Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller Book Review
StoryBrand Intro
Talking about your brand in a way that customers will listen to can be difficult. If you are in business, you must understand that your customers don’t care about your story; they care about their own. Your customer should be the story's hero (your marketing), not your brand. You can dramatically improve your marketing messaging and start connecting with customers if you understand the customer is the hero.
Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller unpacks a 7-part framework called StoryBrand, which puts your marketing story in order. This Framework uses the proven power of story to help your customer’s brains so they don’t struggle to figure out what is happening as much as we’d like to believe that people are reading every word and paying total attention to our marketing collateral.
StoryBrand marketing has a format or, rather, a process. It is like an act of telling stories. In a way, these stories follow a particular format or process. Miller’s StoryBrand marketing format is:
A character (who is the customer and also the hero)
The character then encounters a problem (the problem here becomes the villain)
And the character meets a guide (the guide here is the business)
The guide then presents a plan (the plan here is the StoryBrand marketing framework)
And the plan is implemented
Then the character has success
And eventually, failure is avoided
Bestselling author Donald Miller unveils the first mistake that brands make, which is not focusing their words on clearly stating how their product or service helps customers survive or thrive.
“Human beings are constantly scanning their environment (even advertisements) for information to help them meet their primitive need to survive.” pg. 7
As a StoryBrand certified guide, I see clients always making this mistake. Often, companies will assume that how their product or service will make people’s lives better is implied. If this is you, it costs you a lot of money in sales. You need to start communicating in a simple way that clearly states how people’s lives will be better after working with you.
The second mistake Donald Miller says brands make asking their customers to burn too many calories to understand what they do. In other words, what you’re saying is too long or unclear. Short and straightforward is always the way to go if you want people to pay attention and understand your words.
“And if we don’t say something (and say it quickly) that they can use to survive or thrive, they will tune us out.” pg. 9
If your boss is telling you to read Miller's StoryBrand as one of the books of the month, add it to the shopping bag, and don't be dismayed. This business book offers practical advice and is as good as anything from Dave Ramsey, Seth Godin, or John Maxwell.
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STORYBRAND WEBSITE TEMPLATE
While it's specific to B2B tech, it will work for any business. Just don't tell other agencies that...
A couple of things to note:
Story brand is written StoryBrand.
Sb7 Framework is short for the 7-Part StoryBrand Framework.
The StoryBrand team also offers a live workshop that also helps people clarify your message so that customers will listen and, in turn, grow their businesses.
Check out our write up on Common BrandScript Mistakes.
How the StoryBrand Framework Will Grow Your Company
Chances are that you are unaware of the thousands of advertisements you see daily. Due to the sheer volume of messages we are exposed to daily, our brains must choose which ones to pay attention to and which to ignore. You're off to a great start if you avoid the two mistakes mentioned above. To skyrocket your revenue, you need a sense-making device like stories. Has it ever occurred to you during a good movie that you can pay attention for hours, yet when you meet someone at a cocktail party, it’s hard to pay attention to what they say? Why is this? It’s due to the power of the story.
“Neuroscientists claim the average human spends more than 30 percent of their time daydreaming… unless they’re reading, listening to, or watching a story unfold.” pg 166
Correctly understanding and utilizing story is your greatest weapon in marketing. It will help combat the noise and make you stand out so that people will listen.
We always work with small business owners, and I love their passion for their products. They often believe their product is better for their customers than the competition and provides more value. Truth be told, most of the time, they are right. The problem, though, is this -
“People don’t buy the best products; they buy the products they can understand the fastest.” pg. 19
Does Your Marketing Pass the Grunt Test?
As a StoryBrand guide, we love taking our customers through what people in the StoryBrand community call “The Grunt Test.” Why do we love it? Because it’s often a lightbulb moment for our clients when they understand just how unclear they are and how StoryBrand can solve this problem. So what is the grunt test? It’s a series of three questions that a caveman should be able to grunt out when he looks at your website. For the exercise to be successful, though, you must be as honest with yourself as possible and try to forget everything you know about your industry/company.
“They should be able to answer these questions within five seconds of looking at our website or marketing material:
What do you offer?
How will it make my life better?
What do I need to do to buy it?”
The best way to do this is to find someone who doesn’t understand or know your company and test it with them. Show them the website for five seconds, and then close the laptop. I’d encourage you to find someone now and do it.
