The 3-Phase Messaging Campaign That Fuels Sales

There's three phases of a messaging campaign. People get curious, they want to know more, and then they buy. Curiosity phase is the most important phase. I'm going to talk about curious that's what I'm talking about. They stop and say, wait, say that again. Wait, this looks good. Wait, I'm going to open up this email. I'm convinced that most businesses can double in revenue if they just get their curiosity sound bites right. [MUSIC PLAYING] If you have ever struggled to explain what your business does, or you felt like your marketing should be converting better than it is, this might be the most valuable two days you spend this year. Story brand your business live. It's a two-day in-person workshop happening May 7th and 8th in Nashville. That's not a conference. It's a working session where you will build clear messaging for your business, create five survival sound bites that you can use immediately and get direct feedback from Story brand certified guides who are in the room with you until your message actually makes sense to customers. So far, all of this year's workshops have sold out, so don't miss your chance to attend this May. If you want marketing and messaging that is simpler, clearer, and more effective, just go to Story brand.com/live and join us in Nashville this May. [MUSIC PLAYING] You're listening to the Story brand podcast based on Donald Miller's best-selling book, Building a Story Brand. The Story brand framework is made up of seven key elements, all of them anchored in one powerful idea. Your customer is the hero and you are their guide. Each week on the podcast, you'll get exactly what you need to craft clear messaging that connects with more customers and grows your business. Now let's dive in with your host, Donald Miller. [MUSIC PLAYING] Let's talk about a messaging campaign. What is a messaging campaign? What is a marketing campaign? And what is the difference? I think a marketing campaign is a little more logistical. Marketing campaign is we're going to run paid ads in these magazines, paid ads on these websites, paid ad through meta, whatever. And that's going to cause people to download this lead generator. And then when they download this lead generator, we're going to put them in email and text funnel. You know, that sort of thing. I think of marketing campaign as logistical. When I think of a messaging campaign, I think of what are the words that we're going to use in our marketing campaign. And the fundamental idea is this, come up with your messaging campaign first and then build your marketing campaign around your messaging campaign. What do I mean by that? Well, I was recently with a client, ID.me, ID.me. If you've ever filed for taxes, you used ID.me as identification verification. Fantastic company, fantastic leadership. They came to town, we had a great time. Blake Hall is their CEO, he's a genius, war veteran, war hero, started a company really helping Vets, massive, massive compassion for his clients. And he just believes that your identification should be secure and protected online. The issue with them was you get an ID.me verification to file your taxes. There's 150 million people who've done that already. So 150 million people are using the product. But they don't realize that ID.me is not just identification verification that they use, almost like proof it's you so you can file your taxes. It'll do a thousand things and you can go to ID.me to find out about it. Like a lot of any time you need somebody to prove their identity, ID.me is who you can use to do that. And so we came up with a messaging campaign. And the messaging campaign was this, anywhere it says ID.me, we want to put how the internet proves it's you. And you say, well, you used to just say ID.me, but imagine every time you saw ID.me, how the internet proves it's you. And you read that as you filed taxes, well, how many people who have businesses who need some sort of identification verification will now read that and realize, oh, that's the person that we need to go to in order to prove that these people are who they say they are. Well, all of a sudden we've told everybody in a short statement, a tagline, what this product is useful for. And that statement was not there before. So this is a $2 billion company. I would expect they put that statement on there. And they're going to at least double, right? Go to $4 billion because all these potential buyers and people who need that application will suddenly realize what they do. So these are, this is very complicated. This is a very complicated product. And we had to figure out a messaging campaign to slowly help people realize, people by the way, who are not paying attention, slowly help them realize what this product does, what it's useful for, how they, and how they can use it to improve their lives. And so we spend a day together and we'll spend the next eight weeks rolling out that campaign. That is a messaging campaign. A marketing campaign is, let's run an ad saying IDMe, you know, use IDMe or whatever. Now that we know what the messaging committee is, we can run more effective ads. So I'll explain to you the three phases of a messaging campaign that I was thinking about when we met about IDMe. The three phases of a messaging campaign, if you're watching on YouTube, if you're not watching on YouTube, go subscribe to our YouTube channel, it's the StoryBrand YouTube channel because it's like a college class every episode. But there's three phases of a messaging campaign, curiosity, enlightenment and commitment. And right now I've got a picture of the communication triangle, StoryBrand communication triangle on the screen. Curiosity, enlightenment and