Narrative Equity™ delivers headlines.
And bottom lines.
Build a brand story that connects, converts and continuously fuels growth.
Unicorn Kreative is a go-to-market growth engine specializing in startup storytelling
We align sales messaging and marketing messaging into a single, value-driven brand narrative that unifies your culture and positions your company to win in crowded markets.
Our brand stories are more than marketing assets. They’re financial assets, designed to deliver Narrative Equity™ and propel sustainable and repeatable growth that brings a measurable return on your go-to-market investment.
What is Narrative Equity™?
Narrative Equity™ is the tangible value your brand story delivers, both in the immediate and the long-term. It can be measured in visibility scores, conversion rates, deal sizes, cycle times, and revenue growth.
In other words, Narrative Equity™ is a result. The outcome of the compounding market interest your brand story generates for your company and the degree to which that interest converts into rock solid leads and closed deals.
Brand Stories that deliver Narrative Equity™ can be defined by core outcomes that, in turn, translate to measurable ROI.
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Connect emotionally with buyers
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Convert higher quality leads
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Drive buyer urgency to act
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Build continuous visibility and definitive authority
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Align sales and marketing teams
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Build champions that refer you to other buyers
Storytelling is the new tech moat.
Build a castle in your customer's mind.
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AI is democratizing innovation, and that is changing the game in terms of how you create market differentiation. The long runway of market advantage innovative features used to buy a startup has been whittled to days and weeks.
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In a world defined by this type of accelerated automation, your story is how you stand out. Crafting a narrative that defines both what you do as a company (value) and who you are as a company (brand) builds emotional connection and trust. And once established, these are two things no competitor can take away from you.
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A unique brand story strategically and creatively positions a startup as a differentiated and compelling idea in the customer’s mind, making competitors less attractive and relevant. In other words, it creates a castle in the mind of your customer.
The ROI of Resonance
In an increasingly AI-oriented world, today’s brand stories need to speak fluently to both robots and people. Which means creating resonance on two levels: Emotional and Rational. Our story development builds on both levels to amplify the power of your brand to reap the return of brand loyalty, customer advocacy, and long-term business value.
Key Advantages of Resonance:
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Deepening competitive moats
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Commanding premium pricing
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Reducing customer churn
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Building word-of-mouth reach
Stories that Speak the Language of AI
In addition to delivering value and speaking with brand voice, building Narrative Equity™ requires a story that speaks in the way AI engines search. This can’t happen if your messaging strategy is reading off an old playbook.
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Using cutting edge strategies, we structure and design stories to be cited and mentioned across the digital ecosystem and position your brand to appear prominently in major search engines.
The best brand stories alone won’t deliver strong ROI until sales and marketing align to tell that story clearly and cohesively across all conversations.
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We specialize in creating unified go-to-market cultures because when these teams work together, they are proven to compound Narrative Equity™ and drive growth on multiple levels.
Culture as a Growth Engine
Approach:
Integration for Acceleration
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Most go-to-market consultants bring expertise on either sales or marketing. This only champions half the GTM organization and undercuts acceleration. We bring a holistic expertise across both departments to ensure cultures are unified and support is all encompassing.
We do things differently
Implementation:
Partnership over Advice​
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We don’t offer advice on what to do then leave you to figure out how to do it. From enablement and coaching, to fractional sales and marketing support, to full blown execution with pitch decks, sites, and thought leadership, we work with you until you and your story are up and running.
Go-to-Market Expertise Built on Elite Enterprise Experience
Deloitte
Ui Path
Publicis
Vanguard
Omicom
Common Questions
What is Narrative Equity™? Narrative Equity™ is the tangible value your brand story delivers, both in the immediate and the long-term. It can be measured across multiple fronts: •Visibility scores •Conversion rates •Deal sizes •Cycle times •Revenue growth In other words, Narrative Equity™ is a result. The outcome of the compounding market interest your narrative generates for your company and the degree to which that interest converts into rock solid leads and closed deals. •Clear, compelling articulation of the value you bring to customers •Anchored in an ownable brand voice that help you stand out •One cohesive story across all touchpoints •Increased pipeline that proves a return on marketing investment
How do I create message-market fit? The first step to creating message-market fit is understanding what it really is. Message-market fit means making your message fit with your market’s needs, as your buyer sees them. It means you are telling your story in a way that is easily understandable and undeniable compelling to your market. But your market is no longer just your buyers. It is also now the robots those buyers use to research your company. Which means modern message-market fit requires crafting your messaging and content so precisely that it aligns with the exact language, questions, and needs your target audience uses when searching online, making your brand’s story and value clear, relevant, and easy for answer engines to find. This means your site copy, thought leadership, social posting, white papers, and case studies all clearly explain your value in terms your buyer can relate to and drive urgency to take action, learn more, and engage in purchase.