So how did it go? If your test subject cannot answer those three simple questions, you throw money out the window, and your competition picks it up behind you.
Check out our blog on StoryBrand Website Examples
A Simple StoryBrand Framework Overview
I hope at this point that I have properly agitated the problem you are facing regarding your marketing. At a very high level, I will give you an idea of the seven parts of the Framework. This outline WILL NOT teach you the Framework. I highly suggest that you read the book or, better yet, take the online course with Business Made Simple University. I aim to give you a high-level overview so you can taste how it works and buy the book or course.
1. Character
One of the most significant shifts people make once they understand the 7-Part StoryBrand Framework is that they are not the story's hero. Your customer is the hero of the story. You should research and understand who your current customers are and their desires as it relates to your product or service.
2. Has a Problem
“Companies tend to sell solutions to external problems, but customers buy solutions to internal problems.” pg. 30
A significant shift happens when helping our clients with StoryBrand websites or Facebook ads. They come to realize that their products or services are solutions to problems. Often people are more motivated to solve a problem they are encountering rather than improve their life somehow. StoryBrand teaches us that there is a deeper motivation than the external problems your customers face. This motivation makes them feel a certain way and that something is philosophically wrong about that.
3. And Meets a Guide
If you love your company, you want to talk about it. This desire is a temptation that most business leaders are susceptive to, and I would encourage you that you are not immune to this. The problem with talking about your company too much is that you can often position yourself as the hero. Customers are not looking for another hero in their story; they are looking for a guide to help them get what they want. Your company should focus on communicating how you get your customers what they want and why you’re equipped to get them there.
4. Who Gives Them a Plan
A core StoryBrand principle is that people do not move towards the confusion. Often, we think it’s rude to be overly simple with people. When it comes to your marketing, clarity is key, and it will also make you a lot of money. You must be overly simple in what steps potential customers need to take.
5. And Calls Them to Action
“A call to action involves communication, a clear and direct step our customers can take to overcome their challenge and return to a peaceful life.”
Working with us is an example of how you can overcome your challenge of creating marketing that works to grow your company. If you want to skyrocket your revenue and beat the competition, head to the button on the top right of this screen to get your business to the level of profitability you want.
6. That Helps Them Avoid Failure
If there is nothing at risk if people don’t buy your product, why should they? Often companies do not want to help people understand what’s at risk if the potential customer decides not to work with them. This avoidance is kind of unkind. Your customers deserve to know what the stakes are in the story. You need to see the amount of money you’ll waste on making that doesn't work if you don’t hire Caffeine.
7. And Ends in a Success
What would you do with a massive lift in revenue? Picture having a clear message, a website you love, and Facebook ads that convert. Imagine someone else doing all that hard work. Within 30 days, you can have all that done without the headache. All you need to do to make this happen is work with us.
This example works for us, but what does life look like on the other side of using your product or service? Have you clarified how much better people’s lives will be after working with you?
How do you Implement StoryBrand?
The first suggestion I would give you is to have someone else look over your StoryBrand BrandScript. The chances are that you are too close to your own company to do this well by yourself. We’ve helped hundreds of business leaders create marketing that works. The key to that is this; we are an outside perspective looking in. You need to get a pair of outside eyes on it and be humble enough to receive feedback. Remember, if you’re unclear, you’re confusing customers and costing yourself a lot of money. We care about you and want you not to waste your money. So if you don’t want to hire a StoryBrand guide, at least have a friend or family member shoot you straight about your company’s brand script. Most likely, you think it’s better than it truly is.
Your website is one of the easiest places to implement your StoryBrand BrandScript.
“The days of using your website as a clearinghouse of information are over…Today your website should be the equivalent of an elevator pitch.” Pg. 146
As a guide, we create StoryBrand websites all the time. The key to doing websites successfully is to use the 7-part Framework and not say too much. While your website should be optimized for keywords, it should also be short and to the point. You can use all the keywords you want, but if no one converts into paying customers when they get onto your website, it doesn’t matter.
Website Questions to Consider:
When customers read your website's marketing messaging, is it a powerful story about the hero's journey which paints a clear picture of what life will look like on the other side of working with you?
Is your brand story using the seven universal elements of the story to help customers understand how you help them survive and thrive?
Does your customer story use the StoryBrand process to utilize powerful stories to teach?
