I discovered the most beautiful tea last week. A green tea infused with cherry blossom. I experienced it by accident and would have walked past it on the supermarket shelf. The reason I later paid over $10 for a packet of tea has everything to do with my worldview. The tea was a souvenir of my visit to the place where I first experienced it and the scent brought back memories of my first home where two huge pink cherry blossom trees grew in the garden.

It’s clear that this is a quality product, but what’s really disappointing is that there is no story on the packaging. There are too few clues about the history, scent, flavour and the way in which I might experience it. If you’re selling a premium product, or if you want to differentiate what you do, you must get better at telling your customers the story.

The startup AHAlife, which sells carefully selected and curated items grew 600% this past year, by selling people the story behind the product. Founder Shauna Mei recognised that there was a gap in the market, that people needed to understand the passion behind the making and origins of the product in order to recognise its’ true value.

How is this relevant to your business? What if you don’t even sell a physical product?

It doesn’t matter how good your idea is if nobody knows.
~ Sally Hogshead

If you want your idea to succeed then you need to get better at telling people why it should matter to them. If you want people to understand your quality and your difference then you need to tell them about it. If you sell something that isn’t just about utility, (that’s 99% of consumer goods and services on the planet), then you need to give people more reasons to care about them and you.

It is entirely possible to increase the value of your product or service at no extra cost by telling a better story. Here are examples of businesses doing just that with chocolate, candles, website headers, book marketing and design.

You experience this every single day, now it’s time to put it into practice.

Image by Ed Chadwick.