#95: The List of Deliverables that Every Marketer Should Fill Out

0:00I saw a statistic recently, 90 % of CEOs do not trust their CMO. 90%. There's a problem in the whole marketing world. Senior marketing directors are getting fired. Freelance marketers, we just go through them like crazy. And I'm convinced it's not because they're con artists or they know what they're doing. I think the problem is we can't get visibility into what they're doing. It's just a total mystery. I think we've got to solve that problem. We're going to talk today about how to map out a marketing campaign so that it is visible, so that everybody on the team can speak into it, can actually have ownership of it, and can execute it completely aligned.

0:41This solution has not existed, and now StoryBrand has created a solve for this problem. We need it more than ever because our marketing simply has to work. You're listening to the StoryBrand podcast based on Donald Miller's bestselling 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.

1:23We as Americans see 4 ,000 commercial ads a day. We pay attention to fewer than 100. We have got to figure out how to clarify our message and execute a marketing campaign that people actually pay attention to. The question is, how do we bring attention to our brand and how do we do it in such a way that the entire business is operating on the same page, going the same direction, saying the same thing and aligned on when those pieces of marketing collateral actually fall? The solution to the problem is the StoryBrand messaging canvas. It is an entire messaging and marketing campaign on a single sheet of paper.

2:00I'm not kidding. I'll show it to you in a second. It really works. And if you want one, just go to messagingcanvas.com. They're completely free. The messaging canvas looks like this. At the very top is the name of the campaign, the campaign start date, and the four rules that you're all agreeing to obey as it relates to creating a messaging and marketing campaign. That is make it zero cognitive load, link it to survival, make it memorable and repeatable, and make the customer the hero. I've created a whole other episode just on the four rules, so go back and look at those. I've also created an episode on what's next on the messaging canvas.

2:35It is the five foundational soundbites. These are the soundbites that we are going to use to invite customers into a story and to communicate extremely clearly about our offers so nobody in the market gets confused about why they should buy this. No more making things up. No more being creative. no more of any of that. We need to communicate our offer with crystal clear clarity. Next, we're going to take those five sound bites. We're going to turn them into a tagline, an elevator pitch, and a brand story. We call these the three cornerstone tools. This is the language that we're going to ship onto the header of our website, the subheader.

3:13We're going to ship this as the about us page on our landing page. We're going to put this language into white paper, proposals, pitch decks, sales rep talking points. This is how we're going to talk about our brand. Now, what do we do with all these words? We put them on our campaign map. This is the other part, the right side of the StoryBrand messaging canvas. We're going to outline what sort of curiosity tools we need, what sort of enlightenment tools we need, and what sort of commitment tools we need right there on the same piece of paper. Now, what am I talking about? Curiosity, enlightenment, and commitment.

3:48Well, when we create a marketing campaign, that marketing campaign needs to go through the same three phases that a buyer goes through in order to decide whether or not they're going to buy our product. And those phases are curiosity, enlightenment, and commitment. Curiosity means that we're actually peaking a customer's curiosity. We're getting that attention we need. And you do that with taglines and elevator pitches. You do that by talking incessantly about the problem your customer has because that's what gets their attention, and then you actually position your product as the solution to that problem.

4:23Your elevator pitch and your brand story do that magically, so go back and watch those episodes. But the enlightenment phase, the only way a customer wants to know more about your product and begins the due diligence process of researching what this product is about and wondering whether or not it's going to solve their problem, that's the enlightenment phase. And you need specific collateral for that enlightenment phase, YouTube videos, white papers, things like that. And then in the commitment phase, they want to buy the product, they just need to be asked to buy the product and often that's an incentive or a pitch deck, a proposal, something that really says, hey, it's time to buy this, it's time to solve your problem using our product.

5:02Now we want to break these three phases down though into specific pieces of marketing collateral or what we call marketing tools. For example, you need a brand script. The brand script is those five foundational sound bites. You need the controlling idea and tagline. That needs to be written and decided upon and agreed upon by leadership in your organization. You need your one-liner or what we call an elevator pitch. You need social media posts. You need landing pages. You need lead generators. You need video scripts. You need advertising copy. You need sales rep talking points. You need email and text campaigns.

5:37Now notice, the further we go down this list, the more words we're using in our messaging and our marketing because they're already curious and now they're trying to be enlightened. They're doing their due diligence so we can give them more words. Now you'll notice this is the buying journey that we all go on when we buy something. I bought a Porsche Macan. It's kind of the poor man's 911 slash family car. I saw that car on the street. I thought, gosh, that looks like a great looking car. Curiosity. I found out the controlling idea that it performs like a 9-11 but has four doors. That was enough to pique my curiosity, and I started watching YouTube videos.

6:17Do 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. That'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.

