Here's a simple test I use when looking at a company's marketing.

Go to the homepage and spend 30 seconds reading it.

Can you tell who the company is trying to sell to?

You'd be surprised how often the answer is no.

Instead, you'll find a lot of information about the company. How long they've been in business. What they do. Their proprietary process. Their products. Their technology. Maybe a paragraph about their mission and a few awards they've won.

It's all very “me” focused.

Great marketing is much more “you” focused.

That's because your prospect isn't visiting your website because they're fascinated by your company. They're there because they're trying to accomplish something.

Your job is to connect what you sell to that outcome.

Marketers often call this a “transformation,” and that's a useful concept, but I think we sometimes force that word into places where it doesn't quite fit.

Not every customer is looking for some dramatic before-and-after transformation.

Sometimes they're trying to overcome a challenge. Sometimes they're trying to get from point A to point D. Sometimes they simply need to solve the immediate problem sitting in front of them.

I prefer to think about it as success.

What does success look like to this particular prospect right now?

Once you understand that, your product has a role in the story. But it doesn't automatically need to be the story itself.

One of the biggest lessons I've learned in marketing is that people don't buy your product simply because they need it.

They buy because it delivers the result they need right now.

That distinction sounds subtle, but it can completely change the way you market.

You can take the “customer is the hero” idea too far, too.

How directly you should talk about your product depends heavily on how aware the prospect already is.

Someone who doesn't fully understand their problem yet probably doesn't care about the name of your product, much less all of its features. You may need to start with the problem, the desired outcome and the deeper benefits before the product has much relevance at all.

But put a well-known product in front of someone who's already highly aware and actively looking for it, and hiding the product behind a long story can be equally ridiculous.

If someone searches for an iPhone, Apple doesn't need to spend 20 minutes convincing them that smartphones exist.

Context matters.

The goal isn't to remove your product from your marketing. It's to understand when the product becomes relevant to the conversation happening in your prospect's head.

I spent the first 25 years of my career in aerospace and defense, so I've seen plenty of highly technical marketing.

It tends to lean heavily toward capabilities, specifications, features and credentials.

That makes sense. In technical sales, those things genuinely matter.

But looking back at that world now through the lens of a marketer, I see how much better a lot of that marketing could have been if it had been more prospect focused.

I see the same opportunity today with SaaS.

SaaS companies love features. New integrations. New dashboards. Faster workflows. AI capabilities. Another checkbox to add to the comparison table.

Those features may be legitimately impressive.

But features become much more powerful when I understand what they mean for me.

What problem disappears? What becomes easier? What can I now accomplish that I couldn't before? What risk goes away? What opportunity opens up?

That's where storytelling becomes valuable.

When I talk about storytelling, I'm not necessarily talking about telling your founder's origin story or creating some elaborate brand narrative.

That's often how traditional marketing organizations think about it.

I'm talking about understanding the desires, fears, frustrations and hopes of the person you're trying to reach, and building the marketing around the story already taking place in their life.

Your product enters that story because it helps move them toward whatever success looks like for them.

So here's another test you can run on your marketing.

Read your homepage, landing page or next email and pay attention to who gets most of the attention.

How much of it is about you?

And how much of it is about them?

Because your company may own the product.

But your prospect owns the story.

Jon Stoltzfus
Chief XRO