Does your marketing roadmap offer lead magnets or generators along your hero’s journey?
The next best place to use your StoryBrand marketing toolkit is on your social media. Social media might be your company's second most valuable digital real estate (behind your website).
If you go onto your social media right now, who is the story's hero, you or your customers? Most likely, you’ve made your brand the hero of the story. Yikes. Let’s fix that going forward.
One of my favorite ways to grow a company quickly is through Facebook ads. If you didn’t already know, Facebook owns Instagram and countless other media partners, so your ads will not only display on the Facebook newsfeed. You can waste a lot of money relatively quickly doing Facebook ads if you don’t know what you’re doing. However, Facebook ads are the easiest way to see a massive return on your time investment into your StoryBrand brand script. One of my favorite tests is experimenting with different versions of a brand script within Facebook advertisements and finding out which performs best in real life vs. theory.
While your Brandscript should extend across all aspects of your marketing, I think the third most important place to implement StoryBrand is with your sales team. Your sales team needs a clear script so people will listen and buy from you. We can help you create that script, which will be the magic sauce for selling well.
Some Rules to Help You get the Most from StoryBrand Framework
You will need more than the StoryBrand Framework to succeed with this marketing strategy. These five rules below are StoryBrand-certified guides to help you fully utilize the StoryBrand Framework’s impact on your organization.
1. Ensure to Place Yourself in Your Customer’s Shoes
It’s crucial to detach yourself from your company long enough to consider things from your client's viewpoint. Imagine how things look when a consumer interacts with the company when they come across. This can make you think deeply about how consumers affect your product or service and help overcome their problems.
2. Make Clarity Your Priority, Even if it Takes Time, Do not Settle for Less
Try to learn about your company, client, product, and method. Continue to do this until something sticks, no matter how long it takes. You have to settle on a clear message for your future customers.
3. Ensure to Use Your Sales Team because it Knows Your Customer Pretty Well
Often time, it’s your sales team that knows about the questions your customers always ask and even their needs and desire. You can get lots of free market research by engaging your salespeople while clarifying your brand message.
4. Use Digital Marketing to Build Awareness
What is important to achieving success with StoryBrand Framework is building your audience and creating awareness. You can create awareness for your business through paid advertisements, SEO content, mailers, networking, and social media. Also, give some preference to copywriting and well-crafted marketing collateral.
5. Create Means for Customers to Channel Their Feedback
Ensure your product or website has a platform for customers to give feedback on your product, services, or business at large. Doing this lets you integrate customers’ direct feedback into your messaging.
Some Misconceptions about the StoryBrand Framework
Several people assume that the Framework for StoryBrand is magical. In utilizing the StoryBrand Framework, a typical error people make to view it as the ultimate magic bullet that would fix all of their issues upon application. This is what it is: it is an excellent framework. It should be implemented in every business ramification as you gain more knowledge about your company and desire to achieve your growth goals. StoryBrand Frame cannot channel traffic to your website or build brand awareness.
When launching a website, people sometimes believe clients can automatically “locate” them and sign up. If people don’t know about you or haven’t heard about you, there is no way they will find you. A messaging framework won't solve your issue when you’re not actively conducting advertising and marketing outreach and promoting awareness-raising programs. You must combine the StoryBrand Framework with the correct marketing and sales initiatives to achieve the best outcome.
Sometimes, some customers can come with a completed framework for your agency and only want you to make minor or few changes to their website or marketing material. Such people will usually believe they are experts because they have read Donald Miller’s Building a StoryBrand and have done the simple work of developing a framework together. This usually can set you up to be frustrated. Working through a message will take a long time to get it right, so knowing the front end is essential.
StoryBrand Marketing Conclusion
In February 2019, I went to StoryBrand with Donald Miller and his team to train as a guide. Until then, I read Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Your Customers Will Listen by Donald Miller a couple of times and have been listening StoryBrand podcast for a while. Truth be told, these Story formulas are simple but don't be discouraged if it takes a while to click. It wasn't until the guide training that I felt I could tell stories with a clear message so customers would listen and buy.
Excellent writing can grow your revenue even if you're not a bestselling author like Charles Duhigg, Rachel Hollis, or Ken Blanchard.
If your company needs help implementing StoryBrand after the book or even a private workshop, all you need to do is click the button below to work with us.
