Can a Good Business Tell the Wrong Story About Itself?
There’s a strange problem I’ve noticed with some very good businesses.
Nothing is obviously wrong.
They have good people. Good products. Loyal customers. Years of experience. They’re busy. They’re successful.
But ask them a very simple question:
“What makes you different?”
And suddenly things get difficult.
The answer often becomes a list.
How long they’ve been established. What they manufacture. The services they provide. Their accreditations. Their facilities. Their technology.
All perfectly true.
But somehow, none of it quite explains why the business matters.
Businesses change. Their stories don’t always change with them.
A company might have started life making one particular product.
Twenty years later, that product may only be a small part of what makes the business valuable.
Perhaps its real strength is now the knowledge accumulated around that product. Perhaps customers come to them because they solve problems nobody else can. Perhaps it’s their people, responsiveness or ability to understand incredibly complicated situations.
Inside the business, everyone knows this.
Outside it, people may still see the company it used to be.
That’s where things get interesting.
Because the business doesn’t necessarily have a marketing problem.
It may have a story problem.
The wrong story doesn’t have to be untrue
This is an important distinction.
A business can tell a completely accurate story about itself and still tell the wrong one.
Imagine an engineering company whose website talks extensively about machinery, tolerances, processes and capabilities.
Everything on the website is correct.
But its customers don’t really value the machinery.
They value the fact that when they have a difficult problem, somebody at that company understands it and knows how to solve it.
The machinery is what they use.
The expertise is why they’re chosen.
Those are two very different stories.
And if all the communication concentrates on the machinery, the thing customers value most can become almost invisible.
Sometimes expertise becomes invisible from the inside
I think this happens because people become incredibly familiar with their own businesses.
Something you’ve done every day for fifteen years doesn’t feel remarkable anymore.
It’s just what you do.
But to somebody outside the business, that knowledge might be incredibly valuable.
That’s why I think one of the hardest places from which to understand the story of a business is sometimes inside it.
You’re simply too close.
You know what everything means.
You know why customers stay.
You know why certain decisions are made.
You know which member of the team everybody rings when something difficult happens.
The customer doesn’t.
They only know what you tell them.
Try this
Give somebody who doesn’t know your business particularly well two minutes on your website.
Then ask them:
“What do you think we’re really good at?”
Don’t explain anything beforehand.
Just listen.
Then compare their answer with what your best customers would probably say.
If those two answers are broadly the same, brilliant.
Your story is probably doing its job.
But if they’re completely different, that’s worth paying attention to.
Not because your website necessarily needs rewriting.
And certainly not because you automatically need a film.
It might simply mean that the story your business is telling hasn’t kept pace with the business itself.
The camera still comes later
This is one of the reasons I’m increasingly interested in understanding the narrative before deciding how to communicate it.
A beautifully made film won’t solve the problem if it’s beautifully telling the wrong story.
Neither will a new website.
Or a clever campaign.
Sometimes the first job is much simpler.
Understand what has changed.
Understand what people genuinely value.
Understand what you want them to recognise.
Then ask whether the story you’re currently telling helps them see it.
Because sometimes there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the business.
The story just hasn’t caught up yet.