commitment. These are three different levels, if you will, or kinds of messaging that you use to introduce people to your product and invite them into a story in which they use your product to win the day. So what is the curiosity phase? The curiosity phase is the most important phase of the messaging campaign. The curiosity phase involves short, simple, bumper sticker-like statements that say what it is that you do, that your product does. But more importantly, those short bumper sticker statements need to explain how your product can help people survive. And I wanna repeat that again 'cause it's so important. The curiosity phase of the campaign involves short, simple, bumper sticker-like statements, sound bites, that explain how your product helps people survive. Why? Because the only thing the human brain pays attention to is survival. You are constantly scanning your environment for people, products, leaders, ideas, that will help you survive. Your brain is always looking for it. Why? Because the brain's job is to keep you on the planet. The brain's job is to help you stay alive. So you have to associate your products or services with the survival of your potential customer or client in such a short, simple statement, a zero cognitive load statement is what I call it. That they stop and pay attention. They will not be curious about anything else. And when I'm talking about curious, that's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about they stop and say, wait, say that again. Wait, I'm interested in that. Wait, I'm gonna open up the email. Wait, I'm gonna keep reading down this website. The reason that you're continuing to stay on that website rather than bounce on that website, I guarantee you, is because you've found something that will help you survive. And so if you don't have words on your website that explain how you will help somebody survive, they will bounce. And by the way, if they bounce, they will never get to the enlightenment collateral, the enlightenment messaging, which is allowed to be higher cognitive load, more long-winded, more long-form, more educational, most small businesses and leaders, they start with high cognitive load enlightenment statements and they never actually peek anybody's curiosity to get them there. They assume when they meet with their customer that they're on the fifth date, when actually they never even ask the customer out. And so that makes for a really awkward and weird interaction. I have a whole course on it. The story of an sound bite strategy, go to storybin.com and see about it. The whole course is how to write five curiosity statements. The whole course, I charge 500 bucks for that course. You know what that course is worth? Millions, because if you don't have those curiosity statements, you can't get anybody to want to be enlightened. And you're so close to your products that you're speaking over people's heads, you're starting with enlightenment and you're losing the overwhelming majority of potential customers because you haven't reduced your offer to sound bites associated with your customer's survival. So curiosity is the first phase of the campaign. The second is the enlightenment. Okay, so enlightenment is where you begin to explain. Here's how it works. Here's what it costs. Here's what life will look like if you buy it. Here's the science behind it. Here's the history of our company and why we care so much about building it. Here's the authority that we have to get the science right. Here are the people who've used it and what their lives look like. That's all of everything I just talked about is enlightenment material, not curiosity material. And if you're opening with that, here are the features and benefits of our product. You know, we're just releasing a car with a 2.6 liter, whatever, four cylinder, that's enlightenment material. Right? Super easy and fun to drive. That's curiosity material. A truck you can actually afford. Made of titanium, whatever. Enlightenment material, not even good enlightenment material. Won't rust, curiosity material. You see what I'm saying? You got to get more curiosity material. I always say put the cookies on a lower shelf so the kids can reach them, ladies and gentlemen. So then we get into enlightenment. And enlightenment is where you share white papers, case studies, all that kind of stuff if you're B to B. It's where you share the science of how your product works. Your mission that you're on to change the world, all of that is enlightenment. By the way, your mission in how you try and change the world is not good marketing copy because nobody cares. You care, your team cares, but people really care about getting a good deal and will this product work. They want to find out later that you're on some kind of mission because it makes them feel a little bit better by buying that product, but not it's not really that important. Run your business solidly first and then explain the behind the scene stuff over a whiskey to a friend who asks you. All right, then we go around the corner from enlightenment and after we've enlightened people, we can ask them to commit and we can incentivize them to commit. And we can do bonus offers and things like that. And we can clearly communicate that we want you to buy this product. So that's the sales collateral. So the curiosity collateral is the attention-getting lead magnet, short statement, survival associated statements that get me to say, tell me more. And then you're going to enlighten me about why your tacos are the best tacos in town because you use whatever. Use these ingredients, fresh ingredients, use this, use that. Nothing is ever frozen. There's not a freezer in our shop. It's all refrigerated. So tell me all