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Kindle Notes & Highlights
Create a One-liner. This roadmap is going to teach you the four-part formula for creating a single statement that will grow your business. You’ll want to memorize this statement yourself and repeat it any time somebody asks you what you do.
Create a Lead Generator and Collect E-mail Addresses. You need a lead generator. You need a PDF, e-course, video series, webinar, live event, or just about anything else that will allow you to 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. This may be the single most important piece of collateral you create in response to this book, and in this roadmap, I’ll show you how.
Create an Automated E-Mail Drip Campaign. Marketing has changed, and even the largest of companies are diversifying their ad spend to include e-mail campaigns. But where is the best place to get started? By far, you’ll get your best results through an automated drip campaign.
Collect and Tell Stories of Transformation. Almost every story is about the transformation of the hero, and when we tell stories about how we’ve helped our customers transform, potential customers immediately understand what your brand can offer them. In this section, I’ll help you collect stories of transformation, teaching you what questions to specifically ask your customers and where to use those stories to get the greatest response from potential customers.
Create a System That Generates Referrals. Once you create a system that funnels potential customers into becoming actual customers, your work is not quite done. The final step is to turn around and invite happy customers to become evangelists for your brand. This will only happen if we create a system that invites and incentivizes them to spread the word.
A one-liner is a new and improved way to answer the question “What do you do?” It’s more than a slogan or tagline; it’s a single statement that helps people realize why they need your products or services.
What makes these loglines complete and effective? Two things: imagination and intrigue. They summarize the movie in a way that a viewer can imagine the story, and they do so with enough intrigue that they make the reader want to watch the film.
The one-liner you will create for your company will work like a logline in a movie; it will intrigue qualified buyers and invite them to do business with you.
To craft a compelling one-liner, we’ll employ a distilled version of the StoryBrand Framework. If you use the following four components, you’ll craft a powerful one-liner: 1. The Character 2. The Problem 3. The Plan 4. The Success
1. THE CHARACTER
2. THE PROBLEM
As I said earlier in the book, 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. For workout-deprived soccer moms, the plan might be weekly, meaningful workouts. For the retired couple, the plan of a time-share can make the difference. When a customer reads your one-liner, the plan component should cause them to think, Well, when it’s organized that way, it makes sense. Perhaps there’s hope.
4. THE SUCCESS This is where you paint a picture of what life could look like after customers use your product or service. For soccer moms, success may involve a sense of health, well-being, or attractiveness. For retired couples looking for a second home in Florida, success could be as simple as warm, enjoyable winters.
Keep Editing Your One-Liner Until It Works Consider your first one-liner a rough draft. Write it down and test it repeatedly. Run it by your friends, spouse, potential customers, even strangers standing in line at Starbucks. Do people look interested? Do they completely understand what you offer? If so, you’re on the right track. When they start asking for your business card or for more information, you’ve really dialed it in.
How to Use Your One-Liner Once you’ve created your one-liner, use it liberally. Here are a few ways to put it to work:
1. Memorize your one-liner and repeat it over and over. There’s a good chance you’ve become so used to rambling about your business that reciting your one-liner won’t come naturally. Memorize it as though you’re an actor in a movie and it’s your most important line. Read and repeat it until you can recite it as fast as your own name. This will take some time, but it might be the best few hours you spend working on your new messaging campaign.
2. Have your team memorize the one-liner. Now it’s time to get your team to own the one-liner. That includes everyone from the CEO to the guy who mows the lawn. If every team member can repeat the one-liner, you will have converted your staff into a viral sales force. Have fun with this! Print the one-liner on your walls, coffee cups, T-shirts, or anything else your team interacts with daily. After each member of your team memorizes the one-liner, they will be spreading a clear and compelling message about your company at every cocktail party and baseball game they attend.
3. Include it on your website. While it’s largely subjective what words you include on your website, make sure to get your one-liner in there somewhere. Even a small paragraph beneath the main section of your website will do. Including your one-liner almost guarantees your site invites potential customers into a story they find interesting. Make it bold and legible so it becomes one of the obvious statements you want viewers to read.
4. Repeat your one-liner in every piece of marketing collateral possible. Use your one-liner till it feels borderline excessive. Include your one-liner in every piece of marketing possible. Our customers aren’t going to read every one of our e-mails or visit our webpage every day. The more opportunities a customer has to read or hear our one-liner, the more likely they will be to understand how we can make their lives better.
ROADMAP TASK TWO: CREATE A LEAD-GENERATOR AND COLLECT E-MAIL ADDRESSES
Quick question: What is the most sacred, private, personal possession you own today? The one thing you’d be terrified of other people having full, unmitigated access to? I’m going to take a wild guess and say it’s your smartphone.
An e-mail account is one of the most sacred, personal things people possess. But what if you could have a direct line to customers through that very channel? What if customers willingly gave you permission to contact them in such a personal way? That’s e-mail marketing. E-mail is the most valuable and effective way you can spread the word about your business, especially if your company revenue is under $5 million and you don’t have a large marketing budget. As of this writing I have hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers and nearly as many Facebook fans, but all my social media platforms
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How to Create an Irresistible Lead Generator In order to combat noise in today’s marketplace, your lead generator must do two things: 1. Provide enormous value for your customer 2. Establish you as an authority in your field
Five Types of Lead Generators for All Types of Businesses
Downloadable Guide: This
Online Course or Webinar: Creating a brief online course or webinar is involved, but it’s also easier than ever.
3. Software Demos or a Free Trial:
4. Free Samples:
5. Live Events:
Among marketers, it’s been said you give away the “why”—as in why a potential customer would need to address or be aware of a certain issue—and sell the “how,” which is where you offer a tool or teach customers how to follow through step-by-step. My personal belief is that we should be generous—very generous.
Make sure you feature your lead generator liberally on your website. I recommend creating a pop-up feature on your site that, after ten seconds or so of the browser arriving, offers your resource to the user. Though people complain about pop-ups, the stats are clear: they readily outperform nearly every other type of Internet advertising.
Content is important, but the point is, there is great power in simply reminding our customers we exist. I was young and dumb at the time, but I’d stumbled onto something. 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.
The Nurturing E-mail A good way to craft each nurturing e-mail is to use an effective formula that offers simple, helpful advice to a customer. I’ve been using this formula for years and customers love it. 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.
The Offer and Call to Action E-mail About every third or fourth e-mail in a nurturing campaign should offer a product or service to the customer. The key here is to be direct. You don’t want to be passive, because being passive communicates weakness. In this e-mail you are clearly making an offer. The formula might look like this: 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.
ROADMAP TASK FOUR: COLLECT AND TELL STORIES OF TRANSFORMATION As we learned earlier in the book, few things are more foundational to a compelling story than the transformation of the hero. Why? Because transformation is a core desire for every human being. That’s why so many stories are about the hero being transformed into somebody better.
Here are five questions most likely to generate the best response for a customer testimonial: 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 that 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.
The point is that people are drawn to transformation. 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.
ROADMAP TASK FIVE: CREATE A SYSTEM THAT GENERATES REFERRALS
Once you create a system that funnels potential customers into becoming actual customers, the final step is to turn around and invite happy customers to become evangelists for your brand. This will only happen if you create a system that invites and incentivizes people to spread the word.
1. IDENTIFY YOUR EXISTING, IDEAL CUSTOMERS
2. GIVE YOUR CUSTOMERS A REASON TO SPREAD THE WORD
3. OFFER A REWARD
