- Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen
Introduction
- Customers don't generally care about your story; they care about their own.
1. Read the book and understand the SB7 Framework.
2. Filter your message through the framework.
3. Clarify your message so more customers listen.
- Businesses that invite their customers into a heroic story grow.
Section 1: Why Most Marketing Is A Money Pit
Chapter 1: The Key To Being Seen, Heard, And Understood
- Human brains are drawn toward clarity and away from confusion.
- Story formulas put everything in order so the brain doesn't have to work to understand what is going on.
- Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs:
1. Eat and drink and survive physically
- Have a job and dependable income.
2. Safety
- Roof over our heads and a sense of well-being and power that keeps us from being vulnerable.
3. Relationships
- Reproducing in a sexual relationship, being nurtured in a romantic relationship, creating friendship in case of social threats.
4. Psychological
5. Physiological
6. Spiritual
- Information must help them eat, drink, find a mate, fall in love, build a tribe, experience a deeper sense of meaning.
- If we don't say something they can use to survive or thrive, they will tune us out.
Chapter 2: The Secret Weapon That Will Grow Your Business
- Story is the greatest weapon we have to combat noise, because it organizes information in such a way that people are compelled to listen.
- Storytellers have filters to cut out the noise. If a character or scene doesn’t serve the plot, it has to go.
- Apple's steps to story:
1. Identifying what their customers wanted (to be seen and heard).
2. Idefining their customers’ challenge (that people didn’t recognize their hidden genius).
3. Offering their customers a tool they could use to express themselves (computers and smartphones).
- The story of Apple isn’t about Apple; it’s about you. You’re the hero in the story, and they play a role more like Q in the James Bond movies.
- Apple likely doesn’t make the best computers or phones. “Best” is subjective, of course. Whether Apple has the best technology, though, is debatable.
- People don’t buy the best products; they buy the products they can understand the fastest.
- Story in a nutshell: A CHARACTER who wants something encounters a PROBLEM before they can get it. At the peak of their despair, a GUIDE steps into their lives, gives them a PLAN, and CALLS THEM TO ACTION. That action helps them avoid FAILURE and ends in a SUCCESS.
1. A Character
2. Has a Problem
3. And meets a Guide
4. Who gives them a Plan
5. And calls them to Action
6. That helps them avoid Failure
7. That ends in a Success
- Questions we should always be able to answer
- What does the hero want?
- Who or what is opposing the hero getting what she wants?
- What will the hero's life look like if she does (does not) get what she wants?
- Questions a potential customer should be able to answer within 5 seconds of looking at our website or marketing material:
1. What do you offer?
2. How will it make my life better?
3. What do I need to do to buy it?
- “You sell headache medicine, me feel better fast, me get it at Walgreens.”
- Highlight the aspects that help your customers survive and thrive (build stronger tribes, strengthen family connections, and connect more deeply with life's greater meaning).
Chapter 3: The Simple SB7 Framework
- The Storybrand Framework
1. A Character
- The customer is the hero, not your brand.
- When giving a speech, position yourself as Yoda and your audience as Luke Skywalker.
- We are the leader providing wisdom, products, and services our audience needs in order to thrive.
☆ What does the customer want?
2. Has a Problem
- Customers buy solutions to internal problems.
- By talking about the problems our customers face, we deepen their interest in everything we offer.
- The three levels of problems a customer encounters: external, internal, and phisophical.
3. And Meets a Guide
- Customers are looking for a guide.
- Nearly every human being is looking for a guide (or guides) to help them win the day.
4. Who Gives Them a Plan
- Customers trust a guide who has a plan.
- Customers are looking for a clear path we've laid out that takes away any confusion about how to do business with us.
5. And Calls Them to Action
- Customers do not take action unless they are challenged to take action.
- A call to action involves communicating a clear and direct step our customers can take to overcome their challenge and return to a peaceful life.
- Until we call our customers to action, they simply watch us, but when we call them to action (the right way), they will engage.
6. That Helps Them Avoid Failure
- Every human being is trying to avoid a tragic ending.
- What's at stake?
- The story needs stakes.
7. And Ends in a Success
- Never assume people understand how your brand can change their lives. Tell them.
- Offer a vision for how great a customer's life could be if they engage your products or services.
- Simple, clear messages that are relevant to your customers result in sales.
