The FractionX Podcast
The Power of Story for Better Marketing
It's almost impossible to keep up with how quickly things change in marketing. Between the ever evolving technology and strategies, it's easy to get lost trying to stay current. But, there's one marketing principle that never changes - telling great stories. On today's episode Drew helps business owners understand the steps they have to take to become better story tellers and how they can better market their business.
It's almost impossible to keep up with how quickly things change in marketing. Between the ever evolving technology and strategies, it's easy to get lost trying to stay current. But, there's one marketing principle that never changes - telling great stories. On today's episode Drew helps business owners understand the steps they have to take to become better story tellers and how they can better market their business.
jacket. You know what's called. It's not a shirt it's not a jacket, it's a jacket have you ever now? What word do you use now? But I will now. It's a corduroy man. Remember that teddy ruxpin didn't? He wear a corduroy jacket. I did not expect you to say Teddy Ruxpin. God, I haven't heard Teddy Ruxpin a long time. You're missing, bro. You gotta, you gotta, dig deep in the well for those things.
Speaker 2:This is what I love about you is your mind goes places where I'm just like Teddy Ruxpin. That's great.
Speaker 1:So, um, drew, I hear this statement sometimes where people say I don't even know what they teach kids in a marketing class anymore, like, if you're taking marketing in college, obviously there's some foundational principles you learn, but the technology and the strategies change so often, and so what I'd love to talk about today is, like how do we deliver some value to the people that listen to the podcast? To give them maybe, like what's the current state of marketing and what are those tried and true principles that, no matter what the strategy really is, that they outlast what those strategies look like?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, you raise a great point. It's like when I'm talking to people about marketing, I don't really care so much about what they know or have learned or what they've done before. If they can't tell me what they're doing and what's next, then marketing has already passed them by wow okay.
Speaker 2:So if you don't have the kind of personality which I love, I mean you know me, I love to be on the kind of bleeding edge of things, front edge, so like I get real excited about change and new and different. If you're the type of person that just wants to like here's the way we've always done it and just lock in, like, especially in like the digital world, social media world and with ai now here to stay, I mean there's just you gotta have to, you have to be on the bleeding edge or know someone who is to do that. Um, but I would say, like the funny thing about marketing is I actually hate marketing. Okay, it's why I do it, because I hate it. I hate the way it's been done before, like there's, so there's there's such bad marketing out there and like I love good storytelling, which for me, that is all that marketing is is great storytelling. It's great, but I hate the the cheesy, cliche marketing side of things.
Speaker 2:And so when I'm working with, with, with companies, organizations, whatever, what I'm really mining for is story. Like I want, I want that brand, that company, to tell the why behind what they're doing, and so that's what I love to do. I love to help shape um, just the, the storytelling aspect of what they're doing and I have to give it, before we go too far, I have to give a shout out to just Don Miller, and story brand has been a great mentor and teacher for me. Um went through being certified through their program and so, just on the front end, a lot of what I'll say today is credit to them, because Don really brought to life this, this ancient storytelling modality. He just kind of put some clever handles on it but it's not really his idea, but he, he, he brought it to life.
Speaker 1:He packaged it in a way that I'm not a marketing person. I mean, the last time I thought about marketing was in a marketing class, you know in 2003. Yeah, and when they released the story brand framework, I was like, oh, this actually matters and this is different than anything I've ever been taught about this before.
Speaker 2:And we have. We had friends in the organization when it was just just coming up, right before, even before the book released or anything. And I remember we were an organization that was going through a really tough time with our identity and who we are and what's our brand and all that kind of stuff. And we brought in a friend, a consultant, to come in and kind of help us think through this stuff and I fell in love with it. To come in and kind of help us think through this stuff and I fell in love with it.
Speaker 2:And at that time, you know, our whole team was kind of responsible for the branding, but I knew to to execute that and to lead it out. That was going to be my responsibility long-term. And so instead of hiring a consultant to come in and work it, I went to our team and said, hey, would you allow me to get certified in this so that I can implement it. And that was kind of the beginning of that, of that journey for me, of of I had always a music. Music was and you know, similar to you, music was our background and I kind of got burned with that, wasn't doing that as much.
Speaker 2:And and also when you come to nashville and you're a musician like everyone in the room is better than you, yeah so I'm just like all right, and I just fell in love with storytelling and marketing, and so that's a big part of what we do For people that are uninitiated.
