48. My brand story in 15 minutes a day. Part 6 - Putting it all together

You've got all your story talking points captured, and now it's time to use them. There are some very quick wins that you can get out of this brand script that you can use straight away, and there are some more advanced things that you can do with these talking points now that you've got them to really help to transform the whole of your sales and marketing communications

In this last episode of our build-your-own-story sprints, we finish up our deep dive into storytelling. Today, we'll see how the elements of your story come together and how you can use them to clarify your message and inspire your audience throughout all of your business communications.

To help you improve your marketing strategy, download the free brand script worksheet, which includes sections for each part of the storytelling framework we discuss in our episodes, here (or copy and paste the link below): 

wantauthentic.com/brandscript

---

Join marketing experts Simon Harvey and Daniel Kleber on Authentic Marketing, the biweekly podcast that provides proven marketing tips to improve your marketing efforts and help your business grow.

Subscribe to our biweekly episodes dropping Friday on your favourite podcast platforms like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other.

Book a consultation with our Authentic Engagement coaches to help you navigate through the jungle of the business world: demodia.com/sales-marketing-review

Demodia Instagram: instagram.com/demodia_digital

Demodia LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/demodia

Chapters

• 0:02 Overview
• 0:32 Introduction
• 2:48 Coaching session
• 17:31 Plan of Action

Transcript

Simon Harvey: 0:05

Well, we've made it to the end. You've got all your story talking points captured, and now it's time to use them. In this last episode of our build your own story sprints, we finish up our deep dive into storytelling. Today, we'll see how the elements of your story come together and how you can use them to clarify your message and inspire your audience throughout all of your business communications. So let's get started. Hi there, I'm your host Simon Harvey and welcome to the Authentic Marketing Podcast in association with Demodia, where we give you actionable advice that will help you create marketing that works. So welcome to the last episode in this special season that we've been running at the moment we've been looking at the whole of our storytelling process and in each episode we've been breaking down what you need to talk about and how you can discuss each of the individual steps within your own business story. So we've learnt in those episodes, we've talked about the hero, we've talked about the problem that they have looking at internal and external problems. We've talked about the plan and how to build out that with call to action. And then in our last episode, we talked about the resolution and the transformation in there. So for today, what we want to do is to try and wrap things up a little bit and just explain to you how you can use some of these things. There's some very quick wins that you can get out of this brand script that you can use straight away, and there's some more advanced things that you can do with these talking points now that you've got them to really help to transform the whole of your sales and marketing communications, and not just, you know, something on a PowerPoint slide or a few words on your website, the storytelling idea and this brand script that we've put together built can be used in so many different places at the top level. You can think of it as being the story for your overall company. Underneath that, you might have individual stories that you build that tie back into that top level story that talk about your products or your services inside there. You might take a different approach and spin on your story and use it for employer branding. So when you're doing HR, so there's so many different ways that story can be used. So we're going to drill into some of those things. Um, of course, if you want to follow along and join in with us here and create your own brand script, we've got the brand script template that's available. You can find that by going to wantauthentic. com slash brand script. I think that's about it for my intro at the moment. As always, sitting at the side of me here is Daniel. Hi there, Daniel. How are you doing? Hello, Simon. Thank you. I'm doing good. Good. Let's take a look at a bit more of this then,

Daniel Kleber: 2:57

so Yes, let's take a look. So, now we got pretty far. We have the hero, We have the problem, the guide, and we have the plan that will lead the hero to success.

Simon Harvey: 3:11

Indeed, yeah.

Daniel Kleber: 3:12

You know, to me, that sounds like we have all the parts that we need for a successful story. But, the question comes up, how can we pull all of these parts together? To create the successful story, what are some hints that you can give us from your experiences?

