It seems that every few years, some new marketing method or idea is introduced as the best way to do marketing. You may have heard of StoryBrand and wondered what it is. The StoryBrand® method was detailed by Donald Miller in his 2017 book, Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen. The SB7 framework, or method, is designed to help companies bring clarity to their messaging in story form. It’s more of a shift in how you think about your company and marketing than anything else.
While we at Craft & Cloud are not StoryBrand® certified, we have studied their methods and found some of them quite useful in our clients’ marketing.
Common Pitfalls in Marketing
Too often, a company’s marketing message becomes, by default, whatever the company founder thinks the message should be. This can lead to several common mistakes:
- A confusing message. In some ads, they focus on one thing and something entirely different in another. Maybe they even try to explain everything about their product or service in one advertisement, creating information overload.
- Getting lost in the weeds. Trying to explain every important fact about a product or service can quickly lead to over explaining.
- Resting on their laurels. The ads spend too much time talking about what the company does and why you should choose them because of their experience or history.
Enter the StoryBrand® Framework
The StoryBrand® framework is a step-by-step messaging system that helps companies simplify and focus their message. If it takes too long or is too difficult to figure out what you do, your customers are going to move on to another company that communicates more clearly. Donald Miller simply states, “If you confuse, you lose.”
Not only is simplifying your message important, but identifying what you can do for your customer and how you can make their life better are key parts of this system. Once you show your customer that you understand their pain points and how you, the guide, can help them solve those pain points, you have their attention and an opportunity. As you build that trust, can you ensure they will have a successful outcome? If so, don’t be afraid to tell them and you may have just solved your marketing.
Instead of falling into the common pitfalls, we intentionally ask the following three crucial questions:
- What does the customer want? What is their pain point that causes them to go looking for a solution?
- Who or what is preventing them from getting it or resolving their pain point?
- How will their life look if they do or don’t get what they want?
These may not be easy questions to answer because you are not used to approaching your business from your customer’s perspective. Take your time answering them. There may be multiple paths or multiple answers to these questions.
However, by identifying your customers’ pain points, their story, you can begin forming your messaging and marketing story around how you, the guide, understand those pain points and solve them. This then translates directly into your website and advertising messaging by showing how your services or products can help solve their problems.
Instead of positioning yourself as the answer, you become the guide who helps them find an answer to their problem.
There are also three questions your audience must be able to answer in order to easily recognize you as someone who can help them:
- What do you offer, or what pain points do you solve?
- How will it make their life better?
- What is needed to do to buy it?
StoryBrand® calls this the grunt test. Could a caveman look at your website or other marketing material and immediately understand your offer? Clarity produces results. No matter how good your product is, if your messaging and problem-solving are not clear and do not build trust, people are unlikely to buy your product.
What Are the Primary Components of the StoryBrand® Framework?
A Character: The Customer
The main thing to understand in StoryBrand® is that the hero of the story is the customer, not your brand or company. The goal is to position your customer as the hero who needs help and yourself as the guide who helps them.
Your business should be recognized as someone who can help customers achieve success.
Has a Problem
Like any good story, the hero encounters a problem that disrupts their life. Whether that means finding the perfect gift, finding a trusted builder who won’t take advantage of them, needing more home storage, or finding a dentist who can get them in quickly, your customer is in a predicament and needs help getting out of it.
If you’re in the lawn care business, your customer may come to you because they have an overgrown yard they can’t handle. Maybe they aren’t happy with how their yard looks and want that picture-perfect green lawn. Either way, your customer is in trouble and needs help.
StoryBrand emphasizes the importance of understanding that, in each story, the hero encounters external, internal, and philosophical problems.
Why is this important? Most companies try to sell solutions only to external problems. If you can also address the internal and philosophical problems, you can create loyal customers who are more likely to recommend you.
And Meets a Guide
StoryBrand’s® third principle is that the customer is not looking for another hero.
In storytelling, there is often another character who helps the hero win. There are many different names for this character, but at StoryBrand® the term they use is the guide.
If the hero could solve their own problems, they wouldn’t be in trouble. The goal of the guide is to help the hero win at the end of the day.
Too often, brands unknowingly position themselves as the hero. When customers hear us talking about how great our business is, they may subconsciously think we’re simply another hero. We need to be careful not to become the hero in our messaging.
The focus should be on positioning ourselves as the guide who understands our customer’s problem and can help them solve it.
Who Gives Them a Plan
By the time we reach this step in the framework, we should have identified what our customer needs to solve their problem.
By identifying the problems they’re encountering and positioning yourself as a guide who can help solve those problems, you are well on your way to building trust with a potential client.
However, it’s likely the customer still isn’t ready to make a purchase. This is where we provide a clear path that removes confusion—a process that shows how we can help our customer get out of the hole they are in.
StoryBrand® refers to this element as the plan.
At any point in this journey where the next step isn’t clear, you need to make the choices clear and simple for the customer.
And Calls Them to Action
Now that we have given the customer a clear plan, we need to expect them to take action.
StoryBrand® points out that in stories, for a character to take action, there needs to be a reason. The hero often takes action only after being challenged by an outside force.
In real life, this is common. Human beings don’t typically take action until someone challenges them to run a marathon, learn a new skill, or make a change.
This is where we need to be clear with our calls to action and clearly communicate what we want our customers to do.
It’s too easy to default to passive terms like “Learn More” or “Get Started.” Sure, there are times when these calls to action are appropriate. However, we should look to develop stronger, clearer, and more direct steps our customers can take to overcome their challenge.
Getting this wrong can cause people to disengage with our brand, costing us sales.
That Helps Them Avoid Failure
In your customer’s story, they need to know what’s at stake.
If there is no risk of losing or possibility of gaining something, nobody cares. In every story, there is always something at stake. The same goes for your product or service.
If nothing is at stake whether I buy your product or not, why should I buy it? There is no loss to me.
StoryBrand® says we need to show people the cost of not doing business with us. Brands need to accurately define what these negatives are.
We can’t fail to paint the stakes of not doing business with us. If we do, we are essentially saying that the hole our customer is in is not that deep. That can cheapen the perceived value of your brand.
By accurately defining the negatives and what is at stake, working with us becomes more valuable because we can help customers overcome those negatives.
And Ends in Success
Finally, we must tell our customers what their life could look like when they use our products or services.
Don’t paint an unrealistic picture. However, if you believe in your product or service, you should believe your customer’s life will be better when they work with you.
Then tell them how their life will be better once they get out of their hole.
Bringing it all Together
The StoryBrand® method is about clarifying your message and making it easy for customers to understand.
If your message is too difficult to understand, your customers are going to go somewhere else. Simplify your messaging and remove the confusion.
This also isn’t always accomplished in one try. Developing a clear message that customers can connect with takes time.
As you clarify your messaging, use story form to help your customers recognize you as the guide who can help them solve their problems. We must make sure we do not become the hero in our messaging.
The customer is the hero who needs help. We are there to guide them.
At Craft & Cloud Marketing, we use a lot of the StoryBrand® framework along with several other techniques we’ve developed to write content and messaging for our clients.
We are especially careful to understand what it takes to identify the pain points and solutions within the story of marketing.
If you would like help clarifying your messaging so your potential customers recognize you as the guide who can help them, contact us today.