You might be asking, “What is the Storybrand messaging framework?” You need to know what it is if you are facing any of these problems:
- Struggling to market your brand products or services
- Feeling disappointed despite giving your all in creating a marketing campaign, just for it not to work.
- Not knowing how you can get your target customers to pay attention.
If these issues sound familiar to you, try to pay attention to how you can communicate your brand.
Do you think that your Brand’s story is clear? Well, even if you think it is, your customer may be feeling confused and lost.
Thus, you need a brand message framework that can help you communicate to your customers more clearly and effectively.
What Is a StoryBrand Messaging Framework?
The Storybrand messaging framework aims to grab your customers’ interest with the power of storytelling. Our brain is wired to connect to stories, which makes this framework effective.
How to effectively communicate your company’s brand message will become clear with the help of this framework. The Storybrand framework consists of seven elements that can help you clarify what you want to tell your target market.
This post will focus on the first two elements, the character and the problem.
The Character (The Hero of the Story):
This is your customer; they are the hero of the story.
Most marketers and business owners get this part wrong. They try their best to show the business as the hero. They try to force their company or product’s brand message, not realising that there’s a correct framework to follow.
The question you have to ask here is: Who is your customer?
You may like to read this article on What Is A StoryBrand Buyer Persona. The first thing we do here is take our clients through a Buyer Persona. We spend an hour working on their Buyer Persona, or you may know it under another name “Customer Avatar”.
In most stories you are introduced to the Character very early (well in the good ones you are). This is why doing your Buyer Persona or Customer Avatar is so important. This gives you an insight into the way they think, their problems, challenges, hopes and desires, and more. You will then use it to complete your StoryBrand BrandScript.
Now the StoryBrand Framework begins.
The Problem:
You don’t want to be superficial here. You want to go deep and this is why Donald Miller’s 7 Part StoryBrand Framework has 3 levels in the problem.
– The External:
What is the problem the customer has? Eg: Do they want to lose weight, do they need a new pair of jeans, are they hungry, do they need to buy a new home or build something.
What is their external need?
– The Internal:
How does this make them feel?
This is where we go deeper. This is where you make a connection with your customer by speaking out their pain.
You see the external is just the problem, the internal is the pain. When you start talking about their pain, they can’t help but listen. Eg: They feel ashamed, daggy, angry (have you ever met a hungry person), anxious, determined.
– Philosophical:
This is where belief comes in.
It’s a statement that runs along with the way they are thinking about their problem.
You’ve heard others use statements like these: “It shouldn’t be so hard to lose weight”, “It ought to be easier to find the perfect pair of jeans”, “Food should be easier to find”, “buying a home shouldn’t be this hard”, “Finding a construction company to help me build should be easier”.
Now the tide
- The problem your customer faces and is trying to overcome.
- How your business will help them do this by being positioned as the Guide.
- The steps they need to take to overcome that problem and have success.
- The benefits to their life they will experience when they have success.
- The consequence they face is they fail.
- What ‘Call to Actions” are needed for them to have success.
- How they will feel when success/victory is theirs.
Besides the Character and the Problem, there are five more elements in this framework to know, as they are important in clarifying your brand message. If you want to know more about it, read the article “What is the 7 Part StoryBrand Framework formula.” You may also like to schedule a call with James Hannan, our certified StoryBrand coach, as he can help you with how you can use this technique in your marketing.
