Most companies understand that simply repeating their value proposition doesn’t make for a compelling story. For example, lots of adtech companies drive performance for advertisers or revenue for publishers. That’s the end goal. But it’s not a story. 

Rather, a story is about the industry, your customers, villains, and how you’re changing the industry to improve it for your customers. This sounds a little more Hollywood (as it should), and done correctly, a story can get more people, including future customers, to care about your company, which will help you hit revenue targets (marketing’s ultimate purpose). 

You can ask a handful of simple questions to develop a compelling story that grows your awareness, differentiates you from competitors, and drives urgency around your business. Here are those five questions.

What is the business opportunity? This is a question that aligns marketing with the CEO and head of sales: What are we trying to accomplish this year? For example, if you’re a buy-side adtech company, the answer might be, “We’re trying to grow from 200 to 300 advertisers.” Then we might ask: What kind of advertisers? Performance or brand? SMBs, mid-market, or enterprise? Any specific verticals? Once we’ve answered that, we know whom our story is trying to reach. And any good story starts with a clear understanding of its audience. 

Whom are we fighting on behalf of? These are your customers. In the story, you are their champion, or they are the champion and you’re the humble servant aiding them on their quest. To build on the hypothetical example I mentioned above, let’s say it’s enterprise brand advertisers. The question then becomes, “What challenge are enterprise brand advertisers facing? Where is the overlap between that challenge and the problem our products solve?” 

What’s wrong with the status quo? When you understand whom you’re fighting on behalf of, you can understand how they’re being underserved (which overlaps, of course, with how you’d serve them better). For example, a DSP courting brand advertisers might contend that their competitor is taking exorbitant margins or hasn’t sufficiently invested in emerging technologies to maximize the return on brands’ advertising investments. The implication is: You, customers, are being screwed over. We’re pissed off on your behalf, and we’re going to change the industry for the better so that you get a better deal. The story is even stronger if there’s a clear culprit doing the screwing.

Who’s responsible for the status quo? Who is the enemy? A good story has a villain. The best-performing posts by my clients tend to be those that explicitly call out another company for a shady practice or self-serving strategy. Even if you don’t want to call out a competitor explicitly, your competitors should implicitly figure into your narrative — they should be the representatives of the status quo who are giving your customers a bad deal. In the case of the buy-side advertising company, the enemy would be the leader of that market who is allegedly ripping off advertisers or underinvesting in advertiser success. If you are the leader, the enemy might be an incumbent in a target growth market or an opposing force in another part of the supply chain (for example, an SSP might target a DSP, or a DSP might target the walled gardens).

How are we trying to change the industry for our customers? This is where your value comes to the fore. Having identified a core constituency, a problem they’re facing, and the perpetrators of the problem, you can persuasively explain how you’re solving that problem on their behalf to unlock their prosperity. For example, the hypothetical DSP might contend that its investments in AI will drive better results for advertisers than the technology of the lazy incumbents. Or it might point to more competitive take rates and say it’s hustling on advertisers’ behalf while the leaders exploit them.

Having answered these five questions, you should have a sense of how your story will help you win. You need to sign 100 brand advertisers, which is why your story is about increasing advertiser ROI through investments in AI that the incumbents aren’t making because they’re too content to live off the exorbitant margins they’re taking from existing spend. This is a bigger story than just the mechanics or capabilities of your AI product — it’s about the AI-centric future of advertising, the customers who stand to benefit from that future, and the fat cat, margin-drunk technology companies (your competitors) who are too content with the status quo to bring the advertisers to the promised land. Of course, a real company would have more specifics that further bring the story to life. But with that framework, you’re getting somewhere. 

In a sense, a good story in adtech always boils down to, “Advertising is broken.” The value lies in specificity. Broken for whom? Why is it broken? Who broke it? How might it change?

Once you’ve developed a story based on these questions, the challenge is to figure out who will bring it to market and where to do so. And that is a challenge for executive evangelism.