Whether you’re telling a story in a film, a novel, or a marketing campaign, the same narrative principle applies: there’s a PROBLEM, and there’s a HERO who must solve it.

Why perspective matters for messaging

To get an idea of why this matters for messaging, let’s take a simple story:

Once upon a time a SaaS startup was founded. It developed a good product, received funding, and won a client who improved their bottom line as a result.

We know we’re going to tell some version of this story to help our startup engage new clients, but there are multiple perspectives available to us:

Business-as-Hero

You’ll often see messaging where the business itself is the hero of the story. Founders saw a problem, developed a product to solve it, and received lots of funding and customers. In a single line of messaging:

We’ve made a great product and had a lot of success with it. Do business with us!

This is a strong angle. It tells the story of a successful company capable of getting the job done. That’s compelling and could generate leads. But there are other options as well:

Client-as-Hero

Here, the hero isn’t the business, but the client. They had a problem to overcome, found a product to solve it, and improved their bottom line. The messaging here might look something like this:

You have a problem, and with this product you can solve it. Do business with us!

This is strong too, because it centres the interests of the client, focusing on what they might gain by using the product.

Employee-as-Hero

From this point of view, the hero of the story is the individual working for the client who discovers the product and ultimately improves their employer’s bottom line. The message is:

You can impress your bosses by bringing them this product. Do business with us!

This one shouldn’t be overlooked. Every deal starts by gaining the attention of a single individual, and appealing to that individual’s interests might just get a foot in the door.

Customer-as-Hero

If the client has customers of its own (e.g. an e-commerce platform serving vendors), the customer could be the hero with a problem. In a line:

Help solve your customers’ problems by using our product. Do business with us!

This can be effective because, just like you were with the previous two examples, your clients might be trying to think from their customers’ perspective too.

Using perspectives in your messaging

None of these perspectives is necessarily better than any other. They’ll be more or less effective at different funnel stages or with different audiences.

Ultimately, it might make sense to build a strategy around multiple points of view: those of potential clients, their employees, their customers, their investors, and, in the case of impact-focused businesses, possibly even the environment, the economy, or society as a whole.

The specific balance of perspectives will depend on the product, the budget, the campaign and its goals, data from previous efforts, and many other variables. That’s why it’s a good idea to get help with your messaging from an experienced storyteller, but here are some useful questions to get you started:

1) What’s the story of our business until now, and what do we want for the future?
2) What are all the possible perspectives we can tell this story from, and what message does each one communicate?
3) Are any of these perspectives best-suited for specific purposes, audiences, funnel stages, or channels?

If you’d like to share your own perspective on perspectives, or hear more about mine, get in touch.