Episode 64: Donald Miller Shares 7 Proven Story Formulas for Sharpening Your Marketing Message

The experts welcome special guest Donald Miller, NYT Best-Selling Author and President of StoryBrand, to discuss how to create a marketing message that filters through the noise, enters the customer’s story, and connects you with your audience.

Listen in to learn this easy process and gain valuable resources you can apply to any business.

IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN:

  • The problem most customers respond to (« aim your marketing message at this problem to see an uptake in sales).
  • The two things customers are looking for from brands (« and what it has to do with Yoda from Star Wars and Haymitch from Hunger Games).
  • An easy exercise you can do to help generate headlines, bullet points, and copy for your advertisements and landing pages. (« hint: it includes a whiteboard).

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Episode 38: The 4-Step Podcast Launch Strategy
Episode 56: How DollarBeardClub.com Generated 100 Million Video Views in 13 Months
The 5 Minute Marketing Makeover Course or text “makeover” to 72000 — 3 five minute training videos that help clarify your marketing message.
The 7 Proven Story Formula Worksheet
Episode 64 Transcript (swipe the PDF version here):

Keith Krance: Welcome to Episode 64 of Perpetual Traffic. Today we are really excited. We’ve got a great guest today. Nice work, Molly, getting him on today. If any of you guys have been following us since the beginning, or if you saw our talk at Traffic & Conversion last year when Molly, Ralph, and myself were up onstage, or if you listened to Episode 38 where we talked about the 4-Step Podcast Launch Strategy, I mentioned at the beginning how we wanted to create a story with the podcast, especially in those first six episodes. I sent this long, 20-minute video to Ralph and Molly showing them the story arc and the stuff we wanted to try and create in those first several episodes.

 

 

  One of the guys I was following that I learned a lot of this from is actually Donald Miller. Donald Miller is the founder of StoryBrand. He does workshops every single month, helping people create amazing stories to grow their brand and develop huge brand advocates. He’s the author of over seven books, several are New York Times bestsellers. The guy just knows how to tell a story. I read an amazing book he wrote a few years ago and absolutely loved it. Donald, man, thanks for coming on. We’re excited.

 

 

Donald Miller: Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

 

 

Keith Krance: Donald helps a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of big, really successful owners tell a better story. You’ve even got a pretty cool framework I think we’re going to get into today, so let’s get right into it. What made you transition from what you did before to what you’re doing now?

 

 

Donald Miller: I’ve been studying story for a long time and the formulas that create stories, the formulas that create screenplays. What a lot of people don’t know is there are 2,000-year-old, age-old formulas that have been perfected with best practices over the years. These formulas are used to make movies and write novels, and they are proven to compel a human brain. There are really only seven of them. I know that sounds crazy, but there are just seven basic formulas. They are so proven that I can go to a movie with my wife and point to the screen and say, “That guy’s going to die in about 31 minutes.” I know this particular story format. That became really fascinating to me for the purpose of writing books. The more I understood it, the better my books became, the more people read them without putting them down.

 

 

  I know a lot of people listening to this, they feel so close to their business that they just don’t know how to explain it. When somebody at a cocktail party says, “What do you do?” They say, “Well, you know, it’s complicated. My grandfather started the company,” and they just lose the room. Nobody cares or they want to go eat the bacon-wrapped dates that are being passed around by the wait staff.

 

 

  I wanted to grow my little conference company and so I thought, “I’ve got to dip into these formulas that are proven to make people pay attention and use that as a filter to create my marketing messages for my company.” I created this seven-part framework. It is based on the elements of story. I filtered my communication through that framework, and we doubled in revenue within 12 months, and did it again in the next 12 months, and did it again in the next 12 months, and then had an 80% increase the fourth year.

 

 

  We didn’t spend any money on advertising. In fact, this is our first year. I have a multimillion dollar company that didn’t spend any money on advertising till this year. The reason is our message got so succinct and clear that people could almost memorize it and repeat it to their friends. They also, when they heard our message, they felt intuitively a need to buy that product because we positioned our message in such a way that it was the resolution of a problem. That is the essence of story. A character who has a problem and is seeking to resolve this problem.

