What is StoryBrand?
StoryBrand is a proven messaging framework that turns your marketing efforts into a major sales funnel to grow your business. Created by Donald Miller, it is designed to help businesses clarify their messaging and tell a compelling story to connect with their customers effectively. The StoryBrand concept is based on the idea that the most successful brands understand and use the power of storytelling to communicate their message and engage their audience.
By applying the StoryBrand concept to their marketing and messaging, businesses can create a more compelling and engaging story for their customers. This framework helps companies communicate their value proposition more clearly, connect emotionally with their audience, and ultimately, drive more conversions and sales. It's also a framework that we stand behind and believe can help clarify a brand's message and engage its target audience! Next, we'll dive into the framework behind StoryBrand and how to specifically utilize StoryBrand for health and wellness businesses.
What is the StoryBrand Framework?
The StoryBrand framework was created by author Donald Miller and shared in his groundbreaking book, "Building A StoryBrand," which has sold over a million copies since its release in 2017. In it, Miller outlines seven steps in what he calls a BrandScript to help brands clarify their messaging and compel their ideal target market to take action. The seven steps include:
- Defining the character in your brand story - Your clients are the hero of their own story. You must understand what they want, their desires, challenges, and motivations.
- Articulating the challenges that your ideal client is facing - the problems that compel them to turn to you - their guide - to solve. This creates a connection with the audience, as they can relate to the struggle.
- Understanding how your role as a guide involves both empathy and authority - Positioning the business or brand as the knowledgeable guide who can help the "hero" overcome their challenges and achieve success.
- Creation of a clear plan - how you will guide your ideal clients from their current state to an ideal state (the character's "want"). Providing a clear and actionable plan for the hero (customer) to follow, with the guide's assistance.
- Call to action - What your client must do to get what they want, what action must they take?
- Success - This step includes identifying what success looks like, the benefits of moving forward, and the tragic results of failing to take action.
- Failure - finally, the last step includes a deep understanding of the identity transformation your clients go through as you show them the way, recognizing the consequences of not taking action (or choosing a competitor's solution.)
Why Should I Hire A Guide To Help Me Create My BrandScript?
Marshall McLuhan, a mid-century philosopher, media critic & writer, once famously said, "I don't know who discovered water, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't a fish." It can be challenging to see - or understand - something if we are so immersed in it. That's why working with a StoryBrand Certified Guide is the best way to create a StoryBrand Framework for health and wellness that genuinely reflects your brand. The creation process involves a collaborative interview that brings out the truth you already know but may not know how to articulate.
There are some 600 StoryBrand Certified Guides across the globe, and you'll find that each has a unique specialty. They may work with artists or in B2B; they may approach StoryBrand from a consumer point of view, work with non-profits, or can help you elevate your brand to luxury status. The key is finding the right Guide to help you reveal your unique brand message.
So What Can I Do With My StoryBrand Framework?
Once you create your unique Brandscript, you have the messaging you need to explain three things clearly and succinctly: 1) what you do, 2) how it will help, and 3) how someone can get it. With your 7 StoryBrand framework elements in hand, you have the ability to construct a powerful brand narrative, useful everywhere your brand appears.
With your StoryBrand Framework in hand...
- Your brand narrative can support a pitch to investors.
- It's also the foundation for your website copy (especially that About page!)
- you can create a fantastic one-liner that will invite everyone you meet into your story.
- Your brand narrative can quickly and easily become a brand video.
- Using StoryBrand for health & wellness means you have consistent copy for social media posts, allowing you to explore every aspect of the framework to attract your ideal clients.
- You can include elements of your BrandScript in your email messaging can also be powerful - especially in that automated introductory email!
- You can build a powerful 5-part sales funnel that moves clients from awareness to engagement to conversion.
Who Is The StoryBrand Framework For?
Your BrandScript can also vastly simplify your marketing, allowing you to focus on the audience that needs you most. BrandScripts work for luxury health and wellness offerings as well as they do for single practitioner offices. A Chiropractor may use a Brandscript in a counter brochure to educate first-time patients in-office. In medical aesthetics or medical cosmetics, a Brandscript can be written to be reassuring and remove barriers to entry.
If you're starting out, that's a perfect time to gain clarity so that you connect with your ideal clients from the very beginning. But if you're established and feel like there's an opportunity you still need to explore, your Brandscript can help you see what's missing from your messaging.
It doesn't end there. The StoryBrand Framework can benefit health & wellness businesses of all shapes and sizes. For example, this framework can help fitness centers and gyms clarify the specific problems their potential customers face and position themselves as the guide to help customers achieve their fitness goals, providing a clear plan, testimonials from successful members, and a compelling call to action to sign up for classes or memberships. Medical practices and clinics can use StoryBrand to communicate their expertise and compassionate patient care. They can address patients' concerns about their health conditions, explain the treatment plans clearly, and emphasize the positive outcomes of successful medical interventions.
If you're wondering if the StoryBrand framework can help you build a brand for your health & wellness business, the answer is a resounding yes!
What Does StoryBrand Mean In Health & Wellness?
While the StoryBrand Framework is powerful and proven, if you're a health or wellness practitioner, pairing your messaging with a solid marketing strategy is vital!
Imagine your clients actively seeking out your health and wellness services because they see themselves as a part of your story. With StoryBrand, your messaging will speak directly to their aspirations and challenges, creating an emotional resonance that is compelling and persuasive. Your business will not be recognized as simply a service provider but a truly transformative partner in their journey towards better health and well-being.
When you combine the StoryBrand framework with the experience of Salt Marketing, your health and wellness business won't get lost in the noise! Your brand can become like a magnetic force, drawing in clients who are not only eager to engage with your brand, products, and services but are also excited to be a part of it and share your story with others. It can seem like a daunting task, but you don't have to do this alone. Salt Marketing is here to help you take action now and rewrite the narrative of your success with StoryBrand.