 Whatever it is that you're selling, your customer is the hero, not your brand. Welcome to the We Are Slam show where you'll learn marketing agency insights, best practices, and ideas to help your business grow. My name is Tyler Kelly. I'm the co-founder and chief strategist at Slam Agency. We are a full service boutique digital marketing agency really designed to help you captivate, motivate, and inspire people to action through advertising. And I'm really excited because today I'm gonna introduce you to another one of my favorite books when it comes to copywriting, storytelling, developing a message. So last week we talked about the importance of understanding the sales process as a marketing professional in order to level up your marketing expertise, you really have to understand sales, why people buy, what motivates people, drives people to action. If you can understand this, then you can really level up your marketing game. Now, if you're a marketing director that's just always done marketing, then maybe you haven't had a chance to get out in the field. This is obviously the best place to start, to understand how your sales organization operates, the challenges that they face, you know, what are those conversations that they're having with people in real life. You really should absorb these types of things. That way you understand, you know, number one, where your sales team's coming from. And number two, what are the types of messages? What are the types of responses that help people get just a little bit further along in that buying cycle? Without understanding the literal nuts and bolts of your organization's sales process, then it's gonna be really hard to market. You know, no longer are we in a day and age where marketing can be here and sales can be here. We really have to bring these two together, break down these silos, bring these two together, align them so that marketing and sales are both operating, you know, with similar KPIs, with the same end goals in mind. Working as a unit and that's how we can get more done. And so, you know, when it comes to understanding sales as a marketing professional, the first way to do that is to just, you know, get on the ground with your people and just absorb the same way that, you know, in branding, we would absorb the attitudes, interests, opinions of the brand, the voice of the brand and we would work that out through a branding guidelines in the same way you should really absorb all that there is to absorb when it comes to sales. Now the second best way to kind of get this into your way of thinking as a marketing professional is to read copywriting books, okay? Copywriters, the best copywriters, the copywriters, the legends of years past, these are the people that understood human behavior, understood how to get people to buy. Now what I really like about copywriting books is that they combine, you know, all of these important elements, the user psychology, buyer psychology, a thorough understanding of the sales process and then putting those things together, how to craft a message that drives results. And so really the best copywriting books put all of these things together and you're able to get all of this knowledge in one book, okay? Otherwise you're reading books on psychology, on why people buy, you're learning about the sales process, reading books on just sales process and buying cycle and these types of things and then, you know, messaging and storytelling but the best copywriting books are gonna combine those three elements. And so last week I introduced one of my favorites, Scientific Advertising. This week I'm gonna introduce another favorite. This one is Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller, New York Times bestseller. This guy runs an agency at a Nashville, Tennessee, has had some pretty high profile clients over the years but I think now he's primarily focused on driving this methodology into the marketplace, helping agencies, helping small businesses kind of get up to par when it comes to story brand and the story brand framework. Now in this book he talks about how companies waste an enormous amount of money for primarily two reasons. Number one is that they just fell to focus on what matters to buyers, right? And what matters to buyers, what really when it comes down to it the reason people buy is because they're either looking to survive or thrive. They're looking for a transformation. They're looking for your product or service to take them from their pain point to success. And in reality we waste a lot of money because we don't get to the point and we don't tell users, tell our buyers potential prospects what's in it for them. And specifically what's in it for them is like what's that result? What is that after effect after you've utilized my product or service? The second way that as a company you can waste a lot of money is just being confusing. You know we've heard this Barry Schwartz talks about analysis paralysis and this whole idea that the more confusing your offer is, the more likely it is that you're just gonna run people off. I mean you have to keep things simple and the beauty of a storytelling framework is that it allows you to keep things simple and really that's what this book is all about. It gives you a framework that you can use. And by framework I mean it's a fill in the blank framework that if you just take it step by step you're guaranteed to not be so confusing in your offer and your pitch. And you're really gonna focus on the things that matter to buyers which is surviving, thriving, that personal transformation taking them from that pain point to that success. That's what a framework allows you to do. Now in previous episodes we've dug into frameworks and we've introduced several different types of options when it comes to frameworks. And Donald will tell you himself that he didn't invent this. His framework is based off of the narrative framework, the narrative storytelling method which has been