 

 

  The magic of the StoryBrand formula is really understanding every human being is a hero in a story. They self-identify as a hero in a story. They all want things, but they are encountering problems that are keeping them from getting what they want. When we go to a cocktail party and we say, “My grandfather started the company,” the person that we’re talking to is listening and they’re going, “That doesn’t mean anything to me; that’s not helping me solve my problems,” so they tune out. When we say, “Well, you know, a lot of people come to me and they have knee pain. They’re in their forties and their knees are getting achy and they just feel too young for that,” anybody in that room who’s in their forties with knee pain is like leaning over going—

 

 

Keith Krance: They’re clued in.

 

 

Molly Pittman: They literally feel your pain.

 

 

Donald Miller: Yeah, they’re clued in. Then you can even add an internal manifestation of that saying, “They feel this pain. They’ve tried it for years and they really think this is the way life has to be. They’re feeling a little down looking forward into the rest of their lives.” Now you’ve just hooked them emotionally and physically. They’re wondering, “Can you make my story resolve well? Do you have a product or a process or a system that is going to help make my story resolve well?”

 

 

  That’s a taste of what we do. It’s an extensive framework. It’s a seven-part framework, but we’ve taken several thousand businesses through it now. We’re just amazed at the results people are getting simply from clarifying their message—from not saying the wrong thing and continuing to say the right thing.

 

 

Molly Pittman: Usually on this podcast, we talk about traffic and Facebook ads, Google ads, and really how to generate more leads and customers for your business. It’s interesting when we were talking about having you on the podcast, there really isn’t a better message that our listeners can hear than what you’re going to say and what you’ve already said. If you don’t have that story, if you don’t know the pain points of your audience, the ad copy doesn’t matter, the creative doesn’t matter, the offer doesn’t matter because you just don’t know. I think this is really foundational, and I hope everyone out there really pays attention to this episode because it will affect all aspects of your marketing and your business.

 

 

Donald Miller: For example, we had one client come to us who spent over $100,000 on their web marketing collateral. The second I saw their website I just thought, “I don’t even have the heart to tell you’ve wasted $100,000.” They clarified their message, they spent $3,000 fixing their website, and they doubled in sales.

 

 

  We’ve helped political candidates who had–the one I’m thinking of–who had over $100 million in their super PAC and $17 million in their campaign fund, and they have one of the worst websites I’ve ever seen. You can’t throw money at this. If you’re spending a lot of money on Facebook ads and all these kinds of ways to get your message out there, but you haven’t clarified your message, you really just bought a very expensive bullhorn and you’re holding it up to a monkey. Now you’re not confusing a small group of people, you’re spending a lot of money to confuse a big group of people. We find when you refine that message and use the same techniques you guys are talking about that we use, because we subscribe to your courses at my company, and when you run a clear message through everything that you’re training people to do, you see the results go up.

 

 

  I was outside of Charlotte, North Carolina one time. I had this funny experience. I was in a hotel, and I’m looking out the window of the hotel and there’s a guy in a bass boat fishing on Lake Norman about 100 yards away from me. There’s another bass boat next to him, and it just had television cameras and they were all tuned into this guy. I thought that was weird. I turn on the television, and I’m flipping the television and there’s the guy. I literally look live out my window and there’s the guy on the television. It’s some big bass fishing tournament. Of course, I’m going to watch that, right? I’m watching this thing really happen.

 

 

  They showed a little piece of him the night before and he had stayed up the night before, and gone through his tackle box and sharpened every hook. As you know, those hooks already come very sharp. I literally see us clarifying our messages saying, “Let’s sharpen it. Let’s sharpen it. Let’s sharpen it. Let’s see if we can get it even sharper.” The work that you do, when you come to one of our workshops, you spend a couple days clarifying your message. That 16 hours in that workshop sharpening every hook in your tackle box pays dividends for the next five years.

