#90: All Marketing Has to Follow these Four Rules

0:00How do you know if the message that you're creating for your company is going to work? We all sit around in a boardroom, we talk about a new tagline, and usually it's a gut instinct kind of thing. You write a few ideas on the whiteboard and you circle the ones that everybody in that room likes the best. That is not a system. You actually need rules, and you need rules to understand if that tagline is going to work, if that elevator pitch is going to work, if our telling our story this way is going to work. You can actually predict whether or not the words you use to describe your brand and your product are going to work, but only if you know the four rules of messaging.

0:38I've written between 15 and 18 books. All that time, looking at a blinking cursor, wondering what to say next, has trained my mind to communicate effectively and efficiently. I've been creating messaging for a decade now for all sorts of companies and it all came down to you know what Every tagline that I've ever written that worked every elevator pitch that I've ever written at work actually obeyed Certain rules and I sat down I tried to figure out of the course of a long time of what those rules actually are So what you're gonna get in this episode are the four rules of messaging that are going to save you from having to write 15 books in order to train your mind to think more effectively and efficiently.

1:23You're listening to the StoryBrand podcast based on Donald Miller's best-selling book, Building a StoryBrand. The StoryBrand framework is made up of seven key elements, all of them anchored in one powerful idea. Your customer is the hero, and you are their guide. Each week on the podcast, you'll get exactly what you need to craft clear messaging that connects with more customers and grows your business. Now let's dive in with your host, Donald Miller.

1:55Well, here is rule number one. Every tagline, every elevator pitch, everything you write from your brand needs to obey these four rules. Rule number one is this, make it zero cognitive load. The idea is don't make people think. The more you make people think, the harder it's going to be for them to understand how your product can solve their problem. What is cognitive load? Cognitive load is how hard it is for me to figure out what in the heck you're saying. Here's the problem. The problem is what Leela Fever calls the curse of knowledge. And the curse of knowledge is when you project your knowledge about your brand or your product onto your customer, and you end up talking over their head.

2:36You try to explain too much. You use elusive language, all that kind of stuff. This is so easy to do. Listen, on my way home today from the studio, I'm going to drive by a bank, and the bank has signage all over it, posters in every window. The posters usually have a guy hiking in the woods or something, and it says, checking accounts for every win. Checking accounts for every win. What in God's name does that mean? I don't know what that means. That is what some ad agency probably charged$100 ,000 for that line and to design those posters, and this is what we're going to do from here on. We're going to give everybody checking accounts for every win.

3:20Now, think of the cognitive load of trying to figure out what that means. Like, if I want a cakewalk, am I going to take my cake and put it in a checking account? What in the world are you talking about? Like, what win are you talking about? How is a win associated with a checking account? If you would have just said, we don't nickel and dime our customers, free checking for life, that is a zero cognitive load message. If it even says, open a second checking account today, and, you know, that tells me what to do. Your kid just turned 18, question mark, open a checking account here. Zero cognitive load, tells me what to do.

3:57The problem is that these ad agencies can't justify getting paid$100 ,000 or$500 ,000 or$1 million for something that just says it plainly. They believe they have to be creative. And I'm telling you, the more creative you are, the more artful you are in your creation of messaging, the higher the cognitive load and the less orders get placed. You say, Don, not true. Nike went with Just Do It, Coca-Cola went Have a Coke and a Smile. Those are high cognitive load messages. That is true. Those are also household name brands. The public understands what a Coca-Cola is. They understand what a Nike shoe is.

4:42Nobody knows what you are. So if you have a multi-billion dollar brand that everybody understands and has experienced, then you can actually make people feel something and associate that feeling with your brand. If you have a smaller brand and you try to use that tactic, it is a complete and total waste of money because nobody knows who you are and what you offer. Your message has to be zero cognitive load. Rule number one, go zero cognitive load. Rule number two, link it to survival. The one thing that motivates human behavior is the desire to survive. What do I mean by the desire to survive?

5:21I mean the desire to get ahead. I mean the desire to save money, make money, live longer, get a better night's sleep, feel better, connect with other human beings, feel good about myself. Anything that we would commonly say is getting ahead in life or experiencing a better life is actually a survival cue. And so the human brain is designed to advance every person. If my brain is designed to advance me somehow in life, in some way to benefit me, and it's all linked to survival. The human brain wants to buy only one thing, survival. It wants to spend its money on one thing, survival. Therefore, if I cannot link your product to the survival of myself, I'm going to have a hard time understanding why that product matters.

