As an entrepreneur or business leader, you will inevitably be asked how your product or service is different from your competitor’s. Often this question comes from someone who isn’t even a potential customer (but that’s another story). Our fallback position is to lead with features and benefits. We describe tiny, incremental improvements we’ve made in order to justify our existence. In our rush to prove that we are different or better, we list things our competitors can copy in a heartbeat.

“We open earlier.” “Our ingredients are superior.” “We support local businesses.”

The best brands don’t lead with descriptions of the features and benefits, they communicate the level of love they’ve put into the product. And they tell the backstory about why it needed to exist. They showing that they understood who they created it for and why it should matter.

Anyone can copy the nuts and bolts of a product. It’s a lot harder to replicate the heart and soul.

Your product story doesn’t just describe what you do, it’s an opportunity to show why you care to do it.

Image by Linh Nguyen.