Hope Schaefer - StoryBrand Certified Marketing Consultant & Copywriter

I Help You Grow Your Business, Clarify Your Message & Attract More Customers

Hope Schaefer

Gain a Competitive Advantage: Your Next Steps

Monday and Tuesday of last week, alongside 250 other business owners, I participated in the StoryBrand Live Workshop. I left the event focused with clear messaging for my business and definitive next steps to grow my brand. Teaching with passion, Donald Miller, JJ Peterson, and Koula Callahan helped me cut through the clutter and simplify the focus for my business. I’ve been suffering from the “cobbler’s children have no shoes syndrome.” As a StoryBrand Guide, I’ve successfully guided business owners in clarifying their messages at the neglect of working on my own brand. By BrandScripting and focusing on my ideal clients’ problem and the solution to their problem, I not only able to clarify my marketing message, but also define specific growth strategies for my business.

Looking For A Competitive Advantage? Need Clear Next Steps For Growing Your Brand?

Uncover the 5 Secrets 250 Business Owners Discovered Last Week At Nashville Music City Center: Why They Each Invested $3000, 2 Days Away From Their Businesses, And Created a Way to 10X Their Growth

1. Clarity Is Your Superpower: Why Most Brands Fail To Get It Right                                                                         

In our fast paced world where consumers are constantly bombarded with marketing messages, the clearest message wins. 8 seconds is all the time your brand has to grab someone’s attention online. The StoryBrand Mantra, “When you confuse you lose,” was the first order principle for the StoryBrand Live Workshop.  

2. Customer Centric Messaging Gives Your Brand A Competitive Advantage:How Shifting One Simple Habit Will Transform Your Business                                  

How many times have you “checked out” of a monologue dominated by a self absorbed brand?  At StoryBrand last week, Donald Miller reinforced the essential need for all brand builders, focus on the problems and pain our customers are feeling , our businesses can connect powerfully.  When we stop shining the spotlight on our brands and start focusing on the internal struggles of our customers, the customer wins and so do our brands.

3. Community Connections Build Better Business Owners: Why Isolation Is So Dangerous For Entrepreneurs

Over 250 business leaders invested $3000 each to gather at Nashville Music City Center and worked hard to clarify their marketing messages. All the business leaders I interacted with were givers. They shared their insights and best practices with one another and were genuinely motivated to help others succeed. The StoryBrand podcast and book attract highly successful business owners who are generous in lifting others to greater success.

4. Cross Pollination Supercharges Your Growth: When You Should Stop Talking and Start Listening

If the only conferences you attend are in your industry, you are missing out.  Turf wars and competition are common within industry specific seminars. When you attend the StoryBrand Live Workshop you’re stepping outside your same predictable environment and grabbing fresh perspectives on creating your company’s messaging.

5. Curse of Knowledge Must Be Eliminated :Why Being An Expert In Your Field Is Killing Your Brand

As business owners, we all speak the language of our native niche and fail to recognize it. The most efficient way to clarify your brand message is to interact with a marketing professional outside your industry because and “outsider” can help you eliminate the “insider language” you don’t even realize you are speaking. At the StoryBrand Live Workshop, StoryBrand Guides challenged business owners to create customer centric messaging by eliminating jargon that repels potential clients who don’t understand the messaging.

 

Discover The One Word Guaranteed to Boost Your Sales TODAY

One Word SalesIf you’re overwhelmed by your sales goals for the new year and you’re frustrated because your customer isn’t buying, then I have a ONE-WORD solution that will help you sell more of anything TODAY.

Imagine the synergy and enthusiasm you’ll enjoy all year if you instantly boost growth during the first few weeks of 2019.

ONE word can make the difference in closing more sales.   [Read more…] about Discover The One Word Guaranteed to Boost Your Sales TODAY

Lead Generators: The Ultimate Guide for Implementing StoryBrand into Your Lead Magnet, So You Attract Customers 24/7

Lead Generators Lead Magnets

As a brand, it’s our job to pursue our customers.  We want to get to know them and for them to get to know us, but we are the ones who need to take the initiative.”  -Donald Miller

Generating high quality leads, creating a large volume of leads, and converting leads into customers are top priorities for businesses.

One way to engage new customers is with the creation of a powerful lead generator or lead magnet.  