Simon Harvey: 3:39

been filling in your brand script, you probably have found that as you go through each of the sections, you've put down lots of different ideas in there or summarize lots of different bullet points, lots of different thoughts. So the first thing that I would recommend that everybody does at this point. Is to go back and in the brand script, you'll see I put a gray box in there, so pull out one sentence or a very short paragraph for each of the points. So summarize basically all of your ideas for each of those sections and pull out the thing that's most important in there and summarize that in one sentence, a couple of words or a very short paragraph. You've then got something that you can take away and you can give a clean version of this overall brand script to the rest of your organization. You know, what I often do is to pull out each of those points into a PowerPoint slide and then I just call that my talking points deck. You know, it's a little bit like having a brand identity document that tells you how you use your logo and how you use your colors. This becomes your talking points deck. That you can then share with everyone in the company and say, this is how we talk about ourselves. This is how we talk about the problem that our customer has. This is how we talk about our organization and how we solve that problem in there. This is how we talk about the challenges that our customers have and the success that they'll see afterwards. So it becomes a really important document if that's used correctly there. So that would be my first point. Take those points, summarize them, and share that widely. My second point, I think, is as you're going through and trying to create those summarization bits, think about the words that you're using. Again, we're trying to create a sort of an inspirational story here. And what I often find, again, particularly when we're talking about business stories and you're talking about technologists or you're talking to consultants, often the words that people choose and they use to describe things like the problems or the success, they tend to be quite clinical. So you might want to use or think about how you can use more aspirational type terms and aspirational ideas. You know, it's like painting in muted colors and pastels rather than painting in vibrant colors. It can be a bit scary at first to use lots of vibrant colors, but the results that you get are far more successful. And this definitely is a hint I would give here is go away and use ChatGPT. You know, if you've defined what your problem is and you've put a few sentences in there, go into ChatGPT, type in your thoughts and say, can you summarize this? Can you give me a more aspirational way of explaining this? AI can be your friend in this case. I wouldn't recommend going and asking it to create your whole story, but if you break down the individual little bits and use it for what it's good at, you can get some really nice ideas, I think, out of there. So that would be my number two idea in here, or number two suggestion. The third thing that I think I would recommend doing, you'll find a section in the script that we haven't yet talked about that's called the controlling idea. And the controlling idea is it's a concept that filmmakers and writers often use to just describe the journey that the hero is going to go through the sort of the general concept that they're trying to get across through this story and through this journey and this transformation in here. And often you'll find the controlling idea is actually a little bit like the philosophical problem that you come up with. So the controlling idea could be that staff should never have to fill in timesheets themselves and then that controls how you think about the other sections. When you're thinking about how you answer those other sections, you go back and think about how does that relate to my general idea of staff not having to fill in their own timesheets. Your controlling idea could be that nobody should have to have a bad looking garden. Everybody should be entitled to a good looking garden. Something along those lines. That could be a controlling idea that you think about for your story about a gardener there. So again, use that in there and just keep things tied up so that you don't start going off in lots of different directions. The last thing that I would do, and then I'll let you jump in again because I know I'm doing a lot of talking today, Daniel. The last thing that I would look at is the last thing in your script here, which I call the validation script. And this is really just a set of paragraphs that you'll find right at the end of the script document. And this is really useful for just. Helping you to understand whether what you've put in there is cohesive. Does everything tie together? I've mentioned in previous episodes that one of the problems that I see quite frequently when people go through this themselves, they'll come up with a problem, they'll talk about the success that this brings about. Or the thing that the customer wants, et cetera, you know, they'll come up with a whole load of really good ideas, which in their own sort of standalone world work really well. You know, if you look at each of those points individually, you can say, yes, this really is the problem. And yes, this is what success looks like. But the trouble is what we're trying to do is create, as I say, a cohesive story here where everything relates to each other and it takes the hero through a physical journey. And what often happens is that you come up with a great idea and it doesn't relate. So the problem that you've talked about, the solution isn't a solution to that problem in there. So what we've got at the end of the document, you'll find this sort of what I call the validation script in here, which is just, it's a template that you can fill in each of your individual sentences into. And when you read this out together, It will give you an idea of whether or not this thing works because you'll read it through and you'll say in order to do this, you need something that your character wants. And the problem is this and it makes you feel this way. And if those things don't align when you start to read it like that, it would be the problem is you've got no water on you need the sun shining. Those things don't align, so you need to make sure that all of those bits come together, and that's the last thing I'd recommend there is go through, fill out that validation script at the bottom, read it through, and go back and adjust just to make sure everything sort of works and everything fits together. I'm going to take a pause, so back to you Sari Daniel.