Speaker 1:give us the high-level look at StoryBrand and why that marketing framework seems to work so well for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think the big idea of StoryBrand is most companies make themselves the hero of the story, which makes sense. We want to talk about our product, our service, what we do, why it's the best, why we're the greatest, all those things. And really it's not until we get to um empathy and authority, it's not until we get to being the guide, as Don would say. We make the customer the hero of the story. Um, that's kind of the the, the big shift in in mentality, once you start seeing that you can't hardly go by a billboard or you can't see any marketing any other way but through that lens, and then you start wrecking. I remember, right after I got certified, I was sitting in a at the Franklin parade and these trucks were coming by and I was seeing all these marketing messages on these.
Speaker 2:You know the cars that are carrying the you know, whatever, and one after one, I just every single one had a message on there that made themselves the hero. Yeah, and I couldn't unsee it anymore. I was like my gosh, like we don't realize that we think we're, you know, doing the right thing by talking about ourselves. We realize that we're missing the point to solve a problem. And I think that's, you know, kind of the heartbeat of what I love to do with organizations is come in and help them. Look at who is the actual hero of your story, um, what problem do you solve for them? And uh, and we kind of go from there, we dig a little deeper.
Speaker 1:Well, what are some brands that have nailed this framework really well? And I will say like, yeah, let's just. I could just answer that question before I jump into the next thing I mean, my, this is gonna be really cliche answer.
Speaker 2:You kind of teed me up. I wish I had some like, really like esoteric yeah just some.
Speaker 2:But I mean, the reason why we know and love these brands is for this reason. But I think about apple, I think about nike, I think about disney. Those are some brands that I love to follow. Yeah, they're great storytellers. They don't lead with their product first, they lead with how they make you feel right. And so this is really the first part of that story.
Speaker 2:Brand framework is when you're looking at the problem that your hero has, you're looking at first. The external issue is, you know, I need a pair of shoes, I need a new computer or whatever. That's your external issue. But nobody buys external, they only buy internal and philosophical Right. And so if you can get to the philosophical like why do I deserve for this problem to be solved, then you've got a customer for life Right. And so if, if we can help companies dig deeper below, not just what you offer, but how does that that, how does that problem make your customer feel right, that's going to be your internal issue.
Speaker 2:Like I feel lost in buying a new computer. I feel like you know, nike's great about making you kind of feel like, hey, I've got this aspirational idea for myself of being healthy and being fit and being a runner. So I either feel like the negative side of it is I either feel out of shape, I feel and if I get these pair of Nike shoes, I'm going to, you know feel like I'm a winner. They do great with that and then, ultimately, the philosophical thing. So when I'm working with companies and brands, the very first thing we do is we dive into those three things. Okay, how can we reshape? Because this is going to inform everything. This is going to inform your one liner, your mission statement. Everything is going to come out of. What is the philosophical problem? That, um, that you solve for your, for your customers, great.
Speaker 1:And so this isn't just for the Nikes and targets and Disney's of the world, like really practical businesses, can have a marketing message like this. So, let's, let's take, um, let's take something kind of basic. Um, let's, let's do a construction company. Yeah, why, why do they need to have a story brand framework for their marketing messages?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we, we work with a great client. Shout out to Josh, he listens and we love Josh. And Stellan Owen is a great construction company in town here to give them a little shameless plug. But they do high-end remodels and builds all in the Nashville area and you were doing like a Strat Op, kind of like Fraction X does these off-site things. You were doing one of those for them and you invited me to come in the last hour of the day and I fell in love with the people of this company. I mean some really great people who really cared about what they do, really cared about their customers.
Speaker 2:Um, but instead of saying hey, we do great high-end remodel work, you know, or whatever it might be, we just started thinking and talking differently about, well, what is the problem that we could solve for our customers? And we started thinking about people's homes and what a home represents and what a home should be. This is the philosophical thing, like. I feel like I deserve to come home after a long day at work and have a place of peace and have a place of joy or have a place where I can gather my friends and my the villain of my story, if you will in their case, might be a space that is not designed well, a space that doesn't fit my needs, a space that doesn't fit my growing family. Maybe some of the fears or the problems is I can't afford to move in this Nashville market. I can't afford to start over. But I'm kind of in this home or I love my home. I just I need to tweak some things.
Speaker 2:What Stellan Owen can do is they can come in and really help on a philosophical level, you know, provide a place for you. And we just actually did a testimonial with a client and they're redoing their kitchen up in Gallatin and I love the story that they told because they've got grown kids and they said every time our kids come to the house, for some reason we always congregate in the kitchen. I don't know why. He's like I wish they would go to the living room, the kitchen, but it's too small.
