I have been reading the book ‘Building A Story Brand’ by Donald Miller for the last couple of days. It explains why some companies dominate the market while some fail to get a single customer. I am reading this and trying to apply the framework mentioned in the books to my personal brand.
In this blog, I will be talking about:
Why stories are important in building a strong brand?
What is SB7 framework?
How to apply SB7 in personal branding?
Story Brand
Most companies follow the same statements when talking to a prospect.” Our company has these offers, our company has these results, our company has better offers than our competitors,” and so on. What they don’t notice is that customer don’t even care about all these things, they want the company to understand their problems.
Similarly, websites are loaded with tons of information about the company and this creates confusion for the customer and they choose to go to their competitor. Our brain wants to understand what exactly the company has to offer with the least effort, therefore if the company’s message is not clear they won’t choose their services.
What every company needs is a message which is easy to remember and easy to understand. Like great stories last forever, a great company uses storytelling to make its brand unique and attract customers like a magnet.
SB7 Framework.
Author Donald studied hundreds of stories from movies, books, and plays and found a pattern common in almost every story. It goes like this:
A character(hero) with high ambitions in his life encounters challenges while achieving them, and then finds a mentor/guide who guides him, gives him a plan, and calls him to action. That action helps him to avoid failure and he succeeds.
Big companies like Apple have used this same pattern to create stories in the lives of their customers which made Apple dominate the technology space. This pattern/framework is called StoryBrand 7 or SB7.
SB7 framework for a companies goes like this:
The character: Defining the hero of this story is our first step. And you got it wrong it’s not the company, it’s the customers themselves.
Has a problem: The challenges that our hero is facing, which the company’s product or service can solve.
Meets a guide: Customers are not looking for another hero, they are looking for a guide, and here comes the entry of the company.
Who gives them a plan: The company provides a set of actions that our hero should follow to overcome their challenges.
Calls to action: Defining a call to action for the hero/customer who already has trust in the company but is needed to tell how to work with them.
Avoid failure: Tell the customer what they will lose if they don’t work with this company.
Ends in Success: Customers are told where they will be taken(desired result) once they work with them.
Placing the story in between the lives of the customers makes them feel they are understood and thus builds trust and connection with the brand.
Note: All steps of the SB7 are not elaborated enough. I will create a series of blogs continuing this one to explain each step in detail.
SB7 in Personal Brand
Companies create brands to give the company human qualities. The best part is we already are human(discovery). So using this framework for our brand can build the same connection and trust it builds for the company.
I am comparing selling a product or service with the follow and engagement. People follow you if they think you have solutions for their problems and you can guide them to overcome them. The more you talk about their problems and give a solution for them, the more they will trust and engage with you.
So the first step is defining my hero(my past self), finding the problems(problems I faced in the past), solving them, and finally comparing my current achievements with my past self to show where failure will lead them and where success will.
I haven’t finished the book yet so the exact plan is not yet created but I am sure of the fact I can grow and learn at the same time and so you can.
If you haven’t followed me on Twitter, follow me to see the experiments I am performing.
That’s all from DAY 9.