The art of storytelling and strategic content creation is no longer a mystery to business leaders and entrepreneurs. While this playground once belonged solely to the world of seasoned writers and public relations professionals, we now see people from every corner of the business community trying their hand at brand-building, thought leadership and growing their overall visibility.

As a result, many business leaders have truly honed their ability to craft a compelling narrative – and many use their “owned” channels (such as their personal and professional social platforms, company website blogs, etc) to try to get those messages in front of the right audiences. Some even dabble in pitching media themselves.

But despite the business community’s growing investment in storytelling and content, there’s still a fundamental misunderstanding when it comes to generating meaningful reach and engagement.

At many points in my 20 year career, I’ve had to explain the hard facts about visibility to clients and prospects. The conversation usually goes like this: You can have the most compelling, captivating story in the world. But if you’re not getting it in front of the right eyeballs and ears, at the right saturation – what’s the point? And all that effort you put into crafting your story? It’s essentially wasted time.

If you want to up your visibility game, and get decision makers to take action as a result of your carefully crafted storytelling – there are three steps you need to take:

Step One: Understand who exactly you’re trying to reach, and why.

Before you exert any effort creating a thought leadership strategy or a storytelling platform, take some time to get specific about the target audience you’re actually trying to engage. For example: Saying you’d like to reach business leaders, or even business leaders in healthcare, is painting with too broad a brush. It may seem like a good idea in theory to try to reach as many people as possible, but this approach can actually backfire. If the content and placement seems too generalized, readers will tune it out as non-relevant to their specific challenges. So instead of attempting to reach business leaders in healthcare, try targeting a more finite group, like hospital administrators with a specific kind of financial challenge. When you have that level of clarity about your “who” (the target), you’ll be much more effective in two ways – your “what” (the content) will be more tailored and specific to the individual decision maker you ultimately want to reach, and your “where” (the media outlet or communications channel you try to utilize) will be much more targeted. So in this example, you’d want to target Hospital & Healthcare Management instead of Modern Healthcare. All together, this will ensure your message gets seen by the rightpeople, and the right people only.

Step Two: Identify the desired action, and create proof points to back up your case.

In order to successfully persuade your target audience to action, you first need to be able to articulate the what exactly it is you’d like them to do. Generating “awareness” isn’t enough. Building on the example we used in Step One, perhaps we want to catalyze hospital administrators with a specific financial challenge to explore SaaS solutions for better financial management. That’s a more specific and tangible goal. Once you have that action figured out, the next step is to compile some objectively valuable and measurable proof points that will help to convince your audience to take the action. What research can you find on this topic? What data points do you have to share? Do you have any success stories or examples from folks who took a similar action? Thinking through the “why” behind your argument – and putting those thoughts into a clear, digestible structure – is going to make all the difference in generating the returns you want.

Step Three: Place your story in media where its reach will be magnified and if you need to, find a partner with a proven record to help you do this.

If you’ve done the work outlined in steps one and two, then you should have the who, what, where and why already figured out. It’s time to get that story seen where your audience is consuming their news – this last step is critical if your storytelling is actually going to achieve its intended goal! If you need support, then an expert PR partner – whether that be an independent consultant or a full agency team – can swoop in to take you the rest of the way toward your goal. Not only can a partner help you fine-tune the story and plan you’ve already developed, but very importantly – they can help you execute on the remaining piece of the puzzle – the “how.” How will you pitch or position your story to the outlets and channels most relevant to and most utilized by your target audience? How will you cut through the noise and get noticed? How will you ensure that all your hard work in story-building pays off with a tangible, measurable placement? In my experience, this is the most critical part of the process. After all, a great story, positioned for a specific audience, with a well-supported call to action, is still ultimately pointless if no one sees it.