And Why This Framework Is More Critical Now Than Ever
I’m going to be honest with you about something that frustrated me for years.
I watched brand strategy consultancies burn through massive client budgets on beautiful slide decks—comprehensive brand positioning, gorgeous frameworks, strategic narratives that looked impressive in boardrooms. Then they’d hand over a 60-page PDF and say “good luck with execution.”
The client would be left with a tiny fraction of their budget to actually build something. To activate the strategy. To make any of it real.
And here’s what really got me: nobody seemed to care.
The brand strategists got paid. They’d move on to the next project. The client had their deck. Everyone nodded along like this was normal.
Meanwhile, the creative teams tasked with activation were left scratching their heads, trying to figure out how to translate abstract strategic concepts into actual marketing campaigns, websites, content, and systems with virtually no budget and incomplete direction.
I saw this pattern repeat over and over. Strategy teams would lob the deck “over the wall” to whoever was supposed to make it real. And the disconnect was killing results.
That’s why I created the Story + Tech framework.
Because strategy without execution is just expensive decoration. And execution without strategy is just activity without direction.
You need both. Working together. Simultaneously.
Story + Tech = Momentum.
Let me break down what this actually means.
Story + Tech Case Studies: Driving Brand Momentum
When I say “Story,” I’m talking about brand strategy with extreme clarity.
Not fluffy brand storytelling or abstract narratives. I mean the concrete strategic foundation that makes your brand understandable, differentiated, and compelling:
Brand Positioning: Where do you sit in the market relative to competitors? What makes you different? Who is your ideal customer?
Value Proposition Clarity: What problem do you solve? Why should someone choose you? What’s the transformation you provide?
Narrative & Messaging: How do you talk about what you do? What’s your angle? What’s the consistent story across every touchpoint?
Product/Offer Positioning: How are your services or products structured? What’s your offer ladder? How do pieces fit together?
Values Alignment: What does your brand stand for? And more importantly—does your reputation in the market actually reflect those stated values?
The “Story” work is about bringing absolute clarity to your brand. Because if you can’t articulate what you do, who you serve, and why you matter in a way that’s crystal clear, nothing else works.
Too many businesses operate with fuzzy positioning. They know what they do internally, but they’ve never really clarified it in a way that translates to the market. Or worse, they’ve got strategy documents gathering dust that nobody actually uses.
Story is the strategic foundation. But here’s the thing: strategy alone doesn’t move the needle.
What Is “Tech”?
When I say “Tech,” I’m talking about MarTech consulting and activation.
This is where strategy becomes real. Where concepts turn into systems, campaigns, and measurable results.
For LLM visibility optimization specifically, “Tech” means:
- Technical SEO: Schema markup, structured data, sitemaps, entity relationships
- On-Page Optimization: Content structure, meta tags, semantic HTML
- SEO Content Creation: Content specifically designed for AI consumption and citability
But Tech can extend much further depending on what a business needs:
- Tech Stack Consulting: CRM selection and implementation, marketing automation, data integration
- Campaign Activation: Building the actual funnels, email sequences, landing pages, and conversion paths
- Systems Integration: Making sure your tools talk to each other and data flows properly
The Tech side is about actually building and activating what the Story defines.
It’s taking your clear brand positioning and making sure it shows up consistently in your website, your content, your campaigns, your systems, and—increasingly important—in how AI systems understand and represent you.
Most technical teams can implement things. But without clear strategic direction (the Story), they’re just checking boxes without purpose.
That’s the disconnect I kept seeing. Strategy people who couldn’t execute. Technical people who didn’t have clear direction. And clients stuck in the middle getting neither.
Why “Momentum”?
You might notice I don’t say Story + Tech = Growth.
I say Story + Tech = Momentum.
Here’s why that matters.
Not every business is in a growth stage. Some are pivoting. Some are consolidating. Some are entering new markets. Some are defending market position.
But every business needs momentum—forward motion toward their goals, whatever those goals are.
When you have extreme clarity on your brand story AND your technology can activate that story quickly and effectively, momentum is inevitable.
You’re not spinning your wheels on strategy that never gets implemented. You’re not executing tactics disconnected from any coherent strategy. You’re moving forward with intention and infrastructure working together.
Momentum means:
- Faster decision-making because your positioning is clear
- Consistent execution because systems are in place
- Measurable progress because strategy and activation are aligned
- Compounding results because each piece builds on the last
Momentum is what separates companies that lead from companies that follow.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Let me give you a real example: Greenhouse Coaching + Advising.
When they came to us, they had solid coaching expertise but fuzzy positioning. They were doing great work, but potential clients couldn’t quickly understand their full offering or which service was right for them.
The Story Work:
We clarified their brand positioning and built out their offer ladder with clear differentiation:
- Digital courses addressing common stuck points seen in coaching
- 1:1 coaching for personalized development
- Topic or role-based coaching programs for specific needs
- Corporate and executive advising engagements for organizations
Each tier was clearly positioned with distinct value propositions and ideal client profiles. No more confusion about what they offered or who it was for.