Section 2: Building Your Storybrand
Chapter 4: A Character
- StoryBrand Principle One: The customer is the hero, not your brand
- It's important to define something your customer wants.
- The customer will then think 'can this brand really help me get what I want?'
- When you define something your customer wants, the customer is invited to alter their story in your direction. If they see your brand as a trustworthy and reliable guide, they will likely engage.
- Identifying a potential desire for your customer opens what’s sometimes called a story gap.
- Moviegoers pay attention when there’s a story gap because they wonder if and how that gap is going to be closed.
- The most important challenge for business leaders is to define something simple and relevant their customers want and to become known for delivering on that promise.
- If you define a desire that is so vague, potential customers can’t figure out why they need it in the first place.
- “Inhale knowledge, exhale success,” -> “Helping you become everyone’s favorite leader.”
- People will always choose a story that helps them survive and thrive.
- Survival is the primitive desire we all have to be safe, healthy, happy, and strong.
- Survival simply means we have the economic and social resources to eat, drink, reproduce, and fend off foes.
- Conserving financial resources: save money.
- Conserving time.
- Building social networks: find community, stay safe, nurture and be nurtured.
- Gaining status: projects abundance, power, prestige, and refinement.
- Accumulating resources: make money, increase productivity, increase revenue, decrease waste.
- The innate desire to be generous: we want others to survive, we are empathetic, caring, we sacrifice for the well-being of others, especially those who have not been given the opportunities we enjoy.
- The desire for meaning: meaning > pleasure, man is most tempted to distract himself with pleasure when his life is void of meaning, give your customers an opportunity to be generous, invite them to participate in a moment greater than themselves, a valiant fight against a real villain.
- Customers want to know where you can take them. Unless you identify something they want, it's doubtful they will listen.
- The goal for our branding should be that every potential customer knows exactly where we want to take them: a luxury resort where they can get some rest, to become the leader everybody loves, or to save money and live better.
- If you randomly asked a potential customer where your brand wants to take them, would they be able to answer?
Chapter 5: Has a Problem
- StoryBrand Principle Two: Companies tend to sell solutions to external problems, but customers buy solutions to internal problems.
- How do you increase your customers interest in your brand? You talk about the problems your customers face.
- The problem is the 'hook' of the story.
- 'Readers want to fret.' - James Scott Bell
- If we're selling time-management software, we might vilify the idea of distractions. Distractions are what's deluding our customers' potential, wrecking their families, stealing their sanity, and costing them enormous amounts of time and money
- Four characteristics that make for a good villain:
1. The villain should be a root source
2. The villain should be relatable
3. The villain should be singular
4. The villain should be real
- In almost every story the hero struggles with the same question: Do I have what it takes? This question can make them feel frustrated, incompetent, and confused. The sense of self-doubt is what makes a movie relatable
- Can your products be positioned as tools your customers can use to fight back against something that ought not be?
☆ Twos:
- Villain: Forgetting things
- External: I need to write something down
- Internal: I need to remember something
- Philosophical: Important things out to be remembered
- Is there a single villain your brand stands against? And what external problem is that villain causing? How is that external problem making your customers feel? And why is it unjust for people to have to suffer at the hands of this villain?
Chapter 6: And Meets A Guide
- StoryBrand Principle Three: Customers aren’t looking for another hero; they’re looking for a guide.
- If a hero solves her own problem in a story, the audience will tune out. Why? Because we intuitively know if she could solve her own problem, she wouldn’t have gotten into trouble in the first place. Storytellers use the guide character to encourage the hero and equip them to win the day
- A brand that positions itself as the hero is destined to lose
- Tidal failed because it positioned Jay-Z and artists as the heroes. He needed to position the customer as the hero
- How are you helping me win the day? Tidal existed to help the artists win the day, not customers. And so it failed.
- The day we stop losing sleep over the success of our business and start losing sleep over the success of our customers is the day our business will start growing again
- A brand must communicate empathy and authority to position themselves as the guide
- When we empathize with our customers’ dilemma, we create a bond of trust. People trust those who understand them, and they trust brands that understand them too.
- Oprah says the three things every human being wants most are to be seen, heard, and understood
- Empathetic statements start with words like, “We understand how it feels to . . .” or “Nobody should have to experience . . .” or “Like you, we are frustrated by . . .
