Growing your business is the main idea of our story here at 7 Story Marketing. Helping ... Based on my research, how can
Start with a Great Brand Story Everyone loves a great story. Stories have been told and written for thousands of years because they bring meaning, they pass on instruction, and they help to guide future generations. The interesting thing about stories is they all have exactly seven elements in common. These seven elements don’t necessarily guarantee a great story, but every great story contains these seven elements. The greatness in the story comes from its connection. It comes from the reader identifying herself with the hero, empathizing with the problem, and dreaming about the outcome. Connection is the greatest idea in life, in relationships, and in business. If we can connect with our audience in a meaningful way, with authenticity, and then see things through … all else will follow. This connection is the reason that story marketing is important. Now, as we mentioned, every great story contains seven elements - characters, a theme, a plot, a point of view, a setting, a conflict, and a specific tone. But what do these have to do with business? Just like a great novel, a great brand story contains all of these elements. If you can identify them, and write a cohesive story about your business that relates directly to your audience, everyone wins. Let’s take a moment to understand these elements and the ways in which they relate to business. Listed below is each story element and its business counterpart. As you read through these, think about your business and your customers.
1. Characters Characters are the people involved in the story. It’s important to note that in the world of local business, as Donald Miller would say, the customer is the hero, and the business or business owner is the guide. In other words, your ideal customer is the main character and you, as the business owner, are the lead supporting character. The main point of the character element is to discover who your customer really is. In other words, develop the main character in the story (your ideal customer). What are they like, and what do they like to do? More on this later.
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2. The Theme Though critical, the theme is often misunderstood. The theme is the “why.” It’s the differentiator between you and everybody else. It’s your Unique Selling Proposition. It’s the reason your clients do business with you. It’s the intangible, the X-factor, the thing that separates you from your competition.
3. Plot Simply put, the plot is the order of events. It’s the place, time, and the manner in which the main character (your customer) finds you, and it’s the sequence of events that happens next. This is the hero’s (customer's) journey. Interestingly, most customers tend to follow a similar journey. We’ll discuss this more later.
4. Point of View Who’s telling the story? Even if you aren’t intentionally telling a story, you can guarantee that one is being written – created either by your customer or your team, if not by you. The great thing about the Point of View element is that you have the opportunity to tell the story. If you don’t tell a story, your competitors will. It’s important to keep in mind that your customer is looking for the story that best connects with her.
5. Setting All the little details of a story are what make up the setting. It’s the logistics of the story - where, when and what takes place. Some businesses will refer to this as their “marketplace” or their “demographics.” The setting is sometimes so obvious, that we miss it completely. You know where your customers are coming from, right? Right? Finding out where your customers are actually coming from can be pretty eye-opening. But finding out where they could come from is downright exciting.
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6. Conflict Conflict is the problem that the hero (your customer) is being led through with the help of the guide (you). You wouldn’t be in business if your customers didn’t have a problem. Your customers need or want something, and you have it. When considering the conflict, it’s important to remember that it’s your job to be your customers’ guide; not to be their hero.
7. Tone Perhaps the most difficult element to define, tone is the specific way you communicate with your customers in person, online, in broadcasts, and in print. Tone is the overall feeling of your business and the content your business produces. Communication is critical because that’s the way we connect with our customers and clients. Speaking industry lingo, or heady sales jargon will turn a potential buyer off. Instead of expecting your customer to speak your language, you instead must get to know your customer (the hero) and learn how to get through to her.
So, now that you have at least a small handle on the seven elements, let’s write your story! We’ll start by identifying what each of these elements means for your business. The good news is - the story already exists. You simply need to write it down so that you can pass it on to your clients, to your team, and to the marketplace. Take a moment, get a pen and paper, then print out the following pages. Grab a cup of coffee, and let’s get started. This is the really important stuff. Go ahead and fire up that coffee pot, we’ll wait right here.
