After six years of being a Certified StoryBrand Guide, I'm going to empty my brain with everything you need to know about StoryBrand and what it means to work with a StoryBrand Guide.
In the New York Times best-selling book Building a StoryBrand, Donald Miller shows how to use one of the most potent forces in human nature—a story—to create meaningful connections with customers and potential customers. With vivid examples from well-known brands like Nike, Jet Blue Airways, Chick Fil A, Patagonia, and many others, this book clearly shows how to leverage the power of story so that people connect with.
Fans of the epic stories like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and The Hunger Games will love the anecdotes and breakdown of the storylines. Most of all, Building A StoryBrand is a marketing book.
In the book, readers learn how customers identify themselves as part of an organization's story. This is more important than ever in today's cluttered and noisy world. In simplest terms, StoryBrand is a marketing framework that helps companies understand how stories work so that they can clarify their marketing message and connect with more cutomers.
It centers on tackling these four questions:
- Who is our audience?
- What do they care about most?
- What problems are keeping them from winning their story?
- How do we leverage the power of story to connect with our customers?
Learning about StoryBrand can help answer those questions and clarify your organization's purpose, direction, and message.
That clarity leads to a consistent voice for your company's marketing. It gets everyone on the same page.
Why StoryBrand Is Pure Gold For Small Business Owners
A lot of businesses read the book and think they can do apply the framework on their own. These cash and time-strapped owners don't realize they need help to do it right. In particular, small business owners are too hands-on to sit back and review their marketing strategy to get more sales. And that's where the problem lies; they are too busy running their business. They don't have the time or perspective to analyze their work objectively.
Donald Miller created the StoryBrand framework to work for any company, but it's particularly effective for companies and people who:
- Struggle to communicate what they do
- Have a website that's just not working for them
- Need a familiar storyline to unite their team
- Aren't sure about who their ideal client is
- Having a hard time connecting with their market
- They have been burned by marketers who wasted their time and money
Plenty of marketing agencies claim to provide a solution to bad marketing. We believe that what Donald Miller has created at StoryBrand is different. It teaches you why most marketing doesn't work and then proposes something far better than the status quo/human nature.
A common mistake in marketing is thinking that telling your story is an essential part of marketing. The truth is that nobody cares about your company's story.
They only care about their own story.
According to Miler, you need to stop trying to be the hero in the story you're telling. Instead, focus on your customers' story. They are the heroes and it's your job to help them overcome their troubles while guiding them to a "happily ever after".
The Main Thing You Need To Know About Building A StoryBrand
This is one of the fundamental points of the book: People only care about their story because it's the only thing that busy people can focus on. Miller so accurately comments that we are all heroes of a story, and it's our own story. We have a laser focus to win our story and tune out anything else.
When you leverage the power of story in your marketing, your conversion rates will increase because the words are more compelling.
The power of a story is that it grabs your audience's attention and builds a connection between them, leading to more sales.
The StoryBrand framework uses the same proven formula used by Hollywood writers.
The StoryBrand Framework can completely revolutionize your marketing, but it's challenging for companies to implement it independently. That's where hiring a consultant or an agency comes in. These individuals or groups of individuals are trained and certified in the framework, ensuring that clients follow every step correctly.
At the end of the book, Miller introduces the role of a StoryBrand Guide to help you apply the book's principles. Even when you've been sold on StoryBrand, you still have a big decision to make: whether or not you want to work with a StoryBrand guide to help you get StoryBrand right.
What Is A StoryBrand Guide?
A StoryBrand Guide is a marketing expert who will spend time with you to help you frame the marketing story clearly and consistently. A StoryBrand Guide will also work on creating marketing collateral with you. A StoryBrand Guide can help you with your website copy, email campaigns, social media posts, and press releases. They will help you to identify your unique competitive advantage in a crowded marketplace.
In a world of noise, you need to stand out. A StoryBrand Guide will show you how to do this with the right strategy, words, images and whatever else you need to make the right connections.
Simply Stated: A StoryBrand Certified Guide Helps You Properly Apply The Principles Of Building A StoryBrand
You Don't Have To Figure Out StoryBrand On Your Own
Certified StoryBrand Guides help you create a marketing plan focused on your audience and the story they are already a part of - their own. They know how to build relationships with customers by intriguingly sharing stories.
You shouldn't try to do your marketing on your own. This is because, if we are honest, most business owners are great at what they do - but they don't have the time or the expertise to understand marketing and do it well. We all know that in business, you always get the best results when working from your strengths. Outsourcing other tasks like marketing strategy, copywriting and design can be beneficial.
A StoryBrand Guide will make sure all of your marketing efforts align with a cohesive message, so customers know the problem you solve, the outcome you achieve for customers, and the path to get them there.
Did you know that a majority of StoryBrand Guides are coming from marketing backgrounds? They are experts with putting together effective campaigns.
You want to follow a proven process so you can get the best marketing results possible. A StoryBrand guide will show you how! They know what works and won't waste your time with things that don't work at all.
A StoryBrand guide should have a few years of experience in design, content creation, and customer service (but they don't always so make sure you ask!).
A StoryBrand Certified Guide can help you take your branding efforts from good to great. They will also give you the tools and guidance to go from average marketing results and achieve stellar ones instead.
Too many people have become frustrated trying to write their message. It slows them down; they waste time and miss opportunities to reach new people.