- Expressing empathy isn’t difficult. Once we’ve identified our customers’ internal problems, we simply need to let them know we understand and would like to help them find a resolution.
- Scan your marketing material and make sure you’ve told your customers that you care. Customers won’t know you care until you tell them.
- Real empathy means letting customers know we see them as we see ourselves. Customers look for brands they have something in common with.
- Remember, the human brain likes to conserve calories, and so when a customer realizes they have a lot in common with a brand, they fill in all the unknown nuances with trust.
- Nobody likes a know-it-all and nobody wants to be preached at. Brands that lord their expertise over the masses turn people off.
- 4 easy ways to add just the right amount of authority to your marketing:
1. Testimonials
- Let others do the talking for you
- Testimonials give potential customers the gift of going second.
- They know others have worked with you and attained success
- Three is a great number to start with and will serve the need most customers have to make sure you know what you are doing
2. Statistics
- How many satisfied customers have you helped?
- How much money have you helped them save?
3. Awards
- Feel free to include small logos or indications of those awards at the bottom of your page
4. Logos
- When they recognize another business you’ve worked with, it provides social proof you have the ability to help them win the day.
- Answer: “Does this brand know what they’re doing? Is investing my time and money going to be worth it? Can they really help me solve my problem?”
- Two questions people subconsciously ask when meeting someone new: “Can I trust this person?” and “Can I respect this person?”
Chapter 7: Who Gives Them A Plan
- StoryBrand Principle Four: Customers trust a guide who has a plan.
- Making a purchase isn’t a characteristic of a casual relationship; it’s a characteristic of a commitment
- Effective plans do one of two things:
1. They clarify how somebody can do business with us
2. They remove the sense of risk somebody might have if they’re considering investing in our products or services.
- If you confuse, you lose
- After potential customers listen to us give a keynote or visit our webpage or read an e-mail blast we’ve sent, they’re all wondering the same thing: What do you want me to do now?
- If we don’t guide them, they experience a little bit of confusion, and they use that confusion as an excuse not to do business with us.
- A process plan can describe the steps a customer needs to take to buy our product, or the steps the customer needs to take to use our product after they buy it, or a mixture of both
- A post-purchase process plan is best used when our customers might have problems imagining how they would use our product after they buy it.
- The key to the success of any plan is to alleviate confusion for our customers
- What steps do they need to take to do business with you?
- Break your process down to 3-6 steps
- Studies show when you bombard customers with information, buying decreases
- The best way to arrive at an agreement plan is to list all the things your customer might be concerned about as it relates to your product or service and then counter that list with agreements that will alleviate their fears.
- Titling your plan will frame it in the customer’s mind and increases the perceived value of all that your brand offer
Chapter 8: And Calls Them to Action
- StoryBrand Principle Five: Customers do not take action unless they are challenged to take action.
- Human beings do not make major life decisions unless something challenges them to do so
- Unless we are bold in our calls to action, we will be ignored
- The fastest way to grow a company is to make the calls to action clear and then repeat them over and over
- When we sell passively, we communicate a lack of belief in our product
- When we don't ask clearly for the sale, the customer senses weakness
- Customers are looking for brands that have solutions to their problems
- There should be one obvious button to press on your website, different color, larger, bolder text and repeat the button as they scroll down
- A good transitional call to action can do 3 things for your brand:
1. Stake a claim to your territory
- Be known as the leader in a certain territory
- Create a PDF, a video series, or anything that positions you as the expert to establish authority
2. Create reciprocity
- The more generous you are, the more reciprocity you create
- The more you give to your customers, the more likely they will be to give something back in the future
- Give freely
3. Position yourself as the guide
- When you help your customers solve a problem, even for free, you position yourself as the guide
- The next time they encounter a problem in that area of their lives, they will look to you for help
- Types of transitional calls to action:
- Free information: white paper, PDF, educational videos, podcasts, webinars, and even live events
- Testimonials: create a video or PDF including testimonials from happy customers
- When they see others experience a successful ending to their story, they will want the same ending for themselves
- Samples: give them a test-drive or taste
- Free trial: risk-removal policy that helps to on-ramp your customers
Chapter 9: That Helps Them Avoid Failure
- StoryBrand Principle Six: Every human being is trying to avoid a tragic ending.
