Marketing Made Simple - Book Summary & Review
Marketing Made Simple: A Step-by-Step StoryBrand Guide for Any Business By Donald Miller with Dr. J.J. Peterson
Book Intro
Marketing should be easy, and it should work. The easiest and best marketing plans start with a sales funnel. Once you create a sales funnel, your advertising can then support your sales funnel.
A sales funnel is a way to capture and convert leads. We can talk about marketing all day, but you will only make money on what you execute. If you have a clear message and no sales funnel, your business will not grow. It is wrong for a marketing company to charge you money and fail to give you a return on investment.
Most companies struggle to create profitable marketing. That’s been the story for hundreds of business owners before we helped make marketing profitable. As a StoryBrand Certified Guide and marketer, I’ve seen countless business owners and entrepreneurs throw things to the wall, hoping something will stick.
Thankfully Donald Miller and Dr. J.J. Peterson have given an incredibly comprehensive guide on how to build a sales funnel that works. In this book, they break down step by step a lot of the same principles that we use when we’re working with our clients.
This book is not for you if you’re not into business and marketing. If you want a full-proof guide on how to build a sales funnel that works, this is your go-to book of the year to help you get there. I also recommend reading my review of Donald Miller’s Business Made Simple University online course.
Check out our review of Donald Miller’s Building a StoryBrand.
As a StoryBrand certified guide, I help people create everything in this book through my agency, Caffeine Marketing. If you want to skip the work (you should still read it), have us do the heavy lifting and request a call today.
If you’re on the fence or want insights into what the book is about, I will share with you some of the highlights I wrote down from the book without giving the secret sauce away. Everything italicized is a direct quote from the book. Towards the end, you’ll see that there are fewer quotes. Most of what I wanted to share with you in those sections was unique to StoryBrand, and I didn’t want to give it away! While I’m quite the StoryBrand fan, this is a must-read for business owners and marketers. Go buy the book!
Chapter 1 - The Three Stages of a Relationship
A Five-Step Marketing Plan That Works:
Create a BrandScript
Create a one-liner
Wire-frame a landing page
Create a lead-generating PDF
Create an email campaign
The good news is you don’t have to lose all your money to build a great company. Following the five steps outlined in this book, you’ll grow your brand correctly the first time.
Whether you’re a small company creating a few sales funnels or a large company creating hundreds, the plan works.
Chapter 2 - The Actual Stages Of A Relationship
Why People Have to Get Curious and Enlightened Before They Will Commit
Our five-step marketing plan will invite people into a trusted relationship with your brand. Asking for a sale is a relationship proposition. And relationships have rules.
All relationships move through three stages. And these stages cannot be rushed. The stages of a relationship are:
Curiosity
Without knowing it, what’s making you curious about this person is one thing: you sense they can help you survive or thrive.
A person, product, or brand that can help us survive or thrive activates a survival mechanism within us that piques our curiosity.
The curiosity stage of a relationship is mostly about snap judgments. Scanning our environment is like sorting through a stack of mail.
Human beings collect physical, emotional, and social resources that help them survive.
If you don’t tell someone how you can help them survive, they will set you aside or, worse, discard you.
Customers are not interested in your story. They are, instead, interested in being invited into a story that has them surviving and winning in the end.
Enlightenment
If curiosity gets us to pay attention to a brand, enlightenment invites us into a relationship.
You should enlighten your customers about how your product works to solve their problems.
Commitment
The two main reasons customers do not place orders are because:
The brand never asked them for the sale, or
The brand asked them for the sale too early
Wise men say only fools rush in, but wise men also make a move eventually
….making a purchase is always a decision to forgo valuable survival resources in exchange for resources they hope will increase their chances for survival even more.
The key to marketing and sales, for that matter, is to invite the customer on a journey at the pace of a natural healthy relationship.
In my opinion, for most products, a customer must experience about eight touchpoints before ordering.
Chapter 3 - An Introduction to the Marketing-Made Simple Checklist
Many companies confuse branding with marketing, and this confusion is costing them millions.
Most of us are so concerned with how our brand looks and feels we neglect to communicate what customers seek. A solution to their problem.
Good marketing is an exercise in memorization, and successful brands know it.
Each sale funnel you create should break through the advertising clutter and speak directly to customers.
The only thing that statistically impacted growth was how they implemented the framework.
You just have to execute!