When you onramp customers with a tool like a lead magnet, you are gaining the right to establish a relationship with your customer. [Read more…] about Lead Generators: The Ultimate Guide for Implementing StoryBrand into Your Lead Magnet, So You Attract Customers 24/7

Turn Your Website Into A Lead Generating Machine: How to Implement StoryBrand So You Attract More Customers and Skyrocket Your Growth

Great brands obsess about the transformation of their customers.” – Donald Miller

When a Customer Visits Your Website They are Searching for Transformation

Whether a customer wants to be thinner, richer, younger, appear more successful, have a lawn everyone envies, or become the best party planner in town, they are ultimately pursuing transformation.  They have a problem and are searching for a solution.

Transformation is the foundational principle on which to build your website.

The single force behind every decision your customer is making is their desire to transform.

The goal of your website is to convince customers you can help them accomplish the change they desire.

“Brands that participate in the identity transformation of their customers create passionate brand evangelists.”  Donald Miller

Before you create your website answer this key question, “How does my customer want to be described by others?” 

By identifying the aspirational identity of your customer before you create your website, your website will be more successful in emotionally connecting with your customer.  

Remember, customers’ buying decisions are based on emotions not purely logical decision making.  

Websites under deliver when they are:

 

  • purely information based
  • fail to address the aspirational identity of the customer
  • ignore the emotional element of buying
  • cluttered with no white space
  • filled with too much text
  • fail to show empathy for customer’s problem and pain

 

The goal of your website is to help your customer quickly discern your brand is the solution to their problem.

Employ Donald Miller’s Grunt Test as you review your site. Can a visitor answer these questions in 5 seconds?

  1. What do you offer?
  2. How will it make my life better?
  3. What do I need to do to buy it?

When You Implement Your StoryBrand BrandScript Into Your Website Your Customers Will Understand Why They Need Your Product.

  1. Your Website should be an elevator pitch for your business. Simple, Clear, Compelling.
  2. Remember your website is like a first date. Don’t overwhelm your customers with too many details.  
  3. Too much noise kills sales. Be brief and basic. Create a desire for more. Do not bore.

Use the following checklist to audit your website.

5 THINGS YOUR WEBSITE MUST INCLUDE

VERY FEW WORDS

  • In our mobile culture, customers are scanning, skimming, and scrolling while multitasking.
  • Your website must be clear and succinct.  
  • In as few words as possible demonstrate how your brand can solve their problem, evoke curiosity, and create the desire to learn more.  
  • Try to cut your word count in half.
  • Use the “read more” feature. This trick keeps your website clean but gives your customers access to the information they need.

IMAGES OF SUCCESS

  • Everyone wants a better life, so your website images should project a better life.
  • The imagines should project the emotional destination (the aspirational identity) of your customer.
  • Yes, you need to display your product, but your header should project the image of success for your customer.

AN OFFER ABOVE THE FOLD

  • Give a clear, customer-centric benefit in your header.
  • Clearly answer your customer’s question, “What’s in it for me?”
  • Promise an aspirational identity.
  • Promise to solve a problem.
  • Simply state what you do.

OBVIOUS CALL TO ACTION

  • Clearly state what action you want the customer to take.
  • Make your call to action such as “buy now” or “order today” button a different color.
  • Since customers read website headers in a Z pattern, put one “buy now” in the top right corner of the header and one “buy now” in the bottom left.
  • Yes, I am recommending two calls to actions in the header of your website.
  • Your transitional call to action (your lead generator) also needs to be placed in your header.
  • “Buy Now” is a commitment. “Download the Cheat Sheet” is simply buying time to get to know one another.  You need a Call to Action for commitment and a Transitional Call to Action to build a relationship.

BREAKDOWN OF YOUR REVENUE STREAMS

  • Create a BrandScript for each of your revenue streams.
  • Review your BrandScript and create an umbrella message that ties all of your revenue streams together.
  • Place the umbrella message on your header.
  • Create a separate page for each of your revenue streams.

Lead Generating Websites Avoid:

  • Focusing on your brand rather than the customer.
  • Wasting your customers’ time with too many words.
  • Including non relevant pictures such as your office, your equipment, your history.

It’s crucial to complete your StoryBrand BrandScript before you create your website.

Your BrandScript contains each element you’ll need for your website.  

If it’s not in the BrandScript, don’t include it on your website.

When you clarify your message, customers listen and they buy!

Businesses who have followed their StoryBrand BrandScript to create a StoryBrand based website have doubled, tripled, and even quadrupled in growth.

If growth is your goal and you need help creating your StoryBrand BrandScript or your website, then reach out to me at hope@hopeschaefer.com

How One Simple Question Changed My Life: Why It’s Not Too Late To Follow Your Passion

Copywriting Academy

Certain moments change your life forever. What’s ironic is quite often when you make a seemingly small decision, you don’t realize you’re actually standing at a major crossroads of your life.  Once you pass through the intersection, there really is no turning back.

