At ProductCamp Austin 8 on Saturday, Josh Duncan, Director of Product Marketing and Community at Noesis Energy, an Austin based software startup, led a town hall discussion entitled Own Your Story Or Someone Else Will.
The title alone was all I needed to read to know Josh and I share a common philosophy.
A key take-away from the town hall discussion was this comment from Josh, “Good marketing uses a product to tell stories. Bad marketing tells stories about products.”
So true.
Your product stories
As you read that sentence, did you think about your stories? Can you classify them as good marketing or are they in reality, bad marketing?
Hopefully, you said good.
Good stories are truthful, authentic and from the customer’s point of view. They address a problem that resonates with a large segment of the market and presents a solution that is replicable without a massive drain on resources and an act of Congress.
The rest of the stories
Good stories are not tall tales, fantasies, sci-fi or other works of fiction – even those that could be true if and only if someone would purchase the product for the problem described.
That’s bad marketing disguised as good marketing. It’s misleading, disingenuous and calls into question the authority, integrity and character of the author. Should a company buy your product based on such a story, only to have fits trying to get the product to solve the problem described in the fictitious account, the final chapter could prove to be a horror story for everyone involved.
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