How a Better Story Brand Can Increase Sales
Want to create an effective story brand that engages your potential customers and drive more sales to your business or your client’s business? All you need is a simple and effective framework. This one, taken from Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller, is used by dozens of companies to sell their brand in the most effective way and have an immense amount of loyal followers.
Recast For a Better Marketing Strategy
Having an effective story brand is crucial to business success. To create this story effectively you have to first understand the characters:
- The buyer is the hero
- Your brand is the guide
As a brand you may feel the temptation to put yourself on a pedestal and call yourself the savior of your customers. As a result, all your marketing strategy makes you the star in the movie.
But you’re not. As natural as it feels to be the protagonist, it’s not the best strategy for your business. You want to be the guide. Your customer is the hero and your brand is the one that guides them to achieve success and avoid failure.
Applying this will make a huge difference in your overall marketing strategy.
An Engaging Story
Your potential customers is a character that currently has a problem and meets your brand. Your brand understands them deeply and gives them a plan. It calls them to action, results in success for them and avoids failure. This is the framework of an engaging story, simple but powerful.
Think about movies like The Hunger Games. Katniss Everdeen is a struggling peasant trying to save her district by participating in an annual event where she has to kill the participants of the other districts to win. She is assigned a guide, Haymitch Abernathy, who gives her a plan that calls her to action and helps her win the games. This way she is able to save the people she loves and avoid the tragedy of losing.
The reason the movie succeeds is because audiences identify with Katniss–not with Haymitch. Similarly, buyers need to feel that they identify as the protagonist of your brand story to fully engage with it. Everything must be about them–not about you.
Solutions to a Problem
As a brand you should be their guide. You give your struggling customer an effective plan that leads them to victory. For you to be a good guide, it is essential for you to know your potential customers very well and know exactly where they’re struggling with. How is this affecting their life? How does taking action (using your product) or not affect them internally and externally?
If you know these things, you can show them how your plan will actually lead them to where they want to go. If you appeal to your customers’ emotions, needs, and wants, you can lead them to your solution.
Turns out the same applies to sales.A salesperson’s job is to discover the prospect’s pain points and give them a plan to avoid failure.
In conclusion, you have to create a whole marketing plan based on your brand story, make sure every marketing collateral, ads, and website is congruent to your “story.” You must always keep the characters clear, and speak to your customers as a guide, bringing them to your product and leading them to success.