The Tech Work:
We completely overhauled their tech stack and website to activate this clarity:
- New website architecture reflecting the offer ladder
- Content marketing strategy targeting each audience segment
- Sales funnels optimized for different service tiers
- Backend pipeline and client management systems
- CRM integration for seamless lead nurturing
The Results:
Growth in organic search visibility. Increased leads from organic search and social content. Better lead qualification because people understood the offerings. Higher conversion rates because the path from discovery to engagement was clear.
That’s Story + Tech = Momentum in action.
Clear strategy, executed effectively, creating measurable forward motion.
The Common Misconception
I’ll be honest—the word “Story” throws some people off.
They hear “story” and think I’m talking about brand storytelling, content narratives, or the kind of abstract messaging work that sounds nice but doesn’t move needles.
That’s not what this is.
I’m actually fairly tired of the word “storytelling” in marketing contexts. It’s been overused to the point of meaninglessness.
When I say “Story” in Story + Tech, I mean strategic clarity. The foundational work that makes everything else possible. The hard thinking about positioning, differentiation, value proposition, and market fit.
It’s not about crafting a compelling narrative (though that can be part of it). It’s about clarity so extreme that execution becomes obvious.
If you have to explain your positioning in multiple different ways depending on who’s asking, your Story isn’t clear enough yet.
If your team members describe what you do differently from each other, your Story isn’t clear enough yet.
If your website says one thing, your LinkedIn says another, and your sales conversations introduce yet another angle—your Story definitely isn’t clear enough yet.
The Story work is about resolving all of that into a single, clear, consistent positioning that everyone—including AI systems—can understand immediately.
How to Know If You Have Story, Tech, Both, or Neither
We’ve built a proprietary scanner that diagnoses exactly where you stand across both dimensions.
It crawls your digital presence and analyzes:
Story Elements:
- Brand promise clarity and consistency
- Value proposition articulation
- Market sentiment about your brand
- Trustworthiness signals across the web
- Alignment between stated values and public reputation
Tech Elements:
- Technical website infrastructure
- On-page optimization
- Schema markup and structured data
- AI crawlability and parseability
- Entity relationships and knowledge graph presence
The scan gives you a clear picture: Do you have strong Story but weak Tech? Strong Tech but fuzzy Story? Both? Neither?
Most businesses we scan fall into one of two camps:
- Clear strategy but poor execution (strong Story, weak Tech)
- Decent technical implementation but no coherent positioning (weak Story, decent Tech)
Very few have both working together. That’s the opportunity.
Why This Framework Matters More Now Than Ever
Here’s what I’ve realized through deep research into how LLMs work:
Large Language Models are evaluating Story AND Tech simultaneously.
This is completely different from how traditional search engines worked.
Google’s algorithm was sophisticated, but it was fundamentally looking at technical signals: links, keywords, structure, user behavior. It was evaluating your website.
LLMs are evaluating your brand.
They’re looking at:
- Consistency across every mention of your company on the web (Story)
- Trustworthiness based on sentiment analysis and citations (Story)
- Expertise demonstrated through content and positioning (Story)
- Authority signaled through relationships and market position (Story)
- Technical parseability of your information (Tech)
- Structured data that helps them understand relationships (Tech)
- Entity recognition in knowledge graphs (Tech)
For the first time in digital marketing history, the algorithm demands both strategic clarity AND technical excellence at the same time.
You can’t just have good brand positioning anymore. You need that positioning technically structured so AI systems can parse and understand it.
You can’t just implement schema markup and hope for the best. You need a coherent brand narrative for the AI to represent accurately.
Story + Tech isn’t just a nice framework anymore. It’s the exact combination LLMs require.
And here’s the critical timing issue: LLMs are forming their understanding of brands right now. They’re building entity relationships. They’re establishing authority patterns. They’re determining who the experts are in each domain.
Those patterns are sticky.
If you establish clear Story + Tech positioning now, you could solidify your brand as the top-ranking authority in your industry for a generation of AI search.
If you wait, you’re playing catch-up against competitors who’ve already established those patterns.
The Bottom Line
Story + Tech isn’t about doing brand strategy OR technical implementation.
It’s about doing both, simultaneously, in an integrated way that creates momentum.
It’s about extreme clarity in your positioning (Story) activated through sophisticated technical infrastructure (Tech) that makes that positioning visible, understandable, and citable by both humans and AI systems.
And in this moment—when LLMs are becoming the primary way people discover and evaluate businesses—having both Story and Tech working together isn’t optional anymore.
It’s the requirement for visibility.
Want to see where you stand? Our proprietary Story + Tech scanner analyzes both your brand clarity and technical infrastructure, showing exactly where the gaps are and what momentum would require. Get your free scan here or email chris@paynestreet.co.
Because strategy without execution is just expensive decoration.
And execution without strategy is just activity without direction.
Story + Tech = Momentum.