 

 

Keith Krance: Wow, I love it. You’ve got a free course called the 5 Minute Marketing Makeover. Great, free course for stuff you were talking about. That’s your hook for your podcast as well. Love that hook because that’s the pain point. It’s the pain point that people have. I think a lot of people listening right now might not realize the true power of story in general. Think about the best movies you sit through for two hours, or HBO series, or Showtime series. That’s what these guys are doing. They can get people to sit.

 

 

Donald Miller: Yeah, they’re just hooking you.

 

 

Keith Krance: Yeah, and you’re just forgetting about everything. There are no thoughts running through your mind. You’re sitting there and you forget time just went away for two hours. It’s because these guys are master storytellers.

 

 

Donald Miller: That’s right. They’re master storytellers and they are definitely people who are better at it than others. Anybody can really learn the process. It’s not actually a difficult process. I’ll go through it if you want me to.

 

 

Molly Pittman: Let’s roll!

 

 

   
Donald Miller: I’ll go through the seven characteristics of a story, and you can use this to write a short story or a screenplay, if you adapt it. Of course, if you’re doing a screenplay, you’re talking about much more nuanced stuff here.

 

 

Basically, a story is this. We always have a character. The character wants something and that’s very clearly defined. That’s Step 1: a character who wants something.

 

  Then that character has a problem and they can’t get what they want because something is opposing them. Well, this poses in the brain a story question: Is the character going to get what they want and be able to overcome the conflict? “We’ll stick around for 90 minutes if we like the character, and we want them to get what they want.”

 

 

  For thousands of years, since the days of Plato and Aristotle, another character has stepped into the story. At StoryBrand, we call that character the guide. This is Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Mary Poppins, Haymitch from Hunger Games. The guide helps the hero overcome their problem and win the day. They do that by giving them a plan. That’s Step 4. It’s: the character wants something, then they have a problem, then the guide shows up, then the guide gives them a plan. Step 5 is the guide challenges the hero, that is, the guide calls the hero to action. They challenge the hero to go do something. They’re going to have to go fight the villain or disarm the bomb or ask the girl out or whatever it is that the story’s about.

 

 

  Then the sixth and seventh characteristics. We have to know that this thing can end in a failure, that this could be a tragedy, that things could go badly for the hero. Otherwise, there’s no stakes and we don’t care. If nothing can go wrong for the hero, we aren’t glued to the television or the movie screen or turning the pages of the book, for that matter. We also have to know that this thing could end well. The whole story, we’re wondering, “Is this going to be a success or a failure?” They hold that carrot out for 90 minutes until the very last scenes, and they resolve that conflict.

 

 

  The seven steps are a character that wants something, but has a problem, meets a guide who gives them a plan and calls them to action that either ends in a success or a failure. Those are the seven characteristics of a story. When we look at it through the lens of marketing, we have tons of people who come to us and say, “We need help clarifying our story.” I tell them, “Sign up for a workshop. Take our online course. We have materials for you.”

 

 

  The reality is about 10 minutes into that workshop, I’m going to tell them there is almost no benefit in telling your story at all. That nobody wants to know that your grandfather started the company. Nobody wants to know you’re hoping to double your revenue this year. Nobody wants to know you have an outstanding, great-places-to-work metric. Nobody wants to know that. They see themselves as the hero in this story. You want your marketing collateral not to tell your story, but you want your customer to be able to find themselves in the story that you’re telling as a company. That’s a radical shift and a radical difference.

 

 

  Companies that have that paradigm shift, they tend to grow. Here’s how the paradigm shift works. Your customer is the hero in the story and you are the guide. When we understood, “Look, our customer’s the hero in the story and the story is all about them, all we do in their story is position ourselves as a guide,” we see an uptick in business.

