to take the necessary steps to avoid failure. At the same time, show how your solution helps them overcome these obstacles and move closer to success.

6. Achieving Success (The Transformation)

After overcoming obstacles, the hero achieves success. In your marketing, this transformation should be clearly defined—what does success look like for your customers?

Success isn’t just about solving the problem; it’s about creating a better future for the customer. Show them the transformation they’ll experience by working with your brand. For example:

• A small business might grow its revenue through effective marketing strategies.

• A personal brand might gain more recognition and engagement online.

By painting this picture of success, you give your customers a vision of what’s possible. This motivates them to act and reassures them that they’re making the right decision.

7. The Hero’s Reward (Building Loyalty and Trust)

Once your customer achieves success, your job isn’t over. The final step in storytelling is ensuring that the relationship continues to grow. This is the phase where you turn satisfied customers into loyal brand advocates.

Offer ongoing support, post-project consultations, or exclusive resources to maintain the relationship. The goal is to provide value beyond the initial transaction, securing long-term loyalty and increasing the chances of repeat business.

For example, offering a free audit of their website six months after completion can solidify trust and demonstrate your ongoing commitment to their success. By consistently offering value, you help your customers feel like they’re winning the long game with you by their side.

The Grunt Test: Simplifying Your Message for Maximum Impact

The 7-stage framework outlined above is directly inspired by the principles shared in Building a StoryBrand. In the same way that the framework guides your customers through their journey, the Grunt Test ensures that the entry point to that journey—your website or messaging—is crystal clear. Once we've gone through the storytelling framework, it's important to understand how to communicate these ideas effectively basically.

Even though you’ve structured a compelling story, it’s easy to lose your audience if your message isn’t crystal clear. The Grunt Test—a concept popularized by Donald Miller in the StoryBrand framework—asks whether someone unfamiliar with your business can understand what you offer, how it benefits them, and what action they should take, all within just a few seconds. Before we see that though, an important aspect of product marketing to note is the positioning. The following article sheds light on an interesting take by Byron Sharp on how you can position your product sucessfully - Challenging Conventional Marketing Wisdom: Insights from Byron Sharp and Effective Strategies for Startups

How the Grunt Test Connects to Your Story

Think of the Grunt Test as the entry point to your narrative. Before the hero embarks on their journey, they need to know who the guide is and what plan is being offered. If your website, landing page, or any other communication is unclear, your potential customers will disengage before they even start their journey.

Make sure that within seconds of interacting with your content, visitors can answer the following:

1. What do you offer?

2. How will it make my life better?

3. What do I need to do to get started?

By ensuring clarity from the very beginning, you invite the hero (your customer) into the story, positioning them for success with your guidance. The Grunt Test isn't just a marketing tool—it's the first step in crafting a story that resonates.

Conclusion: Position Yourself as the Trusted Guide

In marketing, your role isn’t to be the hero—it’s to guide your customers toward their success. By using storytelling to position the customer as the hero, you can create a stronger emotional connection, build trust, and drive action. Incorporate the principles of the StoryBrand framework, address both external and internal problems, and offer a clear path to success.

When your messaging is clear (thanks to the Grunt Test) and your customer feels empowered, your marketing becomes not just a pitch but a compelling story that invites them to be the hero of their own journey.