- The storyteller must clearly let the audience know what no-good, terrible, awful thing might befall their hero unless she overcomes her challenge
- Each scene in a movie must answer the question: what's at stake for the hero?
- Brands that don’t warn their customers about what could happen if they don’t buy their products fail to answer the “so what” question every customer is secretly asking.
- Like Allstate Insurance's Mayhem commercials, humorously remind people why they need to write *things* down
- What will the customer lose if they don't buy our products?
- 99.9% of business leaders don't bring up the negative stakes enough so the story we're telling falls flat
- If there are no stakes, there is no story
- People are more likely to be dissatisfied with a loss than they are satisfied with a gain according to Daniel Kahneman's Prospect Theory
- Loss aversion is a greater motivator of buying decisions than potential gains
- 4-step process called 'fear appeal':
1. Make the reader (or listener) know they are vulnerable to a threat
- “Nearly 30 percent of all homes have evidence of termite infestation.”
- People forget 70% of things they learn every day
2. Let the reader know that since they're vulnerable, they should take action to reduce their vulnerability
- “Since nobody wants termites, you should do something about it to protect your home.”
- Writing things down is the easiest way to remember things
3. Let them know a specific call to action that protects them from the risk
- “We offer a complete home treatment that will insure your house is free of termites.”
- Twos is designed to be the quickest and easiest place to write *things* you want to remember
4. Challenge people to take this specific action
- “Call us today and schedule your home treatment.”
- Download Twos today and remember more *things*
- Present a soft way of agitating a fear and then highlight a path that would return readers or listeners to peace and stability
- Too many warnings about imminent doom with turn customers off
- High levels of fear are so strong that individuals block them out; low levels are too weak to produce the desired effect. Messages containing moderate amounts of fear-rousing content are most effective in producing attitudinal and/or behavior change.
- Negative consequences we are helping customers avoid:
- Spending money on many different tools
- Feeling disorganized with too many sources of information
- Forgetting precious memories
- Forgetting important to-dos
- Growing distain for your notes app or task manager
- You’ll only need a few terrible, dastardly, awful things to warn your customers about to get the point across. Too much and your customers will resist you, too little and they won’t know why your products even matter.
- Once we’ve defined the stakes, your customers will be motivated to resist failure. Next we’ll dramatically increase their motivation by helping them imagine what life can look like when they buy your products or services. After they see what you offer and how it can make their lives better, you’ll have included stakes in the narrative and customer engagement will grow
Chapter 10: And Ends in a Success
- StoryBrand Principle Seven: Never assume people understand how your brand can change their lives. Tell them.
- 'Always remember, people want to be taken somewhere.'
- Where is your brand taking people?
- Foreshadow a potential successful ending to a story, a compelling image of an achievable future
- Successful brands, like successful leaders, make it clear what life will look like if somebody engages their products or services
- What customers want most: a happy ending to their story
- Before you brand and after your brand
- What do they have?
- What are they feeling?
- What's the average day like?
- What is their status?
- Storytellers end a story by allowing the hero to: (the three dominant psychological desires shared by most human beings)
1. Win some sort of power or position (the need for status)
- If our brand can participate in making our customers more esteemed, respected, and appealing in a social context, we're offering something they want
- Offer access: membership, points, status, and free stuff
- Create scarcity: limited number of a specific item
- Offer a premium: identify clients and offer them a title such as 'Preferred', give special privileges like updates from the founder
- Offer identity association: offer status through the brand
2. Be unified with somebody or something that makes them whole (the need for something external to create completeness)
- We have a subconscious idea that man needs to become more like a woman and the woman needs to become more like a man in order to be whole
- Reduce anxiety: reduce frustration, satisfaction for a job well done, a better more people life
- Show how the use of your product leads to the relief of stress and feeling of completeness
- Reduce workload: Customers who don’t have the right tools must work harder because they are, well, incomplete. But what if a tool you offer could give them what they’re missing? Manufacturers have been positioning tools as “the thing that will make you superhuman” for decades
- More time: For many customers, time is the enemy, and if our product can expand time, we’re offering to solve an external problem that is causing an internal frustration. Not being able to “fit it all in” is often perceived by our customers as a personal deficiency. Any tool, system, philosophy, or even person who can expand time may offer a sense of completeness
3. Experience some kind of self-realization that also makes them whole (the need to reach our potential)
- We have a desire to accept ourselves
- Inspiration: have an aspect of your brand that can offer or be associated with an inspirational feat
- Acceptance: help people accept themselves as they are
- Transcendence: create a larger movement to a greater, more impactful life with your product or service
- What problem are you resolving in your customer's life, and what does that resolution look like?