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Wow, that smells delicious! Okay, now that you’ve printed this out, let’s talk about why it’s important. Writing your brand story will give you, your team, and your customers something to talk about - something to guide the conversation. And the more people who hear your story, the more it will connect with the right people (your Ideal Client), and the more your business will grow. Growing your business is the main idea of our story here at 7 Story Marketing. Helping local businesses is our mission and our purpose. It’s why we get out of bed in the morning, and it’s what we stay up late thinking about. Why do we want to help you succeed? Because if you win, we win, and our whole community becomes a better place to live, work and play. In the same way that there are seven elements to every story, we’ve also identified seven elements to the marketing process. In fact, we’ve created a proprietary framework that we use to help us through this process, and we’re going to give it to you here, then walk through it together.
Now, to begin your story, we’ll need to start with some research, and then move on to strategy. This is the most important part of the process. We’ll be working with your story throughout each step in the marketing process, and research will give us everything we need going forward. To give you some context, we’ll include some examples of how this process works in real life. Even though the details change, the principles stay the same.
Research In the research phase of our process, we need to ask some questions. And to answer those questions, we’ll talk to you, the business owner, a few of the company’s best clients, key staff and, of course, consult the source of all digital wisdom – the mighty Google. Getting the right answers means asking the right questions. Here are a few examples of key Discovery Questions: ● Who are my best clients and how are they finding me? ● What are some other ways they could find me? ● How are clients finding my competitors? Click Here for a More Complete List of Discovery Questions
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The reason we do the research first is so that we can gather information without forming any bias. We want to accumulate all the data that we can without trying to analyze or interpret that data…just yet, anyway. Here’s an exercise – imagine looking at your business through the eyes of your best customers. How do your best customers view your business? Walk yourself through the process of trying to find a business like yours. Think through the things your best customers would expect from a business like yours, and also consider what your best customers like the most about your business. How would you start? The end goal of the research phase is to have created a list of the following: ● ● ● ● ● ●
Top clients Top products or services Your specific market area (details – name cities and specific neighborhoods, if applicable) Your industry or category (list all of the possible names, restaurant, casual fine dining, Mexican restaurant, etc.) Your competitors – listed by name and location Keywords or keyword phrases your customers search to find you online
Once this research is completed, it’s time to start looking at the relationships between all of those items. In those relationships, you will begin to form your Strategy. Click Here for a Sample of Completed Research Findings
Strategy The strategy phase will answer these key questions: 1. 2. 3. 4.
What are my business goals? Where am I now in relation to my goals? Based on my research, how can I get closer to my goals? If having more leads will get me more customers, and having more customers will increase my revenue, how can I get more leads? 5. More importantly, how can I get more leads that are like the rest of my best customers? As we mentioned above, research and strategy are the most important parts of the marketing process. But the strategy phase is also the most difficult and most laborintensive phase. This is the vital step in which all of the vague, seemingly unrelated pieces of data come together to form the core of your marketing. Though it isn’t easy coming up with a clear strategy, once it’s done, the rest of your marketing will be a breeze! Think about it - imagine sending a complete outline of your marketing strategy to a web developer. He would be able to build the perfect website
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for you because he already understands the purpose and direction of your business, as well as the role your new website needs to play in the process. In the strategy phase you want to accomplish three things: 1. Develop your Ideal Client Profile. 2. Write your Core Story, which includes a detailed marketing message and your Unique Selling Proposition (your ideal business profile). 3. Map out the Buying Journey that your potential customers will take to become your new customers, and ultimately referring customers. Your Ideal Client Profile is important because once we figure out who your ideal clients are, we can determine how they buy and also around which marketing channels they tend to congregate. For example, if you determine through research that your ideal clients don’t spend much time on Facebook, then there’s no real reason for you to be there. However, if you determine that your ideal client is a 27-year-old suburban woman who is very present on Facebook, you better be there! Developing your Core Story is foundational to the next few steps in the process as it will help drive the messaging and goals for each marketing channel. We’ll circle back around to this in a few minutes. Knowing the Buying Journey that your potential customers will take to become new and referring customers will give you an edge at each step of the process. You’ll be able to plainly see where they’ve been, and you’ll be able to usher them on to their next step. After putting together research and developing strategies for dozens of local businesses, we noticed a clear pattern. Most potential customers will follow a Buying Journey that looks like this:
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Here’s a little about what each stage in the Buying Journey Means:
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Attract (Know) – Something (a sign, word of mouth, a mailer, social media, or broadcast ad) makes a Potential Client aware of your company or service.
