How building a Story Brand can help take your Content Marketing and business growth to a higher level

We identified Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller as one of our top content marketing books for marketers in a recent blog post.

It’s a strategy that we’ve been exploring in our own marketing and one that is especially rising to prominence in the B2B space where selling on features and specifications doesn’t get you all that far anymore.

Creating a Story Brand is very important in modern marketing for a number of reasons

Brand stories add a human element to your marketing by giving your communications a mission – to serve a specific type of customer.
They build communications around relatable and genuine experiences not just promotion.
They create more of an emotional connection through content that is more engaging.
The best brand stories provide “teachable moments” and opportunities to learn.
They are designed to be shared.
Stories are more memorable and convincing than using facts and reason alone.
They tap into human desires, aspirations, fears and other basic impulses.

How to create a brand story

Building a Story Brand means creating a narrative that puts your customers first.

It is one thing saying you are customer centric but quite another doing it consciously.

If you think about your favourite film or book – and then think about some of your favourite brands (the ones you buy on repeat), the chances are they follow most, if not all, these steps.

1. Character (Hero)

The hero of your marketing communications, shouldn’t be you, your product or service, It should be your customer. They are only interested in things that help them get what they want and need.

If your product or service can deliver a benefit to them, it will be useful if communicated in the right way. Remember why you exist, who you serve, the problem you solve and the transformation you provide.

2. Understand their problem

The hero of your marketing communications, shouldn’t be you, your product or service, It should be your customer. They are only interested in things that help them get what they want and need.

3. Hero meets a guide

The critical part of the whole process is YOU are the GUIDE not the hero. Customers rarely start looking for a solution provider; more often, they are looking for a way to resolve a problem or improve a current situation.

Root your brand story and content marketing in the problem and all the related aspects of resolving it, what happens if it is left unresolved, what the future looks like once resolved to help them see you as a credible guide.

4. Receive a plan

Then provide the blueprint – your product or service – of how you can support them to achieve what they want to achieve. Case studies and testimonials become incredibly powerful when introduced this way.

Check out how high ticket landing pages by marketing heavyweights like Tony Robbins are built – they tap into your ambitions first, share the guide’s credentials then introduce a plan and testimonial support that create a powerful call to take action.

5. Challenge them to take action

Sometimes customers need content marketing that directs them specifically to action.

You’ll have seen many of the techniques – we use some of them on this site – introductory or time sensitive offers, deadlines, limited number availability – but almost all credible selling organisations bring it back to the achievement of goals and resolution of problems.

Above all, people want transformation in some way. Remind them of the benefits of achievement and what a positive change looks like someway in the future.

6. Avoiding failure

Some customers might need to be shown the impact of not making a decision – and be shown what an alternate future working the same way they always have can be to their detriment.

If you have a rock-solid understanding of their motivations, you will have already identified what they want most (or want to eliminate the most) so by drawing a future where they don’t have what they most want can be powerful if convincing them to take action.

Often this comes in an email nurture sequence but can be delivered in lots of other ways too if you’re struggling to see conversion.

7. Ends in success

Finally, you have to be very clear in the steps they’re going to take towards success once they have decided to place their trust in you.

Whether it’s product or service marketing, you need a clear onboarding process – if necessary involving training and development so they immediately get to feel a higher standard of customer care.

This is a major part of the marketing process that is all to often overlooked by sellers simply looking to secure deals. And in challenging times, your service levels can be a critical part of not just locking in new customers but turning them into raving advocates too.

How building a Story Brand helps marketers achieve organisational goals

The implication for you, as a marketer is clear.

In marketing, the customer (reader) is the hero of the story.

You (or your client) is the guide

You (or the client) are providing the plan to get them from where they are now, to where they need to be.

And you’ll get what you YOU want, once they get what THEY want.

Examples of Story Brands in action

The agency Knap Sack Creative is a Building a Story Brand partner and has a page dedicated to sharing examples of Story Brand in action. Click here for some examples.

In almost all cases, as the book outlines, you need a guiding principle or statement that is the embodiment of your offer that is then used as the gateway to all your marketing positioning and communications.

If you’ve not read it yet, we recommend getting a copy – it also comes with a cool online tool – the Story Brand Script – which helps to create simple one page Story Brands for your business, customers and clients.

Do you have a Story Brand in your business?

Would you like to create one?

Check out our new Content Marketing Incubator – a four week facilitated programme starting 5th September.

It will help you deeply understand your ideal customer and build a content marketing strategy around a core Story Brand proposition to significantly improve the results you get from your marketing activities.

Further Recommended Reading