Chapter 4 - Create your one-liner
Create your marketing-made simple sales funnel
Once you create these five pieces of marketing collateral and put them into play, your business will grow. Our entire world is made with words. Everything man manmade things started with one person talking to another.
The most powerful tool any of us can use to magically open doors is a one-liner A one-liner is a concise statement you can use to explain what you offer clearly. The one-liner is composed of three parts- the problem, the solution, and the results.
The problem is the hook. Starting the problem adds value to your products. Name only one problem. We are all in business because we provide a solution to a problem.
Don’t overthink the solution component of your one-liner. The solution is the easiest part. It’s your product. The third part of your one-liner should release the tension you create in the first section.
You want that result to be tangible. Make it something they can feel.
Chapter 5 - A wire-framed website that works
It’s words that sell things. Your website is not a place for you to celebrate yourself. Your website is where you sell your customers a product that solves their problems and improves their lives.
A wireframe is a long piece of paper (or digital page) that includes the text in a rough draft drawing of what the website might look like. When we train our StoryBrand-certified guides, we repeatedly repeat that cute and clever don’t sell products; clarity does.
Don’t use your website's header to differentiate yourself from someone else. Clarity itself is going to differentiate you. Make your intentions known early and often.
Few images work better than smiling, happy people enjoying your product. A story without stakes is no story at all. When communicating the stakes, just a little bit goes a long way.
We just raised the value of your product by more than 100 percent simply by using words. And words are free. The day you stop losing sleep about your success and start losing sleep over your customers’ success is the day our business will start growing again.
You need to express empathy and demonstrate authority to position yourself as the guide to your customer’s needs. Always make the story about them.
Although it may be obvious to you how a customer can buy your product or service, it is not obvious to them. While SEO algorithms often change, simply including long-form text using words that sell your product will help. When listing the prices of your products, we recommend having three different options.
Click to read about common StoryBrand BrandScript mistakes.
Chapter 6 - Lead Generator
Give Them a Reason to Give You Their Email Address, or They Won’t
People want to stay in touch with you if you are interested and can help them survive. A lead-generator is (usually) a free asset you offer potential clients to build authority and trust.
Once you have your lead generator created, you first want to promote it on your website. Yes, I know pop-up ads are annoying, but they work. Consider promoting your lead-generators on social media or even use paid advertising.
The simplest and most cost-effective is a lead-generating PDF.
Chapter 7 - The Power Of Email
How to Earn Space In Somebody’s Inbox
Learn from others and practice, practice, practice. Sending them regular, valuable emails is your best opportunity to continue building relationships and selling them a product that will solve their problem.
If someone gives you their email address, they expect you to email them. Use short words. Use short sentences. Use short paragraphs. Use active language
Chapter 8 - Nurture Email Campaigns
Now Let’s Nurture The Relationship
Nurture emails are designed to be ongoing email campaigns that continue to “nurture” your relationship with a client. Some people call these drip campaigns because they slowly drip the information to customers over a long period.
A nurture campaign is important because most customers don’t want to buy your product immediately. Sending out a weekly email ensures that when they hit the buying window, you, not your competitor, are fresh on their minds.
You must be emailing your list consistently with valuable content. The unsubscribe button is your friend. One great characteristic of an email nurturing campaign is that it offers your free value.
The great thing about this email is it offers to solve a problem whether the customer pays…or not. Start slow and enjoy the process.
Chapter 9 - Sales Email Campaigns
How to close the deal
While the nurture campaign is focused on adding value and building trust, the sales campaign will focus on closing the deal. An email sales campaign is not about being shy; it’s about challenging your customer to take a step in solving their problem. Today.
The customer translates passive-aggressive sales techniques as weak. There is a name for businesspeople who fear rejection. We call them broke. Unlike a nurture campaign, a sales campaign works best when focused on selling a single product.
Chapter 10 - How to Execute the Marketing Made Simple Sales Funnel
A Step-by-Step Guide
Execution is paramount. Many people who read this book will feel like they’ve found hope. And I believe you have. But non of the feeling of hope amounts to anything without execution.
He proved that our messaging framework would help any business grow, but only to the degree they execute the plan. Your customers will get confused if the story you invite them into is inconsistent. While creating a sales funnel takes creativity and hard work, it should not be hard. It should be fun.
Want us to do all the hard work mentioned in this book for you and save a lot of money in time in the process? Request a call with me today.
Founder of Caffeine Marketing
StoryBrand Certified Guide.