Speaker 2:And so what Josh did at Stellan Owen is he sat down and he listened to them. Right, he listened to the problem that he could solve. And the reason why Stellan Owen landed that client was and they said this in the interview you listen to us, you heard the problem to solve. And then this guy would say man, I just picture my future grandkids sitting at this table with me coloring. And when he said that I was like that's it. It's not about a beautiful new kitchen, it's about I deserve I should have a place where I could sit with my grandkids and color in my kitchen. That is a quality of life thing that now Stellan Owen is providing and you know they've got a customer for life in these people because they met that problem.
Speaker 1:That's great. So what are some of those? You talked about the voice of empathy and what was the other voice of position Authority right?
Speaker 2:So there is an appropriate time to talk about yourself, but it's just not until like third and fourth down in that story brand framework. Because you're going to start with character transformation, like where do you want that character to go? We're starting all the way to the end. Then character transformation like where do you want that character to go, when they're starting all the way to the end? Okay, then you're going to dig into what does the character want. You're going to get into the problem that you're solving external, internal, philosophical and then they're going to meet a guide and that's where we come in. And the guide is is the most powerful person in the story? Like, yeah, yoda is the most powerful person in star wars? Right, the, the hero of the it was, was um, his name's luke skywalker, jude, you're gonna get crucified for this one I should edit that out.
Speaker 2:I don't know why I couldn't think of luke skywalker I was thinking I'm not even telling you what I was thinking it gets worse, but no, yoda is more powerful actually, but he is guiding. I was gonna call him john luke skywalker, john mark mcskywalker. Yoda is more powerful actually, but he is guiding. I was going to call him John Luke Skywalker.
Speaker 1:John Mark Skywalker.
Speaker 2:Literally one person might understand that reference. Again, this is why I love how your brain works. It's so random, but anyways. So we get to be the guide in the story. When they're working with our brain, that really got me, that's good. So when they, when we finally get to that point of the um of the process, the two things we get to show is authority and empathy, which is literally just authorities.
Speaker 2:Here's what we've seen. We've been doing this for a while. We've seen that when people work with us, they get X factors. So this is your testimonials, this is um, you know, you just being able to kind of the flex a little bit on how you've been able to serve and support other people. The empathy part is we understand, we get it Like. One of the most powerful things that you can do is attune to somebody else to say my story is your story. Like and this isn't not just a marketing, this is an all walks of life when you can attune to somebody and say, man, that must be tough, I get that or I understand what you're walking through, or we've been there too.
Speaker 2:Whatever, that is when we get to talk about ourselves, but that's really the only time in the whole marketing message that we talk about ourselves. It's only go ahead.
Speaker 1:The fatal flaw has to be for most companies they lead with authority. We're the biggest in our market share area for this type of business. Hey, we've signed the most clients out of everybody. Like they lead with authority, and so is it just harder for potential people to see themselves in the story. Because you're, you start with the authority.
Speaker 2:I think so. I think we're. We're so close to what we do that it becomes our baby, and so we just want to talk about our baby all the time. And you know it's like that. No one thinks your baby's as cute as what you do, right? And so I think it's just a harmless mistake that most companies fall into. It's like I want to talk about you know, my product, my service or whatever, and most people are thinking, great, well, I guess I'll call you when I need you, as opposed to when you start with a problem. A lot of times, especially in marketing, unless someone is like a really warm lead, a lot of times when you start with a problem, you gain a customer that didn't even know they were looking for what you were offering.
Speaker 2:And we talk about this a lot in the elevator pitch Once you get through your story brand, your whole process, and you get your brand script down that's what it's called Then you can really start to hone in your elevator pitch and that is how you talk about your, your business, when you're out in public. You know, and that is just problem solution success. You're, but again, unless you work the whole process, you're not going to be able to know what those, those things are. And so if someone meets you in public and I'm going to put you on the spot because you did this recently, okay, remember, you were telling me about it. No, so you did problem solution success. Let me see if I can bring this back. Someone asked you about what you did. Okay, yeah, do you remember? Am I?
Speaker 1:jogging your memory yet, yeah, something like. Yeah, I think I did it on the fly. It's like do you ever like? Do you know any leaders or people that own businesses that are just like stressed and tired and they want their business to grow but they feel stuck? Well, I run a company that helps come alongside leaders to improve their lives, make better decisions and strategically grow where they really want to grow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's perfect, and so that's for us at Fraction X. No-transcript. What we've seen this is success. Yeah, what we've seen the leaders that partner with fraction x. They're able to hit their goals. They feel less alone, whatever. We can go through a whole elevator pitch and never even mentioned our name, yeah, and potentially have a client who's interested in us, as opposed to saying, well, I do leadership consulting, okay, well, next, yeah.
