418: Telling the product and brand story – with Sarah Panus

Insights on brand storytelling for product managers

Today we are talking about the problem you solve, the value you create, and the difference you make—and not just you specifically but also your organization. Just like you, I have encountered organizations that confuse me—I’m uncertain what they are really about. This is a branding and messaging issue. As product professionals, we need to help position our products in ways that make sense for customers and the organization. We have to tell the product and brand story effectively.

To help us do that, Sarah Panus is with us. She is a brand storytelling strategist and coach, host of the Marketing With Empathy podcast, and founder of Kindred Speak, which provides editorial brand storytelling services and coaching. Sarah also speaks on topics for humanizing your brand. Before starting Kindred Speak, she contributed to brand and marketing strategy for the Sleep Number Corporation and other companies.

Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers

[2:14] What is brand storytelling?

Brand storytelling is when a brand shares editorial stories with their audience. Editorial stories are not promotional stories. They’re narrative stories designed to engage your audience, attract new people to your brand, and keep them engaged. They’re something your customer base wants more of, versus promotional content that they’re not really excited to read. Brand storytelling educates, entertains, and inspires your audience.

A brand story isn’t solely about the product. Your webpage can talk all about the product features and benefits. Create a story around the problem the product solves . Bring in real people who can talk about their experience. The product isn’t the hero of the story. Your customer or the problem is, and the product gets mentioned as a secondary element that can help solve the problem. These are the types of stories you read in a magazine or on a digital site. You need both marketing storytelling and brand storytelling, but brand storytelling is better designed and what I’ve seen drive leading ROI of attracting the audience and keeping them engaged.

[6:14] What do you do as a brand storytelling strategist?

Think of me like a rental editor-in-chief. I develop editorial strategies. What are the storytelling pillars that you should focus on? I go through all the data to figure out what the brand cares about and wants to talk about and more importantly what the audience cares about. The sweet spot of those things is the low-hanging fruit .

I use the FED method—focus, empathy, data. One element is figuring out how to get alignment throughout the organization. One big complaint from a marketing perspective is that content can live in silos and there’s no sharing. That can happen between marketing and product. I help with creating the culture of innovation among teams so you’re all working toward the same goal to drive the best results for the organization and have fun doing your job. I help manage blogs, podcast strategy, editorial calendars, and large content partnerships. I help be the extra voice, asking is this good editorial storytelling content? Does it feel humanized? Is it going to connect?

[14:39] How can we use brand storytelling to have more influence with stakeholders?

Brand storytelling can help give  you insights into what your audience is most interested in. As a content investigator, I go through tons of data internally and externally, so there might be other pieces of insights that people who are drafting content have that you as a product team don’t.

If you’re launching a product, storytelling helps generate awareness of the product through those stories.

Storytelling is like a marathon not a sprint. Anything that’s upper-funnel or mid-funnel takes a while, but it’s feeding that pipeline.