6:14So you've got to link it to survival, winning, not losing, protecting yourself from threats, all those kinds of things. You want to ask yourself about every message. What's the survival link here? Human beings, and listen carefully, they want to buy survival assets. They want to be protected from survival liabilities. So you've got to link your product to survival and you do that with your messaging. Do you ever wonder why some marketing instantly grabs your attention while other marketing you just ignore? It's not about luck. It's not about a bigger budget. It's that the marketing that works actually follows just a few simple principles that actually makes it easier to understand, makes it memorable, and most important, impossible to overlook.

6:59That's why StoryBrand has a free guide, the four rules of messaging that will teach you those principles. In just a few minutes, you'll have a simple framework for evaluating every message you create from your website and emails to your ads and sales conversations. Download your free copy of those four rules today by clicking the link in the show notes. Rule number three, make it memorable and repeatable. Can I repeat your message after hearing it? Can I repeat your message after hearing it? We work with one client, wonderful people at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and their mantra, it wasn't even a mantra, it was more like a mission statement.

7:40It was something like, act wisely, live justly as Christ's agents of renewal in the world. I mean, can you repeat that? I mean, no, it's not memorable. It's not repeatable. It is extremely high cognitive load, and it is not linked to my survival, at least not directly. I don't even know if Jesus understands what that means. I think he's up in heaven flipping through his Bible trying to figure out what an agent of renewal is. I think you actually have to have a degree from Calvin University to understand Calvin University's mission statement. We, working with them, changed it to where Christians launched their careers.

8:17Where Christians launched their careers. Now think about how low cognitive load is, that message is, how linked it is to survival, and how much more memorable and repeatable is, you can put it on billboards all over Michigan, and it makes a lot of sense. If you give your tagline or elevator pitch to somebody and they can repeat it right back to you word for word, you're onto something. If they can repeat it back to you the next day, you're even further onto something. And here's what happens when you actually make it memorable and repeatable. Word of mouth advertising begins. You have given people the words to use to tell their friends about your product.

8:58That is free marketing, free messaging, free advertising. All right, finally, make the customer the hero. If you know me at all, if you've read Building a Story Brand, then you know what I mean by make the customer the hero. The story of your brand, of your products, needs to be about the customer, not about you. We all want to talk about our business and tell the story of our business. It doesn't work. your customer is identifying as somebody who has a problem and needs a solution to that problem. You are then the guide who steps in and says, hey, I feel for you. We actually really care about people who have this problem, and we've come up with a solution.

9:36The solution costs $29.95. Here it is. That'll solve your problem. That is a hero in a hole who meets a guide who empathizes with their problem, offers them a product that helps them get out of the hole, and changes their life forever. My whole book, Building a Story Brand, it's sold over a million copies, is all about that idea, making the customer the hero. So what you want to do is when you ask yourself with your current messaging, how much of my messaging is talking about me? I, we, us, rather than the customer, you, them. How much of your messaging is focused on your customer being the hero versus you being the hero.

10:18If your actual messaging obeys the four rules of messaging, that is make it zero cognitive load, link it to survival, make it memorable and repeatable, and make the customer the hero, that messaging is going to work better. You've heard me say it before, and I'm not exaggerating. We have so many clients who just changed their messaging to obey the four rules and saw massive increases in overall revenue. Why? People could finally understand why they needed that product. They could understand that you have a solution to their problem. They didn't have to think to understand it. They were able to tell their friends about it.

11:01And so the brand grows. Obey the four rules of messaging. Listen, if you want to know more about how to create clear messaging, I have a canvas that you or your team can go through to clarify your message. It's all on one page. Just go to messagingcanvas.com, download the StoryBrand Messaging Canvas right now, and use it to understand the four rules. Write your tagline, elevator pitch, brand story, and create a marketing map that makes sense. Your entire messaging and marketing campaign will finally be visible on one sheet of paper. Just go to messagingcanvas.com. Bottom line is this. The reason your messaging isn't working is because you are disobeying one, two, three, or all four of the four rules of messaging.

11:49Stop it. Obey the four rules of messaging and your brand is finally going to get the attention that it deserves. Thanks for listening to the StoryBrand podcast. No matter where you are in your marketing and messaging journey, get the tools, the training, and the support you need to start clarifying that message at storybrand.com. And don't forget to follow and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode. And if you're watching on YouTube, hit that subscribe button and then leave a comment letting us know what resonated with you and what we can impact to help your business grow in a future episode.

12:22Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next week.