Where Each Kind of Story Belongs
Placement decisions for the four kinds of business story across your website, sales conversations, social posts and emails - so the right story does the right job in the right place.
A library of well-told stories is only half the work. The other half is putting each kind of story in the place it does most good. The same customer transformation story that sings on the customer-stories page reads as oversharing on the home page. The mission paragraph that earns trust on the about page reads as filler in a sales email. The everyday story that warms up a social post reads as light when it's the first thing a serious enquiry sees. Placement matters more than people think.
This chapter is the placement guide. By the end you'll have a clear map of which story goes where, how often each kind should appear and the small editing changes that adapt one story across two or three formats without it feeling like recycled content.
The full chapter walks through the placement matrix - which story goes on which page, in which email, in which kind of social post - and the worked examples for a service business, a product business and a coaching business.
The placement matrix in plain language
Home page: the one-sentence origin story (somewhere near the top), one short customer transformation excerpt with a name and a number (above the fold), the offer (most of the page). No mission paragraph. No founder photo with extended biography. The home page is for someone who has thirty seconds and wants to know what you sell and whether anyone has bought it before.
About page: the one-paragraph origin story, the four-part mission paragraph, two everyday stories that show what you're like to work with, a photo of the actual person or team. No long timeline of every job you've held. No values poster. The about page is for someone who's already interested in the offer and wants to know more about who they'd be dealing with.
Customer stories page: full versions of three to ten customer transformation stories, each with the four-section structure, written in the customer's voice, with attribution and (where consented) a photo. Sortable or filterable if you have many. The customer stories page is for someone who's seriously considering buying and wants to verify that other people like them have done so and not regretted it.
Offer pages: short customer story excerpts (two or three per page, near the price) and one everyday story near the call to action that shows what working together is like. No origin story (already told earlier in the journey). No mission paragraph (already told). The offer page is for the customer comparing tiers - your job is to reduce friction, not introduce more reading.
The placement matrix in marketing-channel form
Newsletter (monthly): one everyday story as the warm opener, then the news or content of the month. Welcome sequence (after a lead magnet): a short version of the origin story in email two, a customer transformation story in email three, a mission paragraph linked from email four. Sales sequence (after an enquiry): one customer story in the second email, lifted from the customer stories page and matched to the prospect's situation as closely as you can.
Social media
Roughly: half everyday stories (the steady warm content), a quarter customer transformation excerpts (the trust-building content), a tenth origin or mission moments (the personality content), the rest practical or news content. The exact mix depends on the platform and the kind of business, but the everyday-stories-being-the-bulk principle holds across most. Those small stories are what the platform's algorithms tend to reward and what your followers are most likely to engage with on a Wednesday afternoon.
Sales conversations
Listen first, story second. The prospect describes their situation; you tell them about the customer who looked most like them. Have the customer transformation stories rehearsed enough that you can pick the right one in real time without sounding like you're reading from a script. The everyday stories come up naturally when the prospect asks about your process. The origin story comes up when they ask how you ended up doing this. The mission story almost never comes up unsolicited and almost never should be volunteered.
Podcasts and longer-form interviews
All of them, more or less. Podcast hosts will ask the origin story directly. Mission gets discussed indirectly through values questions. Customer transformation stories come up in 'tell me about a recent project' questions. Everyday stories come up in 'what's your business actually like to work in' questions. A library that's been written down once and rehearsed a few times means you don't fumble for the right specifics on the day - you just tell the story you've already told.
- Home page - one-sentence origin, one transformation excerpt, the offer
- About page - one-paragraph origin, mission paragraph, two everyday stories
- Customer stories page - 3-10 full transformation stories
- Offer pages - 2-3 transformation excerpts, one everyday story near CTA
- Email - everyday in newsletters, transformations in welcome and sales
- Social - mostly everyday stories, then transformations, then personality
- Sales - listen first, then the matched transformation story
Adapting one story across formats
A single customer transformation story should be written once, in full (four sections, six hundred or so words), and then adapted for shorter formats by trimming rather than rewriting. The home-page version is one sentence with a name and a number ('Tom's plumbing firm in Bristol stopped losing two enquiries a week to voicemail in three months'). The offer-page version is one short paragraph with a quote ('Three months in, we've answered every enquiry and converted seven of the previously-missed ones into jobs - about £4,500 of work that would otherwise have gone elsewhere.'). The newsletter version is the full opening section plus a link to the full story. The social post version is the pull-quote and one supporting line.
Trimming preserves the customer's actual words. Rewriting risks introducing a paraphrase that the customer didn't say, which - if anyone notices - costs more trust than the social post was worth. When in doubt, cut. Don't paraphrase.
Worked map for three businesses
Bookkeeper. Home page: one-sentence origin in the second paragraph, Tom-the-plumber excerpt above the fold, the three-tier package menu below. About page: paragraph origin, four-part mission, two everyday stories (the no-to-social-media story, the saying-yes-to-the-overlapping-business story). Customer stories page: five full transformation stories, sorted by trade type. Offer page: two short transformation excerpts beside the package menu. Newsletter: monthly everyday story as the opener. Social: roughly half everyday stories, a quarter transformations, the rest tax-and-bookkeeping-tip practical content.
Plumber. Home page: one-sentence origin, one customer transformation excerpt with a number ('Mrs Patel's annual maintenance plan saved her £600 in emergency call-outs last winter'), the three-tier maintenance plan menu. About page: paragraph origin, mission, two everyday stories about how the team handles call-outs. Customer stories page: six full transformation stories from local households. Offer pages: short excerpts near each tier. Newsletter: monthly seasonal maintenance tip with a quick everyday story.
Coaching business. Home page: one-sentence origin, one anonymised transformation excerpt (with the half-version conventions from chapter four), the offer. About page: paragraph origin, mission, two everyday stories that reveal coaching style. Customer stories page: four full anonymised transformation stories. Offer pages: short excerpts and a 'how working together actually goes' everyday story near the call to action. Sales conversations: a small library of three or four matched transformation stories ready to tell aloud. Social: heavy on everyday stories about the coaching practice, lighter on transformations to protect client confidentiality.
Common placement mistakes
The origin story on every page (it gets stale fast). The mission paragraph as the home-page hero (the customer is here for the offer, not the philosophy). Customer stories without attribution (reads as fabricated even when it isn't). Everyday stories as the offer-page main copy (lovely but doesn't sell anything). Long founder timelines on the about page (skim-skipped within seconds). Each of these placement mistakes weakens the marketing more than it adds; the simple discipline of putting each story where it does its job, and not where it doesn't, lifts the whole site without changing a single word of the underlying story.
What to do this week
Take the stories you've drafted across chapters two to five. For each one, write down on a single sheet of paper which page or channel it belongs on, in what length and how often it should rotate. Most stories belong in two or three places at different lengths. A few belong in one place only. The map should fit on a single page - that's the discipline of placement.
Now build the library properly. The next chapter, 'Building and Maintaining a Small Story Library', covers the documents, the review rhythm and the small habits that keep the stories fresh and ready to use over the next twelve months.
The rest of this chapter walks through the practical steps, the templates and the checklists you need to put it into action. It includes worked examples, copy frameworks and the small decisions that make the difference between a plan that sits in a drive and one that gets used.
Inside you'll find a step-by-step playbook, a downloadable template, a checklist you can run this week and a short list of common mistakes to avoid before you start.
- The full action plan, broken into weekly steps.
- Ready-to-use scripts, templates and checklists.
- Worked examples for different sized businesses.
- Common mistakes and how to avoid them.
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