“Will you join my team as a coach at Copywriting Academy Live?” Ray Edwards asked. I can’t adequately describe the simultaneous feelings of shock, gratitude, and terror that overtook me at that moment. Thank goodness we were not on a Zoom call, because Ray might have retracted his invitation if he had seen my beet red face and my deer in the headlight panic. Somehow I found enough breath to simply whisper, “Yes, Ray. Thank you.”

I joined Ray’s Edwards’ Regency Mastermind a year earlier while I was blogging about divorce. Once I published my book, Finding Hope Beyond Divorce, I was ready to close that painful chapter of my life and move on.

Since I was in Ray’s Mastermind with Mike Kim and some other amazing copywriters, I was certain of my next steps. I kept my day job, but I purchased Copywriting Academy and threw myself 100% into learning everything I could from the course and from Ray on our weekly Mastermind calls.

As a sales professional for two decades, I understood the importance of messaging. I had contributed to the success of pharmaceutical products that had achieved blockbuster status and I had also help to launch brands that fizzled and fallen miserably short of sale projections.

I knew from experience the power copywriting has on the success or failure of a brand. Good products can fail because of bad sales copy.

Each week as Ray and the members of the Regency Mastermind discussed various business related issues, we often came to the same conclusion, “Your problem is simple, you have a COPY problem.”  All roads lead back to the copy.

Ray taught us the PASTOR framework and he also convinced us that copy either leads to confusion or it leads to clarity, there is no middle ground.

During the months between Ray’s invitation to coach and my arrival at Copywriting Academy Live, I played the audio of his course repeatedly. Copywriting Academy was on as a continuous loop in my car as I drove around eastern North Carolina performing my sales job. Each mile I drove, I listened to Ray teaching the concepts of how to write effective sales copy.

During the weekends, I outlined the chapters, make study cards, and practiced copywriting by completing all of the exercises in the course. I wanted to be prepared for any questions I might encounter at Copywriting Academy Live. During this time, I also worked on some copywriting projects for a few of my friends.

Ray expected me to coach his students just as he would coach them, so I memorized all the principles outlined in Copywriting Academy. Before the event, Ray taught us the concepts of coaching. Through all of my preparation to become a sales copy coach, I became a better copywriter.

During Copywriting Academy Live, I was able to coach close to 30 business owners. The types of businesses varied, yet the concepts of Copywriting Academy applied to all of them.

Before one of the sessions, I had the honor of introducing Ray to the crowd and I also participated in a panel discussion.

Coaching, speaking, and copywriting changed the trajectory of my life. Copywriting Academy Live was the catalyst that changed my passions and propelled me into an exciting, unscripted future I never anticipated.

Since enrolling in Copywriting Academy and coaching at Copywriting Academy Live, I’ve written copy for brands like Beautylish, Michael Hyatt, Mike Kim, Fishman Haygood, Drama Free Teams, and Duck Donuts. My experience as a copywriter has opened doors for me to consult with many amazing companies.

Ray Edwards’ invitation to coach at Copywriting Academy Live was a crossroads moment for me.

His handwritten note hangs above my desk and reminds me every day, “Hope, you were born to write.”  

When Ray shared his platform, he gave me the push and the opportunity I needed to uncover my gift of coaching and consulting.  

Up until that moment, I had viewed myself as a salesperson and then a copywriter, but I never realized my real “superpower” was in coaching and consulting with business owners to help them clarify their messages so they generate growth.

Fast forward two years. Because of Copywriting Academy, I decided to retire from my career in pharmaceutical sales with GlaxoSmithKline and now I own my own business.

I work as a brand strategist, copywriting coach, and StoryBrand Guide. I help businesses stop wasting money on marketing that doesn’t work and create messages that sell.

If your brand is falling short of your 2018 projections, I bet underneath all the finger pointing and blame games you will uncover a COPY problem.

I’m not an affiliate for his course but go to RayEdwards.com if you’d like to become a copywriter. He just opened the cart and you can only purchase Copywriting Academy for a few more days.  

I live in a small town in eastern North Carolina. I graduated from high school when Ronald Reagan was president. I’m a single mom. It took me a while, but I realized it wasn’t too late to follow my dream. I simply had to get out of my own way. So, if you’re ready to make a change in your career or if you’re trying to grow your business, it’s time to stop making excuses.

I’m an example of the amazing things that can happen when you purchase a high-quality online course, learn from a wise mentor, surround yourself with people who are geniuses in business and work hard to become an expert in your craft.  

I’d love to hear about the crossroads in your life and how you’ve navigated your way forward.  Email me at Hope@hopeschaefer.com