Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen

by Donald Miller

Your customer should be the hero of the story, not your brand. This is the secret every phenomenally successful business understands.

Marketing has changed. Businesses that invite their customers into a heroic story grow. Businesses that don’t are forgotten.

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.

If we pay a lot of money to a design agency without first clarifying our message, we might as well be holding a bullhorn up to a monkey. The only thing a potential customer will hear is noise.

nobody will listen to you if your message isn’t clear, no matter how expensive your marketing material may be.

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.

Even if we have the best product in the marketplace, we’ll lose to an inferior product if our competitor’s offer is communicated more clearly.

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.

The first mistake brands make is they fail to focus on the aspects of their offer that will help people survive and thrive.

This means that if we position our products and services as anything but an aid in helping people survive, thrive, be accepted, find love, achieve an aspirational identity, or bond with a tribe that will defend them physically and socially, good luck selling anything to anybody.

The second mistake brands make is they cause their customers to burn too many calories in an effort to understand their offer.

The key is to make your company’s message about something that helps the customer survive and to do so in such a way that they can understand it without burning too many calories.

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.

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.

Our customers have questions burning inside them, and if we aren’t answering those questions, they’ll move on to another brand.

If we want to connect with customers, we have to stop blasting them with noise.

Story is atomic.

Story is the one thing that can hold a human being’s attention for hours.

Story is the greatest weapon we have to combat noise, because it organizes information in such a way that people are compelled to listen.

The brain remembers music and forgets about noise just like the brain remembers some brands and forgets about others.

Story is similar to music. A good story takes a series of random events and distills them into the essence of what really matters.

Why do so many brands create noise rather than music? It’s because they don’t realize they are creating noise.

The essence of branding is to create simple, relevant messages we can repeat over and over so that we “brand” ourselves into the public consciousness.

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.

So how do we make the story our company is telling clear?

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?

we’re either making music or making noise. Nobody remembers a company that makes noise.

What do you offer? 2. How will it make my life better? 3. What do I need to do to buy it?

Alfred Hitchcock defined a good story as “life with the dull parts taken out.”