Your 2019 roadmap and new product line-up are finalised, you’ve passed approvals and you are ready to take it to the world. You want to tell everyone about it, lavish attention on every detail, every feature and every benefit to convince customers that it is exactly what they have been waiting for. It’s a perfectly natural reaction after all the blood sweat and tears that it has taken to get you here.

But it is also a danger. The tech world is booming, which means that there are hundreds of similar products ready to launch and compete for attention. They may well not be as good as yours, but unfortunately most buyers and influencers do not have the depth of understanding, nor the time, to sort through the technical features and benefits of every product in a sophisticated way. You (and your competitors) have been super-close to your products, you know the jargon, you know why each feature or capability is important, and the decisions and trade-offs made in getting it to market. Your audience knows none of this.

To stand out, and to get ahead of competitors in 2019 and be the product of choice, you need to get out of the technology weeds and tell a higher-level story.

Audiences are influenced by emotion first, then use facts to rationalise their decision. So, you need to tell a story that draws them in, creates that emotional engagement and provides solutions to issues that are relevant to them. Of course, these may well be related to the specific problem you are solving, but they will also be wider lifestyle, economic, cultural and emotional needs.

The secret of a good communications narrative is that it is rooted in the context of the audience, it talks to the things that matter to them. It has a momentum that moves audiences through the story towards the conclusion that your product is right for them. The features and benefits of the product only really come into play at the very end of this story. Crucially, the story is about them, and not you or your product.

Great narratives leverage products, but also bridge between them to provide ongoing engagement that builds reputation beyond specific products. Telling stories in this way will not only differentiate you from the majority of your competitors, but by breaking away from the tech-weeds, it will give you the platform to speak to wider audiences through a greater range of channels and drive greater commercial success.

To help you do this we’ve created a story-building workshop that will create an effective, bespoke story for you and your product and drive wider and higher-level engagement. Why not kick off the new year with a new narrative that gets you out of the weeds and gets you noticed. Please get in touch if you’d like to hear more.