that stuff. If you're enlightening me about what I care about, which is a good taco. And then you say, by the way, it's by one, get one free on Tuesdays. Come Sunday after church. We'd love to see you. That's commitment collateral. So you need all three levels of messaging in an effective messaging campaign. And then once you have that, here's what we're going to say in curiosity. Here's what we're going to say in enlightenment and here's what we're going to say in the commitment phase. Then you stick those messages into a marketing campaign. This is why everybody who has a business needs to hire a story brand marketing guide as your marketer of choice because they understand this. They will sit down and they will work through the messaging campaign before they ever wireframe your website, before they ever come up with your email campaign. As well, they should and other people should too, but they don't. They just rip you off because they start with marketing and they start with your brand colors in your logo. You need a three phase messaging campaign. Now, once you know what your curiosity messaging is, your enlightenment messaging is and your commitment messaging is you can actually start creating collateral. So what kind of collateral? Well, brand scripts, brand scripts are, if you read my book, building a story brand, those seven sound bites are seven categories of sound bites that you need to invite somebody into a story. And then let's reduce those into your sound bite strategy. If you've taken my course, story brand sound bite strategy, you know what those are. They're five sound bites, the problem sound bite, empathy sound bite, answer sound bite, change sound bite, and end result sound bite, the peace sound bites. Now let's start building our elevator pitch. I like the elevator pitch. It's, we're still, we're moving a little bit out of curiosity at this point. Even an elevator pitch, by the way, is moving toward enlightenment. Bumper sticker statements are curiosity collateral. Elevator pitch. And then we're going to wireframe some landing pages and some websites using slightly more nuance, slightly more enlightening material. Our social media posts, our social media posts need to be really curiosity driven and drive people to our website, which is bridging between curiosity and enlightenment. Then we're going to do lead generators and we're getting, we're getting into enlightenment material at this point. White paper case studies assessments on demand courses, webinars, little more enlightenment, video scripts for YouTube. Somebody goes to YouTube and they want to know how to lower their cholesterol, 100% permission to be an enlightener at that point. You can teach some more text, more nuanced ideas, although always try to keep it as simple as possible. Advertising copy. I would put advertising copy probably in a different place in different order. I'd put it up closer to elevator pitch, but it is curiosity moving into enlightenment. Email and text campaigns, definitely moving more and more into enlightenment. Sales rep talking points, enlightenment, newsletters, enlightenment, keynote presentations, open your keynote with curiosity and move into enlightenment, explanatory videos, clearly in the enlightenment category. Pitch decks, definitely, they're sitting down, they're giving you the mental capacity to go ahead but always open your pitch decks in the curiosity phase and move into enlightenment. Proposals, 100% enlightenment, slash commitment. We're moving into the commitment, we're incentivizing people to buy contracts, even your contracts should be written carefully so that they are still selling and affirming the value. Surprise and delight collateral, even after they commit, there's bonus incentives in here to get them to commit and then surprise and delight collateral after they commit, continue to make that customer a brand evangelist and then brand evangelist collateral, many books, solidly enlightening, books, enlightenment collateral, that's 19 ideas of collateral that you can create out of the curiosity, enlightenment and commitment messaging that you created in a messaging campaign. And I do these things called the $100,000 pitch deck. We spend a day together and we figure out your message and we put it inside of a pitch deck. And the reason that I like starting with a pitch deck is a pitch deck starts with curiosity, moves through enlightenment and covers commitment all in one pitch deck or keynote presentation. In other words, when we finish your pitch deck, we get the whole thing, the whole messaging campaign. And then the reason you pay me so much is not for the pitch deck, although the pitch deck is worth it, we actually start looking at all your advertising, your website, your lead generators, the emails that are going out of, you know, radiators, television commercials, all of it. And we just say, okay, are we on message? Is the message that we've created to make this pitch deck being distributed in all other levels of marketing and messaging? And if it is, we've got a cohesive, solid story brand campaign. But you need all three levels. And by the way, curiosity creates consumer curiosity, enlightenment creates consumer confidence and commitment creates consumer commitment. They get curious, they want to know more, and then they buy. Those are the three phases of an effective messaging campaign. And if your marketing campaign didn't start with a messaging campaign, it's probably not as effective as it could be. By the way, if you want to create an effective messaging campaign, go to storybrand.com, I've got that course, the story brand soundbite strategy, you can grab that course right now at storybrand.com. We'll see you next week.