Is your business the hero of your story?

Storytelling helps businesses explain complex products and services in a way that people remember. The most effective business stories follow four simple elements: a person, a problem, a turning point and a resolution. Whether you sell software, engineering services, medical technology or professional expertise, your customers still make decisions emotionally before justifying them logically. Story helps bridge that gap.

At Piquant, storytelling sits at the heart of every communications strategy, every design, every digital project, and every brand that we create. In this guide, we explain how storytelling works in marketing and how you can apply it across your website, social media and video content.

A stranger walks into a bar…

That’s the moment. The moment when everything changes in a story, the moment we meet the hero, and more importantly, the moment when, for your audience, the story really comes alive.

Humans need story. 

Want to know why storytelling is so important for humans?

• Stories help us make sense of the world, they make the world more interesting, animated and fun. 
• Stories help us understand complex information. 
• Stories appeal to all types of learners; visual, auditory and kinesthetic
• Stories help us remember information. Research consistently shows that people remember stories far better than facts.

With stories doing so much heavy lifting to help us engage, understand and remember, it is important that CEOs, founders and marketing managers harness the power of story for their businesses. At Piquant we have developed the Piquant STORY structure to help our clients reveal and share the stories that their clients (the audience!) will pay attention to.

Getting back to that stranger in the bar moment! That moment is referred to as the ‘turning point’ in a story - the moment when something changes, and the audience gets interested. In working with clients we use Piquant’s STORY structure, and often position the client (or their product or services) as the ‘stranger’, walking into the bar. This establishes the client (or their services or product) as the turning point and ultimately the hero of the story.

For the turning point to bring real value, however, we need two other beats at the start of the story.

We need a person

And

We need a problem

What I mean here is that for our stranger in the bar to make any difference, there has to be someone in the story with a need, or want, or problem. Let’s build out a basic story and then see how we can apply it to some business examples.

Janet is a young and bored, working behind the bar in the small town she grew up in, she feels trapped and alone. 

Now we have a person - Janet

And a problem - Janet is bored, lonely and trapped

One day Janet is working, as usual, when a stranger walks in the bar.

Now we have a ‘turning point’ and a hero.

With the person, the problem and the turning point established we can now focus on the resolution. The resolution is where all the problems are sorted and is essentially the happy ever after of the story. This stage in the story is important for the human brain. We need to know that the end has been reached and the story has been completed. Here’s the resolution and ending in our story example, while I doubt anyone reading this is surprised by the ending, we are satisfied, which is what our brain wants in a story. 

Janet is a young and bored, working behind the bar in the small town she grew up in, she feels trapped and alone. 

One day Janet is working, as usual, when a stranger walks in the bar.

The stranger looks deep into Janet’s eyes and they fall instantly in love. The stranger and Janet elope to the city where they make a new life for themselves, and live happily ever after. The End!

How can I make story work for my business?

If you are thinking, "This is all well and good for novels or films, but what does it have to do with my business?"

The answer is: everything.

Every day your customers arrive with a goal they want to achieve or a problem they need to solve. Your business can become the turning point, and ultimately the hero, in their story. Instead of leading with products, services or technical specifications, begin with the person and their challenge. Then show how your business changes the outcome.

And don't forget the resolution. Our brains crave closure. We naturally want to know how the story ends. If your marketing introduces a problem but never shows the positive outcome, you're leaving your audience without the satisfying conclusion that makes stories memorable. The examples below show how this Piquant’s STORY structure can be applied to almost any business. Every day we make storytelling work for our clients in manufacturing, engineering, MedTech, software, professional services, education and non-profit organisations.

Let’s look at some business story examples

The business: FlowSync Technologies, Technology company offering a service

Person: Sarah is an Operations Director at a growing logistics company.

Problem: Her team spends hours every week manually moving information between different software systems. Mistakes are creeping in and customers are beginning to notice.

Turning point: Sarah partners with FlowSync Technologies, a software company that builds a system connecting all of her existing platforms and automates the repetitive work.

Resolution: Her team spends less time on admin, customers receive faster updates and Sarah can finally focus on improving the business instead of fixing spreadsheets.

The business: Precision Medical Solutions, MedTech company offering a service

Person: Dr Ahmed is an orthopaedic surgeon preparing for a complex procedure.

Problem: Every patient is different and he wants greater confidence before entering theatre.

Turning point: Using a patient's scan data by Precision Medical Solutions, he creates a 3D surgical plan and practises the procedure before the operation.

Resolution: The surgery runs smoothly, the patient recovers well and Precision Medical Solutions has quietly played its part by providing the planning technology that made it possible.