with us as human beings for thousands of years. And what he's done is he's just taken this, put it into this book in a way that you as a business owner, as a marketing professional can understand and utilize and put into practice right away. So I wanna give you some highlights. And in the show notes we will definitely have a link to this book so that you can purchase it and we're available should you have any questions like on this practice, this framework methodology. So building a story brand. So when we think about the framework itself, the story brand framework, it's really quite simple. Here's how Donald puts it. A character has a problem, meets a guide who gives them a plan, calls them to action and that action either results in failure or success. It's the SB7, there's seven steps to it. It's super simple. The way I like to think about it is number one, you have to identify, you have to in any sort of marketing or advertising you have to allow your prospect, your target market to self-identify, okay? So when I say self-identify, that means that if you're developing a radio commercial, if you're developing an online video, if you're writing website copy, right there front and center, your character has to identify themselves and the best way to do that is by identifying themselves with the problem. And so for instance, if you're a marketing director who is struggling with trying to make sense of digital marketing and how best to utilize digital for your goals this year. If you can say yes to that and that's the first thing that I lead with and you say yes to that, then you've identified yourself as a potential customer for what we're offering in that case. And so really a character who has a problem, these first two steps is that self-identification. It's a question that you can ask this person, this persona, this customer avatar of yours, this customer segment. It's a question that you can ask them that they say yes to. So for instance, if you run a barbershop, it could be as simple as is your hair a little too long? Are you looking forward to getting a haircut? If you can say yes to that, then boom, the story has begun. What's next meets a guide. Now here's the thing, a lot of times when we think of storytelling, especially as marketing professionals, we think that we're the subject of the story and that's actually not true. We are not the hero of the story. Every good story, that hero is on a journey. And for us, our hero is the customer. So the customer is the hero. Whatever it is that you're selling, your customer is the hero, not your brand. Where does the brand come in? Where do you come in? You come in as the guide. You're the guide that's gonna take them from that pain point, whatever problem it is that you identified, you're gonna take them from that before state as Ryan Dice likes to say. That before state. And then you're going to give them a plan that says, okay, you do this, you do this, you do this, and you're gonna achieve the success that you're looking for. You're gonna have this transformation. You're gonna survive. You're gonna thrive if you do these things. That's a guide who gives them a plan. Once you've done those two steps, then you gotta call to action. If you don't ask, you don't receive. So let's call this person to action, okay? How do you do that? Maybe in a radio commercial? What might you say? You might say, dial this number. Visit www.mysolution.com or whatever that may be. You gotta call them to action. You gotta say, do this. If you do this, you'll receive this. If you don't, you won't. And that's the final step. It's because this call to action, if they don't take it, you have to kind of point them back to where they are and say, listen, if you don't visit www.mysolution.com, then you're gonna be exactly where you were yesterday. You're still gonna have this confusion, this pain point. It's gonna be with you. But if you visit www.mysolution.com and sign up and follow through with the steps and take action on that plan, then you're gonna have this success that you're gonna survive. You're gonna thrive. You're gonna see transformation for your brand as an individual. You're gonna realize success. And that's the key. A character who has a problem meets a guide who gives them a plan that calls them to action, hinting at that failure that you're avoiding, reminding them of that and then pointing them to success. That is how in Seven Simple Steps, this book, Donald Miller says that you can clarify your message so that customers will listen, okay? So like I said, we're gonna leave a copy of this, or I'm sorry, we're gonna leave a link to this in the show notes for today's show and read this. I mean, this is great storytelling. This is the type of book that will help you grow your business. If you are an entrepreneur, if you're a startup founder, if you're a foundation director, like it doesn't matter, storytelling is key. We have been telling stories for thousands of years as human beings and storytelling, it's really, at the end of the day, it's copywriting and Donald is an amazing copywriter. So when I think of copywriting books that can level up your marketing game, this is one of them, okay? So check it out. Thank you for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's show or if you've read this book, let me know in the comments. I'd be excited to hear who's already read this and what you got out of it. If you read it, make sure to tell me what you got out of it. And if you haven't read it, but you're gonna order it, let me know that too, because I wanna follow up with you and figure out what were some of your takeaways from this book. At the back of the book is a lot of really actionable, practical things that you can do with your website. And so there's a lot here. There's a lot here for marketing professionals and for business owners. So I highly recommend it. Again, building a story brand by Donald Miller. 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