Many Product Marketers, and indeed marketers and founders in general, ask – What is the relationship between storytelling and narrative? Do I need both?
Matthew Reeves posed this question recently after his conversations with product marketers at the Product Marketing Alliance Summit Vancouver.
I’ve found that storytelling is the presentation of your narrative.
Narrative outlines
– Your view on the world
– What’s changed
– Why it’s hard to adapt
– What you’ve built
– Your buyer’s outcome
Storytelling is HOW you communicate your narrative.
A simple analogy is Storytelling is to Narrative as Copy is to Messaging.
One flows from the other.
Another question is, “Do I have one story or many?”
This really depends on two big questions;
– Do you have one product or multiple?
– Does your product(s) serve one or multiple DISTINCT audiences?
If the answer to either is yes, then you’re probably going to need a tailored story for each product and/or audience.