Why does every business story need a call to action?

Unlike novelists or film makers we are not telling stories for self expression, we are telling stories to engage audiences in our businesses. So while you have the eyeballs on your story, make the most of them by including a call to action (CTA) such as ‘reach out today’, ‘sign up to our newsletter’, ‘come to our event’, ‘visit our website’ etc. This is the step I see many businesses forget, and it is so important!

How can I use stories in my marketing?

The beauty of story is that it isn't tied to one marketing channel. Once you've identified the person, problem, turning point and resolution, you can adapt that same story across your entire digital presence. It can become a LinkedIn post, an Instagram carousel, a website case study, a testimonial, an email campaign or a video.

Different formats simply tell the story in different ways. A carousel lets the audience uncover the story slide by slide, while a video brings it to life through movement, voice and emotion. Below are some examples of how we've used the Piquant STORY structure across different content formats for our clients.

Examples of using story in carousels

• Meet Cian, see he is a strong footballer - that’s our person
• Felt like there was no place for him  - that’s our problem
• Created his own space, his own table - that’s the turning point (Cian is the person and the hero!)
• He is part of generation Pride making space for Ireland’s LGBTQI community - that’s the resolution
• The call to action is to visit the website and be part of Generation Pride

This carousel is one of a series that featured in the ShoutOut Generation Pride campaign. The overall aim of the campaign was to engage and empower LGBTQI+ youth by celebrating the contributions and achievements of LGBTQI+ individuals and ambassadors. What is interesting here is that ShoutOut (our client) really wanted the ambassadors, such as Cian, to be the heroes of the story, so it is a good example of how while we still follow the story structure we adjust it and work within the structure to tailor the message to meet the business goal. 

Find out more about Shout Out’s Generation Pride campaign here.

This carousel is part of a campaign by Gill Education to promote the Flourish History book to secondary home economics teachers. 

• Teachers and writers - Michelle McCabe and Kelly Doolan - we have two ‘people’ in this story
• Difficulty finding resources for the classroom - a problem they experienced as home economics teachers
• Flourish by Gill Education - Gill Education presents the turning point and becomes the quiet hero of the story offering the opportunity to publish a book 
• A fully developed text book designed for teachers and their students - that’s the resolution
• The call to action is to read the full interview

You can see here that this is a very different business, a very different target audience and a very different message, however the base story structure is solid. 

Explore how we delivered a performance-led social strategy that leaned into storytelling to deliver year-on-year gains for Gill Education here.

Example of using story in video

Video is, of course, a great place to use storytelling and it is even more important in this format to avoid straight information delivery, and instead harness the energy of storytelling to create a video that is engaging and memorable for your audiences (clients / customers).

• Restaurant owners and managers - this is ‘the person’ in the story
• Managing table bookings in modern restaurants is challenging - that’s the problem in the story
• Tablepath manages booking flows and gives control back to restaurants - this positions Tablepath as the hero and turning point in the story
• Restaurant owners can now easily manage table bookings while reducing no shows, and automating guest communications 
• The call to action is to ‘book a demo’

Tablepath is a hospitality-first table management platform built to give operators complete control over reservations, revenue, and guest experience. This animation for Tablepath communicates TablePath's value to restaurants and hotels while driving demo bookings from venue decision-makers. Following a "stress-to-relief" narrative structure, the video positions TablePath as the ultimate solution to hospitality operational challenges, showcasing its key features and highlighting the full range of services it offers.

How can I find stories for my business?

Building out stories that will engage your target audiences on social and digital channels takes time, effort and practice. The team at Piquant are storytelling experts. We are passionate about crafting stories for our clients across all digital formats. The STORY Workshop is Piquant's collaborative process that uses our STORY structure to help businesses uncover authentic customer stories and turn them into content for websites, social media, video and sales communications. Our expertise translates information into stories that visual, auditory and kinesthetic learners can enjoy and remember.

Key takeaways

• People remember stories far better than facts.
• Every business has stories worth telling.
• Great business stories include a person, a problem, a turning point and a resolution.
• Storytelling can be used in websites, social media, video, case studies and email marketing.
• Every story should end with a clear call to action.

In short, storytelling helps businesses communicate complex ideas, build emotional connection and make their marketing more memorable by following a simple structure of person, problem, turning point and resolution.

Need help finding stories for your business?

If this article has you thinking differently about your marketing, imagine what could happen if we uncovered the stories already sitting inside your business. If you would like to make your business the hero of the story - get in touch! Send an email to [email protected] or DM Piquant on Instagram (make this a live link) or give us a call +353 61 597 512