Speaker 1:What does that even mean Exactly? Right, that's good. Well, I experienced a little bit of the like, the philosophy you talked about. The philosophical problem is my wife had a meeting last night, and so it was me and my girls and I was like, okay, it's dad dinner night and I can cook a couple of things, but every once in a while I'll just kind of run out of ideas.
Speaker 1:I was like, let's go to Chick-fil-A. And so I went to Chick-fil-A to bring them some food and they were like, dad, thank you for bringing us Chick-fil-A. Like I got to be the hero in the story, but really Chick-fil-A is a little healthier than McDonald's. So I feel like I'm I'm winning there. It's a values driven company. It's like, okay, yeah, they, they do some good with their. You know, we know people that lead in that organization and we know they have a great leadership philosophy. So I felt good supporting them. My kids were happy that we had it and I was like, okay, yeah, their food. And somehow my kids thought I was the hero of that story, perfect.
Speaker 2:And I was like that's that's story brand, because chick-fil-a is all about how it makes you feel yeah, right, like you, just it. Even the way that people treat you there, the culture of the place. You, you feel it. You feel so much different in a chick-fil-a drive-thru than you do in a mcdonald's 100. You just feel like you're in a mcdonald's drive-thru.
Speaker 1:You're like covering your face and hope people don't see you there and you just like so much shame in that drive-thru and I always embarrass my kids because I like to talk to the, the kids taking your order in line, and it was a little chilly last night and kid had a jacket. I was like hey, like how long you been out here? She's like an hour.
Speaker 1:I was like whoa, like she's like no, I can go anytime I want to, like I feel okay, and there just wasn't any frustration, there wasn't entitlement. She was in the cold taking people's orders in a line in a fast food restaurant and had a smile on her face and was happy to be there.
Speaker 2:They treat people well, especially young, I mean. It's a great organization for young people to be 100% the plans they put together.
Speaker 1:So I felt good about being a customer last night. You were the hero. Yeah, kids, that's right. So say you walk a potential client through some of this framework, yeah, okay. So now, now we've got the story, we've made our you know, our customer is now the hero of their journey and we're just guiding them to better results. What do you do next?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think it's all about now that, once you have your story kind of outlined, it's about about now how are you going to tell your story right? And so you know the way that people are doing that these days. Whether you love it or or hate it, it's through social media, right, digital media is the way we tell our story and I try to talk to our brand and say listen, we're not filmmakers, we're not movie makers here. We're not trying to make a feature film, we're not going to spend a bunch of money, do a one-time thing and then just let it sit there in the archive. We're, we're in a newsroom like we want to be telling these stories every day. We want to be shown up every day, which is it can be daunting for for leaders, which is a big part of of what my business does with.
Speaker 2:We have a business called amplify. My wife and I and we we just help, uh, companies and leaders tell stories every day, show up in their feeds every day and um, so yeah, that would be. The next step is to take. So what I do is I take that story brand script. We actually craft content around those ideas.
Speaker 2:So a part of empathy in the process is helping alleviate the fears that your customer has of doing business with you, right, and so you can make a list of 20 things, right? Well, that's 20 pieces of content that you can tell in 30 seconds, 45 seconds, that place, and you can just kind of read you know, go through those every month, every year, you know, kind of revisit those, repackage and reskin them. But this is the core of your content and what I love about in today's culture. In some ways, the more and I know, organic is a buzzword, but basically we're just saying the more real, the more authentic, the more believable it is, the better it's going to work, right. So you looking down a camera and presenting something and it's real, polished people like, okay, you worked on that, you produced it, yeah, but someone just telling their story to a phone and putting it out there.
Speaker 2:And I'm not saying, put out low quality stuff, I'm just saying you don't have to spend tons of money on production, you don't have to spend tons of time. I mean even the way we work with our clients. We're like, hey, if you give us a few hours a month, we can come in, we can grab the content for you, we can post it for you, we can show up, we can engage, we can do all that stuff. But your story needs to be told consistently. Some would say every day, two times a day. There's that school of thought. I'm more in like, hey, just just showing up consistently, even if it's three times a week, you know, is better than just, hey, we're going to put a bunch of stuff out there and then let it sit. No, you gotta you know, you gotta show up, yeah.
Speaker 1:So with with social media is there? Is it trying to turn a community of people into potential clients, like. So we're taking this framework and turning it into some pieces of content that show up every day, like what's, what's the next target after that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's a little bit of both. I like to think of social media more nurturing you know, and it.