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Capture (Like) – The Potential Client likes what you have to offer, and a loose relationship starts. This step in the process can occur in person with the exchange of business cards, it could occur online with an email opt-in, or it could even occur at an event when the Potential Client signs up for something. By giving you their information, they’re saying, “Hey, I like you!”
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Nurture (Trust) – Unfortunately, this is where many relationships tragically end. Unless the Potential Client pursues the company, nothing else can happen and the relationship will fizzle out. With that in mind, this is where you have an opportunity to set yourself apart from everyone else by nurturing that relationship instead of letting it end. For example, sending emails to follow up will add value to the relationship and let your Potential Client know that you care about her. Likewise, you could meet in person for lunch, or maybe send a handwritten card that lets her know you were glad to have met her. Nurturing the relationship builds trust; and trust is the most valuable asset you can have. After all, a person will only do business with a company (or a business owner) whom they trust.
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Convert (Try) – As you build trust, it’s important to give your potential clients an opportunity to “try” out your products or services. Many times, this comes in the form of free or inexpensive sample, a guaranteed offer, a trial period, or a money-back promise. This way, your Potential Client gets a chance to experience what it’s like to work with you or to buy from you while also having little to no risk on their part. This is the perfect transition to convert a Potential Client into a New Client.
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Deliver (Buy) – Once the Prospective Client become a New Client, you have a critical obligation to over-deliver on the promises you’ve made along the way. Many businesses would consider a relationship complete once the sale is closed, but really the relationship is just beginning! This is your opportunity to impress your New Client so much that they buy from you again at a higher level, and even … (wait for it) … present you with The Holy Grail of Marketing (we’ll get to that in a minute).
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Upsell/Resell/Repeat – As you continue to add value to your New Client, there must be opportunities for him or her to do more business with you. If there are not any different ways for your relationship to go to “the next level,” build some into your business. In other words, it’s vitally important that you find a way to add value. Remember, these people already know you, like you, and trust you. The natural next step is that your New Clients will want to use you to help them 8
even more. You can do this through value-added services and products that genuinely help your New Clients. •
Referrals – These priceless relics are The Holy Grail of Marketing! When you make a real connection with a client all the way through the buying process, they can become one of your greatest assets by referring more business to you. These new Referred Clients actually bypass the Attract and Capture steps of the Buying Path because they already trust you based upon the recommendation of their peers. What does that mean? It means that you didn’t have to spend a dime on attracting or capturing these Referred Clients, and you also didn’t have to fight against the competition to gain their business. Referrals really are the Holy Grail of Marketing because your margins on referred business are MUCH higher than any other business that comes in. The other great thing about Referring Clients is that they will replicate themselves. If you’ve put in the work to turn a New Client into a Referring Client, they will return the favor by turning their peers into New Clients, and the process repeats itself!
With these three concepts outlined – your Ideal Client Profile, your Core Story, and your customer’s Buying Journey, you’ll be able to make better decisions about your marketing channels, tactics, branding (design), and more. Once your strategy is developed, you can use it to decide what tactics to use.
Go ahead and get that pen and paper ready. Take a moment to complete your marketing strategy. Identify a few customers or clients who you enjoy working with, who love you, and who are profitable. Think about all the things these customers or clients might have in common. Think about their journey. Think about how you can connect with them on a deep level. Once you have this information ready, it’s time to move on to the different ways we can reach these people.
