011 An intro to narrative design 3. Speak to your audience one-on-one If you somehow managed to skirt around it during the research phase, set some time aside to speak to your customers – whether that be over the phone, in person, or during a focus group. • To get the answers you need, ask questions like: • How does our product help you? • Can you imagine going back to a life without our product? • What was the biggest turning point in trying out our product? • What could someone have said to you to make you realize you needed our product sooner? • How did you 昀椀nd out about us? • Is that typical of how you normally research products in this 昀椀eld? • What did your journey with us look like? Did you buy straight away? Watch a video 昀椀rst? Did you download a few guides? • If you had to sum up our product in three words, what would they be? As well as helping you understand key bene昀椀ts and how and where to spread your story, with these kinds of questions, you could even 昀椀nd yourself with buzzwords to infuse into your messaging. 4. Know why people buy your product Stories require context and if you want it to have an effect, contextrequires accuracy. Let’s say you’re a TV package provider and one of your main features is that you have more channels than any of your competitors. So, you use this as your hook. “More channels at your 昀椀ngertips than any other provider.” But, your market doesn’t primarily care about that. They want something cheap. All the channels in the world wouldn’t relate to their buying behavior and all your angle would do is alienate them from the outset - which is the exact opposite of connecting. Instead, with the right info under your belt, you might go in with something like “Like John, you too could save £110 a year on your TV package - without compromising on your channels.” Relying on assumption is a route to failure - don’t lose sight of the importance of research.