- We need to show repeatedly how our product or service can make somebody's life better
- If we don't tell people where we're taking them, they won't follow
- A story has to go somewhere
Chapter 11: People Want Your Brand to Participate in Their Transformation
- The greatest single motivating desire is to transform
- Everybody wants to change. Everybody wants to be somebody different, somebody better, or, perhaps, somebody who simply becomes more self-accepting
- Brands that participate in the identity transformation of their customers create passionate brand evangelists
- Who does our customer want to become? What kind of person do they want to be? What is their aspirational identity?
- The truth is I got a knife and something more than a knife. In a way, Gerber helped me become a better person. They defined an aspirational identity and invited me to step into it. They made me feel more tough and adventurous, and they even created a moment between two friends. And that’s worth a great deal more than forty dollars.
- The best way to identify an aspirational identity that our customers may be attracted to is to consider how they want their friends to talk about them. Think about it. When others talk about you, what do you want them to say? How we answer that question reveals who it is we’d like to be.
- How does your customer want to be perceived by their friends? And can you help them become that kind of person? Can you participate in their identity transformation?
- Leaders who care more about changing lives than they do about selling products tend to do a good bit of both.
- “Welcome back to The Dave Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice.”
- Forgetting things stinks, remembering things feels good, and the opportunity to remember more makes us more thoughtful, responsible, and organized
- You've changed, you're different now and there's nothing you can't accomplish if you apply yourself
- Great brands obsess about the transformation of their customers
- A hero needs somebody else to step into the story to tell them they’re different, they’re better. That somebody is the guide. That somebody is you
- More and more companies are not just improving the world through their products and services; they’re actually improving the way their customers see themselves.
Section 3: Implementing Your Storybrand Brandscript
Chapter 12: Building a Better Website
- 5 things your website should include:
1. An Offer Above the Fold
- Message should be short, enticing, and exclusively customer-centric
- 'We will make you a pro in the kitchen!'
- 'We will help you remember any *thing*!'
- Customers need to know what's in it for them right when they read the text
- Make sure the images and text meet one of the following criteria:
- They promise an aspirational identity
- Can we help our customers become competent in something?
- Will they be different people after they've engaged us?
- Spell it out clearly
- They promise to solve a problem
- They state exactly what they do
2. Obvious Calls to Action
- Call to actions should be in the top right and in the middle above the fold
- The 'Buy Now' button should be a different color than other buttons on your sight
- People don't read websites, they can them
- If you aren't asking people to place an order, they won't
3. Images of Success
- Images of smiling, happy people who have had a pleasurable experience by engaging your brand should be features on your website
- We need to communicate a sense of health, well-being, and satisfaction with our brand
4. A Bite-Sized Breakdown of Your Revenue Streams
- The key is clarity
- Break down our divisions clearly so people can understand what we offer, customers can choose their own adventure without getting lost
5. Very Few Words
- The fewer words you use, the more likely it is that people will read them
Chapter 13: How Storyboard Can Transform A Large Organization
- The onboarding is more about the company’s customers than it is about the company itself. This organization loves their customers and is obsessed with seeing them win the day. Finally, the new employee discovers the secret. These people are here to serve a customer they love
- Thanks to very low turnover, the organization maintains a rich repository of valuable experience that pays dividends most companies never realize.
- The number-one job of an executive is to remind the stakeholders what the mission is, over and over.
- Here’s the problem: if an executive can’t explain the story, team members will never know where or why they fit
- A true mission isn’t a statement; it’s a way of living and being. A mission is a story you reinforce through every department strategy, every operational detail, and every customer experience.
- All engagement rises and falls on the employee value proposition. Increasing compensation is one way you might add value to employees, but that’s just the beginning. You can also provide advancement opportunities, recognition, meaningful work, camaraderie, and flexibility.
- The team is positioned as the hero and the company leadership is positioned as the guide.