Click Here for a Sample of a Completed Marketing Strategy
…but go ahead and grab another cup of coffee. You’ve earned it, champ! Next, onto -
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Tactics In this step of the process, you’ll simply need to decide how best to get your Potential Clients to become New Clients and, eventually, to become Referring Clients. Essentially, you need to work backward through the Buying Path. Tactics begin in the Attract phase of the Buying Journey. Ask yourself this question – “Where is the most likely place for my Ideal Clients to find me?” Once you have a theory about where your Ideal Clients are hanging out, test that theory. Take some time to walk back through the journey of one of your existing clients. What was his journey like? How did he hear about you? Can the beginning of his journey be replicated on purpose? Where are similar clients likely to come from? Can you have a strong presence there? How can you move them from one stage to the next? For example, we know a painting company who realized most of their best work was coming from a few specific general contractors and interior designers. Though they originally acquired work from a particular job bidding website, the great relationships with those contractors and designers flourished while they were working on the jobs. With this information, the painting company decided to make sure that the owner showed up at every site, that their employees always had business cards, and that they purchased an optimized presence on the dominant job bidding website for contractors. Because they implemented the proper tactics, their business has doubled three years in a row. Another way to define a tactic is a Marketing Channel. While there are dozens of Marketing Channels available, determining the proper ones for your business comes down to one thing - where does your ideal client find your kind of business? Below is a list of 27 Marketing Channel categories to help you get you started with some ideas. These are some of the most common channels: 1. Television 2. Radio 3. Magazines/Newspapers 4. Blog/Website 5. Mail 6. Email 7. Webinars 8. Podcasts 9. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) 10. Social Media 11. Trade Shows and Events 12. Speaking/Presentations
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13. Books/eBooks 14. Video 15. In-Person Marketing 16. Billboards 17. Google AdWords 18. Word-of-Mouth 19. Groups/Online Communities 20. Syndicated Articles 21. Joint Ventures 22. Display Advertising 23. Text Message or SMS Marketing 24. Mobile Marketing/Apps 25. Content Marketing 26. News-Jacking 27. PR Campaigns Use a marketing matrix to begin to put together the details of your Marketing Plan. Your marketing matrix should look like this and answer these questions – ● Which Marketing Channels will I use to move clients from one phase to the next? ● How often will I use those Marketing Channels? ● What results should I expect from those Marketing Channels? After these questions are answered, the next step in the Tactics phase is to construct a Marketing Calendar.
…pause for effect…
BUT DON’T WORRY! Creating a Marketing Calendar isn’t nearly as intimidating as it sounds. You’re simply going to organize a one-year calendar of Marketing Content that you’ll deliver through the Marketing Channels you’ve chosen. The Marketing Calendar is important so that everything you put out will work together as opposed to contradict. Also, whenever possible, it’s a good idea to create regular (think monthly or seasonal) themes that can be updated if needed. For example, let’s say your business is an organic grocery store. Based upon your research and strategy, you’ve determined that Facebook is a useful Marketing Channel through which to attract your Ideal Clients. Once you’ve set some budgets for things like pay-per-click ads, graphic design, and copywriting, you’ll need to decide what Marketing Content you want to deliver and when you want to deliver it.
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In June, for instance, your Marketing Content may be related to a sale on cookout foods like uncured hotdogs and grass-fed beef hamburger patties. When the weather gets a little cooler, you may want to sell a bunch of hot cocoa and organic cookies. Alternatively, if you get a great deal on a few cases of lemons from your produce supplier, maybe you should share a mint lemonade recipe on your Facebook page and then let your audience know they can get the ingredients at your store for a great price. Once you’ve got your tactics nailed down, you’ll need to make sure your Marketing Content can be conveyed along with your unique logo, branding, and design. The optimal next step here is to have a graphic designer turn your Marketing Message into branding that not only appeals to your Ideal Clients, but can also be conveyed consistently across all of your Marketing Channels. This is important to your Marketing Plan because it conveys a sense of composure and authority to your audience. Here’s the dish on design.
