Introduction
Success story briefs are well worth your time.
As I’ve mentioned on my blog before, success stories are exactly what they sound like: stories about how your clients achieved success using your products or services. These kinds of stories are specifically focused on why the success happened. Ultimately, success stories are best used to persuade a potential client to lean into their curiosity about your company’s offerings.
Success stories usually follow this simple format:
- Problem
- Solution
- Results
However, they are not simple to create. A great success story requires specific details about the aforementioned three things that are best to get directly from a client.
Sometimes, that’s not exactly possible. Sometimes clients are unavailable, unwilling to do an interview with you or have concerns about publicizing certain information.
What happens when you can’t get a client interview?
As a result, some companies and organizations resort to creating success stories that:
- lack meaningful quotes
- are missing key details
- don’t include enough information about the client
So, in order to create a steady stream of stories, companies and organizations often follow a formula or a template.
In my professional opinion, formulas or templates are only short-terms solutions. In the long-term, they may not help you clearly position your brand as unique and different.
My suggestion is to use success story briefs instead of (or after using) formulas and templates.
What are success story briefs?
Success story briefs are detailed documents that outline what exactly you want to achieve with your success story. They help you execute your vision with more accuracy and less headaches. Whoever you give the brief to can fulfil the requirements and prepare the story properly without all the guesswork.
Think of them like creative briefs but specifically tailored for success stories.
A great success story includes several details, such as:
- Goals, objectives and expectations
- Tone, voice and key messaging
- Target audience information
- Clear direction, context and company information
- Format requirements
- The story you want to tell and why
- How the story will be used
How do you save time with success story briefs?
With this information, you’re able to clearly communicate to your writer (perhaps you want to hire a freelance writer for this work) what you want, why you want it and when you want it. And as a bonus, much of this information won’t need a lot of updating, so you don’t have to start from scratch every time.
This is how you save time, money and resources.
Templates and formulas are good and great in the short term. However, they can push you to skip steps and cut corners in the name of just getting the story done. With a success story brief, you don’t even have to consider compromising the stories because it doesn’t fit neatly in a template or formula. Furthermore, briefs allow you to consistently ensure that the stories you tell align with your mission, vision, values and overall company or organizational goals.
Over to you
These days, everyone is busy and on the computer a lot. You want to find ways to maximize your time without compromising on your work. Success story briefs are the way to do that. Unlike formulas and templates, you don’t ever have to worry about sacrificing quality.