Page 19 - Intercom On Marketing

Start with why:
getting your story
right
By Matt Hodges, Senior Director of Marketing
No matter how good your product is, if you can’t tell a cohesive, compelling story about it, you’re going to have a very hard time getting people’s attention when you actually do take it to market.
Companies like Amazon understand this well and are rightly famous for their “work backwards” philosophy. You start by writing the press release, to articulate how the world will see your product, and then work backwards until you get to the minimum set of technology requirements to achieve your goals for the product.
Our approach to crafting a story begins with asking “Why?” Why are you building this product, and why does it matter? People don’t typically discover and buy a product just because of its features. They buy a product because it solves a problem for them and delivers value in doing so. That’s why it’s really important to think about the end-to-end story you need to tell to capture attention and motivate action, before you build anything.
19