Design At this phase, it’s time to turn your business and your message into a Brand. In other words, what does your Core Story actually look like? Now that you’ve established your Ideal Client, how can you convey a feeling they would relate to through your logo and branding? You want to have something visually appealing, but not something so complex that a person couldn’t take it all in during the 5 seconds they’re passing a billboard. It may sound a bit daunting, but the good news is there are people who do this for a living! (Really, we know a bunch of these people.) Have a professional graphic designer turn your Core Story into five distinct visual representations of your business. Fewer than five won’t be enough variety, and more than five is just too many to keep track of. Graphic design is equal parts art and psychology. With that in mind, it’s important to allow your designer to explain to you why she designed the way she did. Remember, what you like isn’t so important. What’s important is how much your Ideal Client likes your design and that it conveys your message. If you already have a cool brand, you have to be willing to update it or even change it completely to match your Core Story. Now, if you already have HUGE brand recognition, it’s okay to just refresh or apply a new treatment to your branding. Otherwise, in the immortal words of the great philosopher Princess Elsa, “Let it go.”
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Now, let’s review. You’ve done your Research, and it’s led you to a Strategy. You’ve chosen Tactics that will reach your Ideal Clients and you have compelling Design (along with colors, themes, and context) to represent your brand and encourage them to act upon your Marketing Message. What’s next? It’s time to put it to action!
Feel free to grab another cup of coffee. Do you want another cup of coffee? We’re gonna get another coffee. You should have another coffee. Coffee is great. Coffee.
Implementation With your Marketing Plan solidly in place it’s time to, like the shoe company says - Just Do It. This is the most exciting part of the process because it’s here that the real action starts! Begin setting up each of your Marketing Channels, but set yourself up to win – don’t be afraid to get help. Remember that many Marketing Channels have industry professionals that will help you get more out of your marketing than you ever could on your own. Find a contact for the Marketing Channel you’ve decided to use and walk that person through your Research, Strategy, Tactics, and Design. Make sure they really understand (and care to understand) your business. If he doesn’t seem like he’s got your success on his mind, hire someone else. Let them know you’ll be coordinating your marketing efforts, and help them understand how your Marketing Plan works. Is this particular Marketing Channel a part of attracting potential clients? Or is this Marketing Channel in place to get you more referrals? Ask the contact for input on how to get the most out of what they do. It’s very important that you stress to any industry professionals you’re dealing with that you want their portion of your marketing strategy to work together with all the rest of it. You should direct your online traffic to offline (vising your store, trying you out, making a phone call, sending in a return postcard, etc.). Likewise, you should drive your offline traffic online (ask them to visit your website, leave a review, download a coupon, etc.). Be sure to ask in what ways they can help with this. Real marketing professionals LOVE to talk about their area of expertise! Marketing lingo gets them excited (if you don’t believe that, call our office sometimes and ask about Website Analytics, Typefaces, Shades of Aqua, or Engagement Rates). Most of the time, you’ll get an education AND you’ll make sure that you’re on the same page. Keep in mind that this step in the process is not the place to go it alone. Often times, you’ll pay the same amount of money to work with a marketing professional as you
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would to deal directly with the various marketing outlets. Marketing professionals usually have great relationships with vendors and marketing outlets that they can leverage for you. And they’ll know how to help you get the most out of your marketing dollars. That being said, don’t just hand off the ball and take a seat on the sidelines. You’ll still want to hold them accountable to test and measure all of the Marketing Content that goes out. Monthly reporting should be a given. If they tell you that a particular Marketing Channel can’t be measured, let them know they need to either find a way to measure it, or find a different client. Everything can be measured with a little creativity.