A StoryBrand Certified Guide will help you get your message on point, so you can spend less time figuring out what needs to be said and focusing on doing what you love - not your marketing.
What Does A StoryBrand Guide Do?
Hiring a StoryBrand Guide can reduce the burden on a small business that does not have designated staff to handle digital marketing, social media, or content creation. This is especially true for small businesses with limited marketing budgets.
StoryBrand marketing is something we at Get Clear happily do for our clients. It's a strategic marketing and planning process that helps businesses simplify their message, identify their most appealing USPs (Unique Selling Proposition), and create rock-solid messaging to help them sell more products or services.
A StoryBrand Guide, the marketing consultant, helps their clients identify business goals, develop strategies to achieve these objectives, and can offer to implement customer/project strategies (or introduce you to someone in the StoryBrand community who can).
The Guide can become practical regarding the execution, depending on their field of expertise. These tasks focus mainly on copywriting, strategy, and can include design. Some of the marketing collateral that Guides help produce are:
- write scripts for your videos
- write social media articles
- write a copy of a website, and design it.
- Create landing pages
- Create a lead-generating PDF
- Create a Sales Email Sequence
- Help you with your One Liner
- An Email Nurture Campaign
The Guide As A Marketing Coach
Guides can also help you with your overall marketing strategy.
Consulting and coaching are helpful when you are designing your marketing. A guide can help you make the best decision for how to invest your time and resources. They will show you how to do this step-by-step. Perhaps you want to have marketing material (e.g., your website, sales copy, one-liner, etc.) for use in your advertising campaign but aren't sure how it should look. Guides help you tackle it from a StoryBrand perspective so that you get the best results.
The Overall Benefits Of Working With A StoryBrand Certified Guide
There are many benefits to hiring a Storybrand Certified Guide for your business. They will help you create a marketing plan that is focused on your audience and the story they want.
StoryBrand guides can work with organizations of all sizes, shapes, and industries.
They know how to build relationships with customers by sharing stories in a compelling way.
One of the significant benefits of working with a StoryBrand guide is establishing a solid relationship. As your Guide works through your project, they will gain a deep understanding of your business and get to know you as an individual. At the end of the process, you'll clearly know who will be working on this project. If that person does good work for one area of your company, then there's a possibility.
One of the biggest reasons someone should hire a StoryBrand guide is that it tends to be a more affordable option.
One Thing To Be Aware Of
Hiring a StoryBrand guide can be daunting due to the sheer number of options available. Have you ever look at the number of options you have at marketingmadesimple.com? This is the marketplace for where you find StoryBrand Guides. You can search based on skill, budget, location, and bunch of other options. Be warned: Not all StoryBrand Guides provide the same quality of work. So it is vital to vet their credentials and find one that matches your needs.
Finding a single Guide to take on your project can be complicated. If you're looking to hire one expert who does it all, some companies offer this type of service, but they certainly aren't the only option out there.
Spending time and effort finding a content writer, developer, and designer is inefficient when you could hire a single agency for the most affordable rates.
Get Clear helps organizations and businesses of all shapes and sizes clarify their message using StoryBrand. Get Clear's marketing machine will help your business reach the right people at every stage, so you can get back to doing what you do best.
Some Of Our Frequently Asked Questions
What if StoryBrand doesn't work for me?
The StoryBrand process has been proven successful with many companies. However, we know that not everyone is not always the right fit for every company and person out there. To combat this and save you the time and money, we offer that free discovery call to help you decide if this will work for your business or organization. We want you to have peace of mind that this will be the best decision for your business.
Schedule a meeting with us for a free strategy session with us. We will help you get some clarity on what your business needs and how to get where you need to go. On that free call we promise you'll get tons of value from a member of our team.
How much does it cost to hire a StoryBrand guide?
The cost of hiring a guide is so varied that we cannot go into any specifics here. The scope of projects depends on your need and can be adjusted depending on your budget. We wrote about it here. The first step is free - we'll work with you to determine if this will be the best fit for your business or organization. Once we know and decide to work together, we'll set up a phone call to cover the details and costs.
Before moving on, let's briefly talk about the StoryBrand Guide Certification program.
How Do I Get Certified As A Guide?
We understand that a lot of readers may be wondering, "Being a Guide sounds amazing. How do I join the StoryBrand Guide program?" The first step is you have to be willing to invest. The cost of the Guide training program is USD $10,000. This includes two additional days of instruction after the live event. I loved my time hanging out with Donald Miller and his team. It was a joy to learn the Storybrand framework from the author himself!
In addition, members are engaged in discussion with each other as they work on different tasks concerning building out an imaginary company's branding.
During the sessions, you are broken into a group of about 5-7 people and assigned various projects that require you to design a full BrandScript, create the wireframe for a website, write an email sales letter, and write the headings for future marketing emails.
The point is that this assignment gives you the chance to put your new knowledge to work right away.
At the end of the workshop, we would each present our completed work to the other guides-in-training. The staff then offers their feedback and provides constructive criticism.
I felt well-prepared to deal with any challenges that came up because I had already worked through them in advance with my team.
What qualifications does a StoryBrand guide need?
StoryBrand guides are experts in storytelling principles with proven results for their clients. They understand how to craft compelling stories that drive conversion rates and create the essential emotional connections you need in your marketing. This is why they're so valuable to your business.
If you want to learn more about hiring a Guide (or even becoming a Guide - we love sharing our insights, do not hesitate to reach out to the Get Clear team. We'd love to chat with you.
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