Hope Schaefer - StoryBrand Certified Marketing Consultant & Copywriter

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

Marketing

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

22 Immutable Laws of Branding: The Laws I Live By

Branding laws

If you’re looking for ways to accelerate growth so you’ll surpass your competition, 22 Immutable Laws of Branding is your ideal guide.

22 Immutable Laws of Branding: How to Build a Product or Service into a World-Class Brand

In his classic on branding, Al Ries simply states, “the most important aspect of a brand is its single-mindedness.”

So if you or your marketing team ever says, “Why should we limit ourselves?”

Remember, this is a red flag question.

Pause and immediately return to the fundamentals of building a brand, “the most important aspect of a brand is its single-mindedness.”

Focus and single-mindedness require discipline, especially when you see your competition broadening their approach.

But a narrow focus is the key to success in branding.

Ries shares fundamentals to help business owners avoid common branding mistakes:

  • “Today most products and services are bought, not sold.  Branding ‘pre-sells’ the product or service to the user. Branding is simply a more efficient way to sell things.”
  • “Nothing happens until somebody brands something.”
  • “Your brand is the single idea or concept that you own inside the mind of your customer.”
  • “What you think your brand is doesn’t really matter. It’s only what your customer thinks your brand is that matters.”
  • “You should limit your brand. That’s the essence of branding. Your brand has to stand for something both simple and narrow in the mind.  The limitation is the essential part of the branding process.”  
  • “Limitation combined with consistency (over decades, not years) is what builds a brand.”

Remember, the core of a failed product is usually a no-brand strategy issue not a no-good product issue.

A few famous examples of branding strategy missteps:

  • Little Caesars leaving their buy one, get one “Pizza. Pizza” take out focused business.
  • KFC trying to distance itself from fried chicken.
  • Holiday Inn trying to get into the upscale hotel segment.
  • Atari walking away from gaming and attempting to become a computer.

When you read The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding: How to Build a Product or Service Into a World Class Brand you’ll discover:

  1. How the power of a brand is inversely proportional to its scope. (Law of Expansion)
  2. Why a brand becomes stronger when you narrow its focus.  (Law of Contraction)
  3. How the birth of a brand is achieved with publicity, not advertising and why so many businesses get this wrong. (Law of Publicity)
  4. Once born, a brand needs advertising to stay healthy. (Law of Advertising)
  5. The truth about why a brand should strive to own a word in the mind of the consumer. (Law of the Word)
  6. How the crucial ingredient in the success of any brand is its claim to authenticity. (Law of Credential)
  7. Why quality is important, but brands are not built on quality alone. (Law of Quality)
  8. How a leading brand should promote the category, not the brand. (Law of Category)
  9. Why in the long run a brand is nothing more than a name. (Law of the Name)
  10. How the easiest way to destroy a brand is to put its name on everything. (Law of Extensions)
  11. Discover the counterintuitive truth that in order to build the category, a brand should welcome other brands. (Law of Fellowship)
  12. Uncover the simple fact that one of the fastest routes to failure is giving a brand a generic name. (Law of the Generic)
  13. Identity the very real difference between brands and companies. (Law of the Company)
  14. Understand how sub-branding can destroy your brand.  (Law of Sub Brands)
  15. How to know the time and the place to launch a second brand. (Law of Siblings)
  16. Why a brand’s logotype should be designed to fit the eyes.  Both eyes. (Law of Shape)
  17. How this simple fact proves a brand should use a color that is the opposite of its major competitors. (Law of Color)
  18. If there are no barriers to global branding, then a brand should know no borders. (Law of Borders)
  19. Why a brand is not built overnight, how success is measured. (Law of Consistency)
  20. What if brands can be changed. (Law of Change)
  21. Uncover if euthanasia is the best solution. (Law of Mortality)
  22. How to embrace the most important aspect of a brand. (Law of Singularity)

Three ways to overcome branding mistakes and create unity with your strategy and your messaging are to: