By Jonathan Chan
Source: Huffington Post
When you’re looking for solid advice for launching a successful startup, it makes sense to turn to experts like Gary Vaynerchuk for advice.
Gary is a serial entrepreneur and New York Times best selling author. In the book Foundr V1.0, when asked to share his top tip for startups, Gary says to focus on storytelling. “Quality storytelling always wins. It’s not about pushing advertising. It’s about bringing value.”
That’s great, but you’re an entrepreneur not J.K. Rowling, so what should you do? Let’s dive into the steps you need to take to tell an amazing brand story right now!
1. Know The SPECIFIC Wants/Needs of Your Target Audience
When you decided to launch your startup you did so because you thought your idea could solve a problem for someone other than yourself.
For example, Harry’s is an e-commerce store that sells affordable, well crafted men’s grooming products. The founder of Harry’s decided to launch his startup one day when he was in the drugstore spending what he felt was way too much money for some boring looking razor blades (I think we’ve all been there).
The founder of Harry’s initially could have thought: I’m going to create the highest quality grooming products or I’m going to launch a line of aftershave products or I’m going to create a new style of blade that’s technically better than all other blades.
Any of those angles on their own would have been great, but those are a lot of issues to tackle for a startup, especially for one launching into a market with leaders like Gillette who have a lot of marketing dollars to spend to squash the little guys.
Instead of thinking I need my brand to tackle ALL the problems, the founder started with a focus that met a very specific need for many consumers: the high price of razor blades. He then created a blade that was high quality that costs just $2.
When crafting the Harry’s marketing messaging he could have launched by saying “New High Quality Grooming Products for Men!” which might get lost in the sea of a million other “new high quality” products.
Instead Harry’s was able to launch saying “less than $2 per blade.”
You see how specific that messaging is? That specificity is powerful because it speaks to a very specific need for someone in Harry’s target audience.
The more specific you can be in your own communications the better off you’ll be!