Find the 3 Core Elements of Your Product Narrative with Primary Research

The rise of technology enabled products and services has made possible new conveniences, controls, and access to information. But such rapid development has also made it difficult for many consumers to grasp how it all fits meaningfully into their lives. This is due to many reasons, ranging from a potential consumer’s wariness of new offerings, to apathy caused by a lack of understanding how they might realize concrete benefits from ownership or use.

In these cases, primary marketing research is applicable, but must be used with care.  Using a direct-ask approach to estimating adoption can yield disappointing, superficial, or misleading results. Actionable Research has developed a unique approach to uncovering unarticulated, or latent, needs. These are subconscious needs and desires consumers may not be aware of, but which can be activated through the right marketing stimulus. This approach seeks to reveal connections between known product or service benefits and other, more esoteric benefits that consumers value in other relevant life categories.  Most importantly, this method offers crucial insight into optimal narratives for use during prospect engagement. 

The 3 Core Elements of a Product or Service Marketing Narrative

Though narratives may use different styles and approaches, as a method of communication they remain the best way to help your target audience visualize how your product or service can be incorporated into their lives. This is especially important when offering something which has not already been clearly “defined” in the marketplace.

 

An effective narrative requires three very important components in order to be successful:

• Category of life experience – Quickly answers the question, “Which category of my life will this product or service affect?”
• Primary value of the product or service experience – Answers the question “How will I benefit from this specific product or service?”
• Overall meaning of product or service impact – Answers the question “What will this product or service mean to me?”

 

Although these questions are crucial to understanding a product or service’s value, they are, unfortunately, seldom answered in marketing communications, even when using a narrative style.  Aside from the basic problem of “featuring” a customer to death, their neglect is often due to mundane reasons such as time crunches, conflicting priorities within management, or a lack of enough detailed information to understand the importance of making these determinations.

You want a great narrative to reach a deeper connection between your product and its eventual consumer. However, getting to a great narrative requires the discipline and methodology required to seek out the details behind each of components above, and put them to practical use.