 

 

Keith Krance: There’s a lot of people out there teaching people to tell your story, to figure out a way to find out where you had that down-and-out moment and almost lost everything maybe, whatever it was. If you don’t have your own story, then you can tell somebody else’s story like a past customer.

 

 

I love what you just said. It’s very, very specifically different. Now, if you have that story, I’m sure there’s a perfect time and a place for that, but I’d love to get your insight on that and what you’re seeing out there and what you think about it.

 

Donald Miller: Well, each of those seven characteristics when you look at it from a branding perspective or a marketing or messaging perspective, they have conditions. For instance, we have to know as a brand what it is that our customer wants. There are two mistakes that screenwriters make when they start writing a story and they happen to be the same mistake that brands make. One is the screenwriter will not define clearly enough what a hero wants at the beginning of a story. What this does is it posits no question in the mind of the audience. The audience wants a question to wrestle with and you didn’t give them. We don’t know what Jason Bourne wants because you didn’t make it clear enough.

 

 

  The second mistake a screenwriter makes is they give us too many things that Jason Bourne wants. If Jason Bourne wanted to know who he was, but also marry the girl, and also lose 30 pounds, and also finish a marathon, and also adopt a cat, you would lose the entire audience. That is a huge mistake that companies make too. They know they can solve 53 problems and so they advertise and message that they can solve all these problems. They end up losing their brand identity because a customer is really only giving you one little space in their Rolodex. That space is not labeled with the name of your company. That space is labeled with a problem.

 

 

  Think of a Rolodex as your customer’s brain and every category in that Rolodex is a problem: knee pain; tooth pain; emotional pain; termites in my attic; plumbing doesn’t work; wanting to make more in digital marketing, but I don’t know how to do it. Those are all problems. When you hand them your business card, they’re wondering, “Where on that Rolodex do I put this business card?” If you haven’t said, “Hey, you put us in the category of termites and getting rid of termites in your house,” then you’re going to lose them.

 

 

  In fact, I use the termite example. We had one company come through. It’s a national brand termite company, millions and millions of dollars. They said to me, “We want to expand our services so that we’re doing a lot of household chores and fix-it projects for people.” I just said, “That is an enormous mistake because you are known for this and you don’t yet have market share or market dominance. If you add more things to this menu, you’re going to lose customers because they don’t know where to place you in their mind.”

 

 

  We have to define something that our customer wants. If we do have 53 things that our customer wants, we need to be known for one of those things and then unpack the rest of that narrative at a later date, but not on our website, not in those initial interactions, not in our elevator pitch, not in the one-liner that we use at a cocktail party. We need to become known for solving a problem.

 

 

  Next, we need to define what those problems are. There are three levels of problems in story and there are three levels of problems in your customer’s brain. There’s the external problem, the internal problem, and the philosophical problem. The external problem in a story would be like the bomb is going to go off. The internal problem is the feeling that the hero has about whether or not they can get this job done. It’s almost always in every single movie you go see, the same feeling. They don’t know if they have what it takes.

 

 

  Here’s what’s interesting about the external problem in the story and the internal problem in the story. If you had a story that was just about the external problem, you would lose the audience. All stories are really about internal problems. Now, what does this have to do with branding and messaging? Here’s what it has to do. Most companies tend to sell solutions to external problems, but most customers, all customers, buy solutions to internal problems.

 

 

  That means that whatever problem you’re resolving, you’re going to want to go out and talk about that problem. I want you to talk about the problem, and talk about the frustration that that problem is manifesting in your customer’s life. You will see an uptick in business. People are not motivated to call us or to click “Buy Now” or to swing by our retail shop because they have an external problem. They’re motivated to call us or swing by our retail shop or click “Buy Now” because they are frustrated about that external problem and they want that frustration resolved. When we aim some of our marketing messages toward the emotions that a human being experiences: frustration, anger, a feeling of ineptitude.

 

 

Keith Krance: Overwhelmed.

 

 

Donald Miller: Yeah, overwhelmed. Envy that our neighbor’s yard looks better than our yard. When we aim our marketing messages at resolving those frustrating emotions, we see an uptick.