What is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), and why does it matter? AEO is a new and essential aspect of your marketing strategy to compete in AI searches Buyers are asking AI engines to do their comparison shopping for them. And those engines are crawling your content to serve up those comparisons. So, to keep you from getting weeded out of the robots’ recommendations, you need to understand Ask Engine Optimization. Once you have established message-market fit, AEO is the strategy you deploy to make your message as visible as possible to the AI engines your buyers are using to research the companies that can best meet their purchase needs. Optimizing for answer engines includes strategically constructing your content so it is noticed by the engines, developing both content and amplification strategies that will continuously increase your visibility within answer engine searches, and technically optimizing the back end of your site for AEO.
What are the two most solvable problems startups can tackle to build a moat and speed growth? The lowest hanging fruit for accelerating growth is to tell a better story and unify GTM culture Telling a better story starts with dismantling key misunderstandings. Your story is not about the solutions you pitch, the updated features you’ve released, or the events you’re attending. It’s about how each of those things delivers tangible value to your customers and why helping them succeed is a passion driven endeavor for you. To help get you started, here are three elements of a great business story. •It orbits around clear value •It anchors in brand purpose •It delivers on a proven buyer need As for unifying your GTM organization, divisiveness is a culture killer, and it can take many different forms. To dismantle divisiveness in your culture, identify if any of the following behaviors are active across your teams Go-to-Market Culture Killers: •Sales blaming marketing for a lack of leads •Marketing blaming sales for not delivering the pitch correctly and "wasting" the MQLs they generate •Teams focused only on metrics that make them look good at the QBR, especially at the expense of the other team •Snide comments after meetings about what the other team is or isn't doing If you spot any of the above, then it’s time to regroup and rebuild your culture from a fundamental place of unity. Each of these culture killers can, with enablement, be converted in culture accelerators that fuel growth. Culture Accelerators: •Sales proactively working with marketing, sharing critical feedback on the leads they receive, brainstorming new points of value to communicate (things your customers love the most about what you do), and new ways to reach their audience. •Marketing proactively working with sales to improve the content, improve the stable of discovery questions, build strong customer success stories, and yes make the pitch deck sing. •Cross-functional collaboration where teams brainstorm together on messaging, audience reach, how customers get value from our products, and making everyone more successful Ultimately, all teams are collectively responsible for closing the deal. It’s essential that your culture operates with this truth at its core.
Should I still be using MQLs and SQLs to drive go-to-market growth? While funnels are still powerful tools for the AI Era, MQLs and SQLs are an outdated metric. These KPIs are doing more harm than good when it comes to building a strong pipeline. This framework is divisiveness disguised as cooperation. •It creates two different goals •That answer to two different success standards •And that are measured by two different sets metrics That’s a Russian Doll of divisiveness and, with most startups, it’s sitting smack dab in the middle of the go-to-market culture, creating siloed messaging, stalling progress and stunting growth. Siloed metrics, such as MQLs and SQLs lead to siloed performance mindsets with each department and person within it worrying only about their own success rather than the holistic success of the company. Ultimately, revenue is the only metric that matters
What is hybrid marketing and how does it work? Hybrid marketing is a modern marketing approach that marries traditional and digital tactics. It combines automated artificial automated intelligence with human emotional intelligence. The idea is to bring the best of technology and creativity together to create more efficiency in delivering emotionally relevant campaigns. In theory, it’s a smart and strategic approach. However, in reality it is often poorly executed. Here are some common mistakes startups make when implementing hybrid marketing: •Lack of clear strategy: Robots, like humans, need clear directives to succeed •Deprioritizing brand building: Without a unique voice, your messaging will blend into the market •Over-reliance on automation: Depending solely on AI driven tools limit engagement and messaging longevity •Generic audience approach: Generalizing profiles will generalize pain points and you will miss the mark in truly connecting with buyers