Measure The intellectual, analytical, older brother of Implementation is Measurement. Not only will monthly reporting help to keep your marketing dollars accountable, monthly reporting will also let you measure the effectiveness of each marketing tactic you’ve chosen. Regular monthly reports will tell you how many times your message went out, the reach of your message, the traffic it produced, and whether it converted to actions taken by Potential Clients. For example, let’s say you’ve decided to run a radio ad. As we mentioned above, online traffic should be driven offline, and offline traffic should be driven online. So the idea would be to drive the radio listeners to an online location upon which you could make them an offer. A web developer could build you a simple Landing Page containing a specific Call-to-Action, and you’d reference that Landing Page in your radio ad. The number of unique visitors to that Landing Page will let you know whether your message is reaching people, and the number of claimed offers will let you know whether you’re reaching the right people. Even if you opt not to construct a Landing Page and instead opt to try and drive traffic right to your door, make sure every person walking in is asked how they heard about you. This sort of conversation is a great way to not only to help with the measurement process, but also to build rapport and better get to know your client base. It’s important to keep in mind that one or two months’ worth of data really isn’t enough to accurately test and measure the effectiveness of each of your Marketing Channels. So once you’ve compiled a few months’ worth of data, review that data with a few people you trust. It’s then time to objectively interpret the measured data you’ve collected and then decide how to improve what you’re doing. In other words, optimize your Marketing Plan.
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Optimize Optimization really only works if you’re having some success with your Marketing Plan. If Marketing Channels aren’t showing you any results, stop using them. If a particular Marketing Channel is working well for you, think about ways you can make it even better - different ads, different phrasing, or even choosing different models for photographs and alternate color schemes in your ad artwork are all ways to communicate your Core Story and Marketing Message in a different way. In the same vein, a professional copywriter could also help you rewrite your scripts, ad copy, etc. By looking at the reports from each month and testing new ways of doing things, you’ll be able to get the most out of your marketing efforts. As you have success, expand your reach by adding new marketing channels.
Time to review! In the beginning of this eBook, you learned about the Seven Elements to every story and how they relate to business: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Characters – You (the guide) and your customer (the hero). The Theme – The “why” behind the “what.” Plot – The order of events, the hero’s (buying) journey. Point of View – Who’s writing the story? And who’s telling it? Setting – The details. Conflict – The problem you solve for the hero. Tone – The way you communicate your story.
You also learned the seven stages of your ideal customer’s Buying Journey: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Attract – Your potential customer knows about you. Capture – Your potential customer likes you. Nurture – Your potential customer trusts you. Convert – Your potential customer becomes a new customer. Deliver – Your new customer buys from you and you “wow” them. Repeat – Your new customer buys more from you or buys again. Refer – The Holy Grail! Your new customer refers potential customers.
Finally, you learned about the seven phases in our Marketing Process: 1. 2. 3. 4.
Research – Objectively gather data. Strategy – Analyze data and make a marketing plan. Tactics – Choose the channels that will best execute the plan. Design – Make sure it represents you and compels potential customers.
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5. Implementation – “Make it so, Number One!” (Star Trek, anybody?) 6. Measurement – See how well the plan came together. 7. Optimization – Make it even better.
This 7-step process of research through optimization isn’t just a theory. It’s the exact method we use here at 7 Story Marketing to produce results for our clients. We’ve tweaked and improved the process over time and we continue to test it constantly. We’ve discovered that all of the local businesses we’ve worked with love and understand our 7-step process, but most are just too busy to do it themselves. In other words, business owners are focused on being great at what they already do. And instead of having to also be focused on trying to become great at marketing, they turn to 7 Story Marketing. So whether you’re looking for a partner to handle all of your marketing, just looking for some assistance in one particular area, or if you just need occasional help with a little section of a marketing campaign, get in touch with us. We’d love to work with you and your team to get you started on the path to even greater success. If it makes sense for us to work together, we’ll both know by the end of our first meeting. We hope you found this eBook to be informative and helpful to your business. It was a labor of love! If you have any questions, don’t be shy.
Get in Touch Take the next step and schedule a meeting to discuss all the ways we can help you meet and exceed your goals. If you have some questions, or need more information please don’t hesitate to get ahold of us. We look forward to growing with you!
239.287.0334 |
[email protected]
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