 

 

Keith Krance: Wow. I love it. I love it. It makes perfect sense.

 

 

Donald Miller: It’s really just basic story structure. I’ll go through the rest of it real quick. Into those problems that our customers are having, we step in as a guide and there are two things that the guide does; two things Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi and Haymitch and all these characters do. When you do these things as a brand, you will position yourself as your customer’s guide, which is what they want you to be. They’re not looking for a hero, they’re looking for a guide.

 

 

  Those two things are empathy and authority. Empathy means that you understand and care about and have a genuine, sincere heart about the frustration your customer is living through. Then authority means you have demonstrated you have the competency to solve their problem. They’re looking for those two things: “You care about me and you know what you’re doing. You understand my pain and you can help me resolve it.” Statements like, “We’ve helped thousands of people who are frustrated with X resolve that problem through this program and experience a really great life,” those are powerful, powerful statements that bond us to a customer.

 

 

  Then there are all sorts of plans we can get into in our framework. A bigger one, just for your listeners that we don’t have to spend hours unpacking, is the guide has to call the customer to action. That you have to put a “Buy Now” button on your website, that you have to directly ask your customer to buy the product. If you don’t challenge them to buy it, they simply won’t buy it. Human beings do not move without, what’s called in story terms, “an inciting incident,” something that is challenging them and forcing them into the action.

 

 

  Then lastly, six and seven are failure and success. If we haven’t shown, talked about, the negative consequences that we’re helping our customers avoid, they won’t engage with our product or service. Likewise, if we have not given them a vision for what their life can be like, then they won’t engage, either. There have to be stakes in the game. I’m amazed at how many companies haven’t spelled out the negative consequences they’re helping customers avoid or the positive consequences they’re helping their customers experience if they buy their product.

 

 

  That’s the 7-Part framework. We take about 16 hours to unpack it and develop a message for each brand that we work with, but that’s it in a nutshell. We really believe that nothing a brand says on their website, in their Facebook ad, in their blogs, in their emails, nothing, not a single sentence, not a word, not a picture on their website, should come from anything but those seven modules. That’s the 7-Point framework and our message should come from that.

 

 

Molly Pittman: Yeah, Donald, I love what you just said about really speaking to pain points and benefits because that’s even what we teach in ad copy. If your ad copy can not only agitate a pain paint or speak to something negative that might happen if an action isn’t taken, but it can also paint this picture of what will happen if they do take the action or what benefits they will receive, that’s really the key to success. I really like how you rounded that out because, of course, ad copy is exactly the same. We’re all speaking to humans. It doesn’t matter if it’s a book or if it’s an email. We’re all speaking to humans. Our minds are all wired the same way.

 

 

Donald Miller: I want to just emphasize that to anybody who’s listening is we all love whiteboards. I have a feeling everybody listening to me right now loves a whiteboard.

 

 

Molly Pittman: Love whiteboards.

 

 

Donald Miller: Never met a whiteboard they didn’t love. On your whiteboard, on the top of the board, just write down every revenue stream you’ve got. Under each of those revenue streams, write down the pain that revenue stream resolves. Just make lists. That whiteboard will then give you enough copy and enough blog titles and email subject titles and bullet points on websites and Facebook ads to last you a long time. It’s only when we understand what pain we resolve that our product ever becomes interesting.

 

 

Molly Pittman: Wow. I’m going to do that after we get off of here. That’s an easy exercise.

 

 

Keith Krance: I love it. This is so good. There’s so much good stuff here. I think Number 5 was the one where you made a comment that people are not looking for a hero, they’re looking for a guide.

 

 

Donald Miller: If you really think about it, every human being wakes up self-identifying as the hero in a story. They have things they’re trying to get done. They’re experiencing some frustrations. When we show up and we start talking about our brand or our self or our vision or our goals or what we’re trying to do or what makes us different, all those kinds of things, they intuitively hear us saying, “Hey, I’m a hero, too. You’re a hero and I’m a hero.” They think to themselves, “That’s really interesting. I hope this person’s story goes well and I wish them the best, but right now, I wish they would get out of the way because I’m looking for a guide. I’m looking for someone who understands my story and is trying to help me rather than is living a story of their own.”