Speaker 2:It really depends on your brand, right? Your? It depends on what your product is. Is it you're going after quantity, right? Like you're going after? You know? I think about, like, selling a product where it's like, hey, we just need to turn as many of these products as we can, right? Or is it big projects yeah, you know, we mentioned stella, no, and it's like, hey, they're not going to necessarily close a client every day.
Speaker 2:I mean they yeah they'd love to, but I'm just saying they're. They're going after big, big clients, right, these are people that are doing big remodels or new home builds or whatever, and so there's more of a nurturing that happens so that when a customer needs us, they know where to find us. Okay, that's good. So that's true in our email campaigns, that's true with whatever lead generators. We do A lot of marketing. Digital marketing today is you do something, you see what works and you pour gas on it. Okay, right, where? In the past, it was like we're going to take this risk, we're going to put this big budget together, do this big campaign, go board commercials, yeah, and then we're going to launch it and we're gosh, I hope it works. We put a lot of money into it. Now it's more about we're going to show up consistently and then we're going to see what takes off.
Speaker 1:And then we might, might even pull that back, reskin it a little bit work on it and put it back out there, or we may just put a little bit of money in target market behind a post. Is that like the idea of micro content?
Speaker 2:where it's like a smaller piece that if it starts to work, yeah, okay, yeah, for whatever reason, the hook on that piece, the title on it, the copy, the video, the storytelling, for whatever reason, it just it's working. You know, and I would just be really um careful for any marketer or any social media person that comes in with too much confidence, knowing exact, they know exactly what to do to make you go viral. Yeah, that's just not true. That's just there's too much and there's not. When they talk about the algorithm, it's not even. It's not one algorithm, it's multiple algorithms, multiple things, and so it's almost. I'm not going to say it's impossible, but it's really hard to promise and guarantee that a certain post, if we do this, that the other is going to go viral, viral. Usually it surprises you what hits and what works, but for me that's the adventure of it.
Speaker 2:Okay, I love that part of it because I'm like, okay, well, let's try a bunch of things. And then we look back at it. We're like, oh my gosh, this one took off. What is it about this one that made it work? And then you kind back at it. We're like, oh my gosh, this one took off. What is it about this one that made it work, and then you kind of dissect it and you do more of the same and then you know that's part of it that I actually love. And so, yeah, I think the micro content showing up every day, I think taking the pressure off that we've got to, you know, put together this really high, polished high. You know, it's not about that. It's about allowing yourself to empathize with your customer, alleviate their fears and just show up with your story, your personal story, why you do what you do, that's great.
Speaker 1:So maybe just last question here. So if you're sitting with a business leader, someone who's running a company, who's never really spent money on marketing before, what's the best way to get started in trying to better market your product or your service?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean that's a great question. I think marketing is one thing that it's. It's one of those things that it can be tough to spend money on, right, like you're like man and you really want ROI from it, which I get. It's like, hey, if I spend this amount, I got to make more than this amount for it to make sense, right? So I get that it's tough.
Speaker 2:And the challenge is like with, especially with social media, you gotta, you gotta be willing to commit to it for a certain period of time. You're not, it's not just going to happen overnight. Um, but I would say you, you can start small. You don't have to start with massive contracts or massive whatever. You can start with. Hey, I'm going to take the next 90 days and we're going to try some things, I'm going to shoot some reels, I'm going to put some stuff out there, I'm going to see what's working.
Speaker 2:The great thing about social media today is, you know, there's there's analytics out there now that show you exactly what's working, what's not working, and so it's not a guessing game. You know, I can work with a client and show them exactly how many people, through one ad that I send them to their website, that click, what link that took what action, and so I can show them and we can make decisions based on that, because I had one client that we sent tons of people to their store but they weren't buying, which that tells us a story, right? It's like they're showing up. Someone walked into your physical store and you had 300 people walk through your store in one day and no one bought your product. That's a problem. That's a problem, but it's also telling you something, right? So now you've got to evaluate is there something with my product? Is there something with my price point? But those are all factors that we can tweak and adjust.
Speaker 1:So marketing can be a bit of discovery on some level, because you go, oh well, what's not, this isn't working, and marketing to show me why that's not working.
Speaker 2:And nine times out of 10, because we're so close to our business as business leaders. What we think will work doesn't, and what we think doesn't work does. I mean that's just the way it works, right. We come in and we say hey, this is how it. And it's what we're most excited. It's not a you know.
Speaker 2:That's why most all of our work is all retainer work because contract yeah, there's nothing we're going to be able to do, but hire us to bring us in, do you know? A few hours post some reels. It's like, okay, that's great, but this is something that we have to nurture and look at over the long run.