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The fact is, pretty websites don’t sell things. Words sell things. And if we haven’t clarified our message, our customers won’t listen.
Because the human brain, no matter what region of the world it comes from, is drawn toward clarity and away from confusion.
The reality is we aren’t just in a race to get our products to market; we’re also in a race to communicate why our customers need those products in their lives.
The more simple and predictable the communication, the easier it is for the brain to digest. Story helps because it is a sense-making mechanism. Essentially, story formulas put everything in order so the brain doesn’t have to work to understand what’s going on.”
advertising) for information that is going to help them meet their primitive need to survive. This means that when we ramble on and on about how we have the biggest manufacturing plant on the West Coast, our customers don’t care. Why? Because that information isn’t helping them eat, drink, find a mate, fall in love, build a tribe, experience a deeper sense of meaning, or stockpile weapons in case barbarians start coming over the hill behind our cul-de-sac.
The first mistake brands make is they fail to focus on the aspects of their offer that will help people survive and thrive.
All great stories are about survival—either physical, emotional, relational, or spiritual.
Without knowing it, the subconscious is always categorizing and organizing information, and when we talk publicly about our company’s random backstory or internal goals, we’re positioning ourselves as the chairs, not the exits.
The second mistake brands make is they cause their customers to burn too many calories in an effort to understand their offer.
When we start our elevator pitch or keynote address, or when somebody visits our website, they’re burning calories to process the information we’re sharing. And if we don’t say something (and say something quickly) they can use to survive or thrive, they will tune us out. These two realities—the reality that people are looking for brands that can help them survive and thrive, and the reality that communication must be simple—explain why the SB7 Framework has helped so many businesses increase their revenue. The key is to make your company’s message about something that helps the customer
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Story formulas reveal a well-worn path in the human brain, and if we want to stay in business, we need to position our products along this path.
The narrative coming out of a company (and for that matter inside a company) must be clear. In a story, audiences must always know who the hero is, what the hero wants, who the hero has to defeat to get what they want, what tragic thing will happen if the hero doesn’t win, and what wonderful thing will happen if they do.
What we think we are saying to our customers and what our customers actually hear are two different things. And customers make buying decisions not based on what we say but on what they hear.
Story is atomic. It is perpetual energy and can power a city. Story is the one thing that can hold a human being’s attention for hours.
Nobody can look away from a good story. In fact, neuroscientists claim the average human being spends more than 30 percent of their time daydreaming . . . unless they’re reading, listening to, or watching a story unfold. Why? Because when we are engaged in a story, the story does the daydreaming for us.
Story is similar to music. A good story takes a series of random events and distills them into the essence of what really matters.
When Apple began filtering their communication to make it simple and relevant, they actually stopped featuring computers in most of their advertising. Instead, they understood their customers were all living, breathing heroes, and they tapped into their stories. They did this by (1) identifying what their customers wanted (to be seen and heard), (2) defining their customers’ challenge (that people didn’t recognize their hidden genius), and (3) offering their customers a tool they could use to express themselves (computers and smartphones). Each of these realizations are pillars in ancient
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People don’t buy the best products; they buy the products they can understand the fastest. Apple has inserted themselves into their customers’ story like no other technology company, and as a result, they’re not only the largest technology company, they’re in the top ten largest companies period.1
Here is nearly every story you see or hear 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. What does the hero want? 2. Who or what is opposing the hero getting what she wants? 3. What will the hero’s life look like if she does (or does not) get what she wants?
Just like there are three questions audiences must be able to answer to engage in a story, there are three questions potential customers must answer if we expect them to engage with our brand. And they should be able to answer these questions within five 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?
STORYBRAND PRINCIPLE ONE: THE CUSTOMER IS THE HERO, NOT YOUR BRAND.
STORYBRAND PRINCIPLE TWO: COMPANIES TEND TO SELL SOLUTIONS TO EXTERNAL PROBLEMS, BUT CUSTOMERS BUY SOLUTIONS TO INTERNAL PROBLEMS.