 

 

  We don’t need any more proof than just presidential campaigns. Think about John McCain. He was a war hero, a decorated war hero who was shot down over Hanoi and captured and kept for three years. He didn’t win the election. He won to somebody with limited military experience. Bob Dole was the same way. John Kerry on the Democratic side was the same way. I think what happens is, of course, America loves heroes and we honor our heroes and we have a deep, heartfelt appreciation and admiration for a hero, but there’s something subconscious when it comes to voting for a leader, someone to guide us, that we don’t look for a hero. We look for a guide. We look for somebody who talks more about our story than their story no matter how amazing their story actually is.

 

 

  It’s actually kind of a beautiful thing because people don’t naturally want to talk about themselves very much when it comes to branding. They feel like they have to. What I want to say to them is, you don’t have to. Just keep talking about your customer. Keep listening to their needs. Keep talking about their story. Enter into their story rather than telling your own story. There’s a place to tell your story. The guide can tell their backstory as long as all they’re sharing empathy and authority. If you’re sharing, “I used to struggle, and then I discovered this and now I don’t struggle with that,” that’s the only part of your story that actually matters to their story. We recommend telling that part of your story, but everything else just doesn’t matter. If your message doesn’t come from one of those seven modules, it is absolutely noise and nobody is listening.

 

 

Keith Krance: Okay, I love it. Let’s say someone’s thinking about a traffic campaign and they want to turn visitors into not just leads, but customers. Do they need to have all seven? Somebody might be thinking, “Okay, I need to go to the show notes and I need to get all these into one message.” To me, it sounds like it depends on where they’re at. What’s a good piece of advice for them? What kind of resources? Are there any images or anything like that that we can add to the show notes?

 

 

Donald Miller: Absolutely. There’s a PDF I’ve created called, “Your Brand is Not the Hero.” You get it just by texting. You can only get it by texting, but it’s texting the word “makeover” to 72000. It will have this grid in it. Essentially, what you want to do is you want to create a 1-Page story brand for your product.

 

 

  If I’m creating a landing page, I want to define what my customer wants. I want to define their three levels of problem. I want to create an empathetic statement. I want to demonstrate why I’m competent to help them with their problem. I want a 3-Step plan that they can engage in order to solve this problem. I’m going to call them to action to download this lead generator, or whatever. I want to define, in short, what failure I’m helping them avoid. Then I want to paint a really beautiful vision for what their life could be like.

 

 

  Now, do you have to have all seven? You don’t. I want everybody to think of these seven modules as something like cords on a guitar. Do you have to have all seven chords in your song? Absolutely not. You can use three or two or six of them. What I would say is, if you add an eighth cord that is not on this list, you’re going to ruin the song. You’re going to lose people. These are the only seven chords. There are no more chords. Don’t use any more chords than these. These have been battle tested for 2,000 years. If a screenwriter breaks the formula that has been proven, they lose millions of dollars at the box office. They are just rules that you can’t break.

 

 

  Everybody probably listening to me is going, “Oh, this doesn’t give me creative license or freedom.” I want you to think of it not like music in the sense, but if I were to play for you a recording of a dump truck backing up and birds chirping and children laughing, your brain would process that as noise. You would hear it as noise, and two weeks later you would never remember it.

 

 

  If we took noise, which is just waves traveling through the air, rattling your inner eardrum, and we submitted that noise to rules and formulas, we could create music. The brain processes music very differently. If I played for you a Beatles song, which again, it’s just noise submitted to rules, then your brain would remember that Beatles song possibly a week, two weeks, three weeks later. You might even be able to hum it back to me or even sing some of the words that were in that song. That’s the difference between noise and music. When we’re talking about filtering your marketing message, what the 7-Part framework allows you to do is filter out the noise. There’s nothing on that landing page that’s going to be wasted space.