- Leaders desire to be seen as heroes when, in actuality, everything they think they want from playing the hero only comes by playing the guide. Guides are respected, loved, listened to, understood, and followed loyally.
The StoryBrand Marketing Roadmap
- Five (almost free) things you can do to grow your business
1. Create a One-liner
- Repeat this statement any time somebody asks what you do
- People are wondering how you can make their lives better
- Four components to a powerful one-liner:
1. The Character
2. The Problem
- Stories hinge on conflict, so we should never shy away from talking about our customers’ challenges.
- Defining a problem triggers the thought in your customer’s mind: Yeah, I do struggle with that. Will your brand be able to help me overcome it?
3. The Plan
- You won’t be able to spell out your entire plan in your one-liner, but you must hint at it
- The plan should cause them to think, Well, when it’s organized that way, it makes sense. Perhaps there’s hope
4. The Success
- Paint a picture of what life could look like after customers use your product or service
- We provide students with one app to remember any thing
- It takes discipline to be successful. James Taylor sings the same song over and over again because he's a servant of the people
- Professionals do what it takes to please their customers, pay the bills, and grow their brand
2. Create a Lead Generator and Collect E-mail Addresses
- A lead generator will help you find qualified buyers so you can let them know, directly and authoritatively, how you can help them resolve their problems
- A lead generator will help you find qualified buyers so you can let them know, directly and authoritatively, how you can help them resolve their problems
3. Create an Automated E-mail Drip Campaign
- Content is important, but the point is, there is great power in simply reminding our customers we exist
- Our customers may not need our product today, and they might not need it tomorrow, but on the day they do need it, we want to make sure they remember who we are, what we have, and where they can reach us
- 20% open rate is the industry standard of emails
- You are branding yourself into their universe
- The last thing you want to do in your marketing is bother someone, so if someone unsubscribes, all the better
- A nurturing email offers your subscribers valuable information as it relates to your products or services
1. Talk about a problem
2. Explain a plan to solve the problem
3. Describe how life can look for the reader once the problem is solved
- About every third or fourth e-mail in a nurturing campaign should offer a product or service to the customer. The key is to be direct. Being passive communicates weakness
1. Talk about a problem
2. Describe a product you offer that solves this problem
3. Describe what life can look like for the reader once the problem is solved
4. Call the customer to a direct action leading to a sale
4. Collect and Tell Stories of Transformation
- When we tell stories about how we’ve helped our customers transform, potential customers immediately understand what your brand can offer them
- Transformation is a core desire for every human being
- Customer testimonials help illustrate our customers transformations
- Good testimonial: showcases your value, the results you get for customers, the experience people had working with you
1. What was the problem you were having before you discovered our product?
2. What did the frustration feel like as you tried to solve the problem?
3. What was different about our product?
4. Take us to the moment when you realized our product was actually working to solve your problem
5. Tell us what life looks like now that your problem is solved or being solved
- People are drawn to transfoRrmation. When they see transformation in others, they want it for themselves
- The more we feature the transformation journey our customers have experienced, the faster our business will grow
5. Create a System That Generates Referrals
- Create a system that invites and incentivizes them to spread the word to become brand evangelists
- Referrals and peer recommendations are up to 2.5 times more responsive than any other marketing channel
- Would have been more likely to share if they created a small, educational video that would have been valuable to my friends
- Dear Friend,
Thanks for doing business with us. A number of our clients have wanted to tell their friends about how we help customers, but they aren’t sure how to do so. We’ve put together a little video that will help your friends solve X problem. If you have any friends with X problem, feel free to send it along. We’d be happy to follow up with any of them, and we’ll be sure to let you know whether we could help.
We know you value your relationships and so do we. If your friends are experiencing a problem we’ve “helped you solve, we’d love to help them too. If there’s anything else we can do, please let us know.
Sincerely,Nancy
P.S. X Problem can be frustrating. If you’d rather introduce us to your friend in person, just let us know. We are more than happy to meet with them in their place of business or at our office.
- Another way to offer a reward is to start an affiliate program. You can offer your customers a 10 percent commission on the orders they bring to you
- A 100 percent refund for three new referrals within a semester
- If you confuse, you'll lose. But if you clarify your message, customers will listen
#SharedFromTwos ✌️