STORYBRAND PRINCIPLE THREE: CUSTOMERS AREN’T LOOKING FOR ANOTHER HERO; THEY’RE LOOKING FOR A GUIDE.
STORYBRAND PRINCIPLE FOUR: CUSTOMERS TRUST A GUIDE WHO HAS A PLAN.
STORYBRAND PRINCIPLE FIVE: CUSTOMERS DO NOT TAKE ACTION UNLESS THEY ARE CHALLENGED TO TAKE ACTION.
STORYBRAND PRINCIPLE SIX: EVERY HUMAN BEING IS TRYING TO AVOID A TRAGIC ENDING.
Stories live and die on a single question: What’s at stake? If nothing can be gained or lost, nobody cares. Will the hero disarm the bomb, or will people be killed? Will the guy get the girl, or will he be lonely and filled with self-doubt? These are the kinds of questions in the minds of a story-hungry audience.
Simply put, we must show people the cost of not doing business with us.
Regardless, the point is this: your story needs stakes.
STORYBRAND PRINCIPLE SEVEN: NEVER ASSUME PEOPLE UNDERSTAND HOW YOUR BRAND CAN CHANGE THEIR LIVES. TELL THEM.
StoryBrand Principle One: The customer is the hero, not your brand.
StoryBrand Principle Two: Companies tend to sell solutions to external problems, but customers buy solutions to internal problems.
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.
Just like in stories, human beings wake up every morning self-identifying as a hero. They are troubled by internal, external, and philosophical conflicts, and they know they can’t solve these problems on their own.
The two things a brand must communicate to position themselves as the guide are Empathy Authority
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.
There are four easy ways to add just the right amount of authority to our marketing.
Testimonials: Let others do the talking for you. If you have satisfied customers, place a few testimonials on your website. Testimonials give potential customers the gift of going second. They know others have worked with you and attained success. Avoid stacking ten to twenty testimonials; otherwise you run the risk of positioning yourself as the hero. 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. Also, avoid rambling testimonials that heap endless praise on your brand. It won’t take long for a customer to trust you,
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Statistics: How many satisfied customers have you helped? How much money have you helped them save? By what percentage have their businesses grown since they started working with you? A simple statement like the e-mail marketing platform Infusionsoft’s “125,000 users trust [our] award-winning automation software”6 is all your potential customer needs. Moreover, this scratches the itch of the left-brained consumer who loves numbers, statistics, and facts.
Awards: If you’ve won a few awards for your work, feel free to include small logos or indications of those awards at the bottom of your page. Again, there’s no need to make a big deal about it, but awards go a long way in earning your customer’s trust, even if they’ve never heard of the award.
Logos: If you provide a business-to-business product or service, place logos of known businesses you’ve worked with in your marketing collateral. Customers want to know you’ve helped other businesses overcome their same challenges. When they recognize another business you’ve worked with, it provides social proof you have the ability to help them win the day.
When people meet your brand, it’s as though they are meeting a person. They’re wondering if the two of you will get along, whether you can help them live a better life, whether they want to associate their identity with your brand, and ultimately whether they can trust you.
Cuddy distilled her research into two questions people subconsciously ask when meeting someone new: “Can I trust this person?” and “Can I respect this person?”
StoryBrand Principle Four: Customers trust a guide who has a plan.
Commitments are risky for our customers because as soon as they make a commitment, they can lose something. Most customers are not going to take this risk yet.
In order to ease our customers’ concerns, we need to place large stones in that creek. When we identify the stones our customers can step on to get across the creek, we remove much of the risk and increase their comfort level about doing business with us.
Plans can take many shapes and forms, but all effective plans do one of two things: they either clarify how somebody can do business with us, or they remove the sense of risk somebody might have if they’re considering investing in our products or services.
At StoryBrand we’ve identified two plans you can use to effectively encourage customers to do business with you. The first kind of plan, and the one we recommend every one of our clients employ, is a process plan. 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.