 

 

  There’s a guy named Kyle Shultz who came through our workshop, and Kyle is an amateur photographer. He’s a fireman. He lives in Illinois. He wanted to leave his firefighting job and just sell his online course. He’s at shultzphotoschool.com. He put together this course and it’s aimed at parents to help them take better pictures. He used a launched like you guys teach. He made $28,000, which is pretty awesome for a firefighter and amateur photographer. Go Kyle!

 

 

Keith Krance: Totally.

 

 

Donald Miller: He sensed there was better. He bought our online version of our course and he filtered his message and he cut 90% of the text on his website. Can you imagine? I actually went through his website recently and I think he had about 250 words on the whole landing page. That’s ridiculous. That’s not very many words. To the same email list that he had just sent it to, he sent another email sequence based on what we had taught him, and sent them back to that sales page where he had cut 90% of the text out, and he had a $103,000 launch. It was the same list. It was the same product at the same price and he hadn’t burned his list at all.

 

 

  It’s just that he had sent a message to that list that fewer people understood than he thought. They couldn’t figure out why this would help them, why this would make them emotionally happy, why this would resolve some of their problems of a camera they paid too much money for sitting in a junk drawer that they never used. When he started talking about their narrative, as it relates to that camera and their desire to take pictures of their kids, he saw an enormous response.

 

 

  Today, Kyle launches that course, runs the course, and he’s no longer a firefighter. He left his job as a firefighter and he has a new full-time job where he works half the hours that he used to work and spends more time with his wife and kids. If we haven’t clarified our message, we’re not going to see people engage. Most of the websites that I look at are noise. They’re not music, they’re noise. We have to turn that noise into music and people will finally start engaging.

 

 

Keith Krance: We had Chris Stoikos of Dollar Beard Club on a few weeks back, and they’ve got guys running their Facebook ads that are new at Facebook. I look at their account, and because they tell such an amazing story in a different way—it’s pretty funny—but they have the lowest CPMs of any account in our business manager. It’s all because they do such an amazing job of telling the story.

 

 

  If you get two or three of these seven elements in an ad on your page that you didn’t have before, if you’re running paid traffic, your ROI will immediately, in some cases, double, triple. Then the other long-term effects of just being able to connect with people on a much deeper, more authentic, more emotional way is game-changing, I think. This is good stuff.

 

 

Donald Miller: Yeah. I believe it is.

 

 

Keith Krance: I appreciate it. All right, cool. This has been awesome stuff. We’ll have the seven steps in the show notes and also Donald has given us a great graphic. It’s a grid of the seven steps.

 

 

Donald Miller: Yeah. You’ll see it the way a screenwriter would lay it out with the ups and downs of a story. It will help you visually understand everything that we just talked about.

 

 

Keith Krance: Love it, love it! Any other resources you want to talk about or where people can find you?

 

 

Donald Miller: We just send people to 5 Minute Marketing Makeovers. It’s three five-minute videos that help people clarify their message in a super-simple course.

 

 

Keith Krance: Perfect. Perfect. 5MinuteMarketingMakeover.com?

 

 

Donald Miller: Yeah, they can spell it out or they can text the number: 72000. It doesn’t matter. It goes to the same place.

 

 

Keith Krance: Cool. I know Donald’s got a great podcast, as well, called StoryBrand. You can find that in iTunes.

 

 

It’s been great. This is episode is one I highly recommend listening to multiple times and maybe once every month or two. You want to come back and get this stuff. As you get better and better at telling these stories, you want to go back and listen to the foundational concepts like this. I highly recommend heading to one of his workshops. Thanks a lot, Donald, for coming on. Appreciate it.

 

Donald Miller: Yeah, I appreciate you guys. All the best.

 

 

Keith Krance: Cool. We will talk to you on the next one.

 

 

   

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