6:51Download your free copy of those four rules today by clicking the link in the show notes. I watched hours and hours of YouTube videos because it was kind of expensive, although about a third of the price of a 911. It was kind of expensive. I didn't know if I wanted to be the guy driving around in a Porsche. That seems kind of weird, but I actually did want to drive one. And so I'm trying to justify the purchase. That is the enlightenment phase. Now, if you don't have enlightenment material that is warming me up, I think of enlightenment as value offered over time. So I need to spend time researching your brand for more expensive products.

7:31If it's a$5 product, The enlightenment phase may be just as long as the paragraph on the back of the bottle of shampoo. But the enlightenment phase has to be hit by all of us. The more expensive the product, the more complicated the product, the more lawyers are going to have to get involved, the more enlightenment collateral you need. But we all need enlightenment collateral. And then I knew I was going to buy that car well before I actually bought it. And I'm talking about months. I knew I was going to do it, but I just didn't want to go spend the money, didn't want to commit. So you've got to create even more enlightenment that moves into commitment.

8:06Keynote presentations by the CEO, maybe a mini book, a book itself, explanatory videos, pitch decks, proposals. Now we're getting into commitment here. Surprise and delight collateral, brand evangelist collateral, newsletters and ongoing communications, all this kind of stuff. Ultimately, for me, it was sitting down with a sales rep at a Porsche dealership who explained all the benefits of the car. And then he said, Don, if you want to design the Porsche Macan that you want, we can do it right now. We can actually ship it over from Germany, and it can be here, and you still don't have to buy it.

8:42All you have to do is put$1 ,000 down, which you do lose if you don't want the car. The car will be here in about four months. And I thought,$1 ,000 is worth it. Let me just buy the car that I want. I ordered the car, and, of course, four months later, I was ready to give the rest of the money, and now I drive that car. But you notice that curiosity, enlightenment, commitment is the journey that every customer goes through. And if you don't have the collateral that gets them from curiosity to enlightenment and into commitment, you're not going to have a campaign. The entire company could get around not just the words that we're going to use to execute this campaign, but where we're going to put those words in specific pieces of curiosity, collateral, specific pieces of enlightenment, collateral, and specific pieces of commitment, collateral.

9:30So the tool actually looks like this. If you're watching this on video, if you're listening to it on the podcast, definitely go to YouTube and watch this video. We give you five spaces for curiosity, five spaces for enlightenment, five spaces for commitment. But you can turn that sheet over and you've got dozens more because there's rarely just five in any of these. But again, your curiosity phase is going to be things like your tagline, your website header, your main trade booth signage. Now, what you want to do is put your tagline up above the trade booth really big, your elevator pitch in smaller text behind it, and then you want sort of smaller signs for each of your main products that have their own tagline, their own elevator pitch.

10:13You really need a messaging canvas, not just for your overall brand, but for every revenue stream and even every product. You can use your elevator pitch as curiosity, your social media bios, the sign off on every paid ad, your email signature. All of that is where you put your curiosity. You want it all mapped out on your map. Your enlightenment assets. How are you going to enlighten customers and date them, if you will? How are you going to spend time with them and become familiar? Lead generating PDFs, nurture email series, YouTube explainer videos, educational social content, white papers, case studies, webinars, or live demonstrations.

10:50All fantastic enlightenment tools just make sure they make it onto your map. Your commitment tools, direct sales email series, proposal templates, pricing and comparison one sheets, buying incentives, written guarantees, consultation or demo booking pages, onboarding roadmaps, showing what happens after they say yes. All of these are commitment collateral and commitment incentives. And we actually look at all of these and you put them on this map using the same language, your five foundational soundbites, tagline, elevator pitch, and brand story. All of that goes into every single one of these pieces of collateral.

11:30They're all repeating the same message in the phases that a buyer goes through before they make a decision. You will see sales go up. Not only that, the CMO gets to keep their job. The senior marketing director gets to keep their job. By the way, if you've hired a freelance marketer and they say, hey, the first thing we're going to do is create a story brand messaging canvas, you hired a great senior marketer because they want you to have insight into what they're doing and they want you to speak into it. They want to get your feedback. They want to know how your customers operate and they understand in this campaign map section exactly how it is that a customer makes a decision.

12:06Now, the thing that turns this from a list of collateral into a campaign is that all 21 assets repeat the same words use the same words the tagline in the curiosity phase should show up in the white paper and again in the proposal most companies write each asset from scratch which is why their marketing feels like it came from three different companies that problem is solved with the campaign map portion of your story brand messaging canvas now you can get this for free You get the tool for free, and you can get it at messagingcanvas.com. Do not plan another marketing campaign without filling out a story brand messaging canvas.

12:45Your customer is on a three-phase buying journey, and if you don't cover each of those phases, your campaign is going to work less and less the less you honor their buying decision and their buying decision process. So go to messagingcanvas.com and fill out a messaging canvas for every messaging and marketing campaign, every product you launch, every brand that you start. If you're overhauling the entire brand, it starts with a messaging canvas. Go to messagingcanvas.com. 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.

13:26And 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 unpack to help your business grow in a future episode. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next week.