The mistake killing your marketing is one you don't know you're making.
How They Claimed It - Vol 03
Hey Revenue Writers,
I rebuilt my adjusting company’s website using StoryBrand.
Before I did, I thought the site was solid.
Clear offer.
Good story.
Knew my audience.
Then I read the book and wanted to delete everything.
My website was about me.
My credentials.
My story.
My team.
My process.
My history.
Page after page of me auditioning for a role, which comes across as begging to buy.
The customer showed up looking for help and found a guy talking about himself.
StoryBrand has a name for this. It’s called making yourself the hero. And almost every business does it without knowing.
The fix sounds simple.
The customer is the hero.
You are the guide.
Your job is to hand them a plan and get out of the way.
I rewrote the whole thing. Led with their problem. Positioned myself as the person who’d already solved it.
Made the next step obvious.
It worked.
StoryBrand became one of my favorite business books of all time. Still is.
And here’s the thing I noticed every time someone else tried to teach storytelling in marketing after that.
I compared them to Donald Miller.
Every single time.
Not because they weren’t good. Some of them were brilliant. But Donald Miller had become the measuring stick.
When you’re the measuring stick nobody else wins.
That’s not luck. That’s Category Publishing.
He did three things really well.
Named It
He named it. Not “story marketing.” Not “brand narrative.” StoryBrand. Two words anyone can remember, explain, and search for. Simple enough to own. Specific enough that you instantly knew whether you had it or not.
Framed It
He framed it.
The SB7 Framework. Seven parts.
A character.
A problem.
A guide.
A plan.
A call to action.
Success
Failure.
He took something that existed since the beginning of time (story telling) and made it teachable on a Monday morning. The framework is what made it spreadable without him being in the room.
Claimed It
He claimed it. And here’s the part people don’t always know.
The book wasn’t the product. The book was the door.
He did what most of us should do, he used his book to get high quality leads.
Every person who finished Building a StoryBrand closed it knowing exactly what they needed next. A certified Guide. A two-day workshop in Nashville. A BrandScript review. The certification empire, the conference, Business Made Simple, all of it flowed from one book that made you feel the gap and made the next step obvious.
Before the book he wrote memoirs.
After the book he was the person you called when your message wasn’t working.
One book.
One framework.
One name.
The person who writes the book on a category gets remembered as the leader of it.
That’s the Category Publishing Law.
Question is what unique process do you have?
What problems have you solved that you could establish a new way of thinking… a new category or subcategory that would allow you to stop competing?
Most of us have these things. We know we are different than other competition, but its hard for us to figure out how to stand out.
If you need help working through what makes you unique.
What your category is and could be.
If you need help getting your book written and published so you own that category and way of thinking…
That is what I help people do.
I’d love to help.
Your Coach,
Chris Stanley
P.S. Who should Vol. 04 be? Hit reply.