Daniel Kleber: 10:15

Simon, thank you very much for explaining everything in such detail. But I have a really good idea, you know. How about we use the story in an elevator pitch?

Simon Harvey: 10:26

Yep, I think that's another great idea. Yeah, maybe you can explain what an elevator pitch is to everyone that's listening.

Daniel Kleber: 10:32

Yeah, an elevator pitch, Simon. That is a kind of pitch that you could demonstrate in an elevator. Yes, you heard right, in an elevator. Yep. Imagine you and your customer meet up in an elevator instead of a normal meeting room. And now, you have to pitch your story to him. In an elevator, so you don't have much time. You only have a few sentences to say. And that's what an elevator pitch is all about.

Simon Harvey: 11:06

Very good. That's pretty good. So how do you create the elevator pitch here? Let me explain. So very similar to the validation script that I talked about a minute ago. I've got another useful little template that you can fill in. And this is called my elevator pitch template so I'm not sure if that's in the bottom of the brand script but I can send you that if you want to drop me a message or I'll post that up and a link to that basically in the show notes here. But what we've got is basically about four paragraphs here that you can use just to fill in your working points. Your elevator pitch goes something like at Demodia, you know, the company name in here. I work daily with, and then you can describe your heroes. Then it says, they want to, and then you describe the characters want. But the problem is, And then you can describe their external problem. And this leaves them feeling, and you can talk about the internal problem. So, I know that you want to be an identity transformation, which is why I believe that, and then some philosophical problem. And then I understand empathy, which is why we And then give your authority in here. So by doing this, my customers no longer have to talk about failure. And instead they're able to achieve success. So that's a really simple template that I use all the time just to take the key points of the talking or the key talking points from the brand script there and literally just turn them into something that you can use straight away. So yes, Daniel said, if you meet somebody in an elevator or if you're a trade show, you can sit there and just say to them, you know, Hi there, what do you do? Yeah, I work for a company called Demodia and every day I work with sales guys and marketers that have problems explaining what they do. They want to be able to sell products quickly and effectively, but the problem is, They can't explain what they do in a way that their customers understand. And this leaves them feeling frustrated because sales are taking too long. There's no leads coming into their website, et cetera. But I know that they want to be great salespeople and they want to be successful businesses. Which is why I believe that everybody should have a communication tool that they can use to explain what they do. I understand how difficult it is for people that aren't trained in communications to be able to summarize these things and communicate clearly, you know, which is why I help myself. I help companies to work with a process, you know, which is why we created a process for creating a tool. Telling stories within organizations. And by doing this, you know, my customers no longer have to struggle with slow sales or lost competitive deals. And instead they're able to grow their business without even having to think about it, you know, that will be my brand script.

Daniel Kleber: 14:07

Good.

Simon Harvey: 14:07

I'm glad you like it. It took me a long while to come up with that.

Daniel Kleber: 14:15

That makes sense. Yes. Um, thank you, Simon. Elevator pitch is definitely a great opportunity to, uh, give away a short idea of what you do now. Let's say we have created an elevator pitch. Yeah. Which channels can I use this elevator pitch on?

Simon Harvey: 14:35

Your elevator pitch, I mean, you can use in lots of different places, but also the brand script, I think you can use in lots of different places, all these talking points. So, as I mentioned, your elevator pitch is perfect if you're at a trade show. You can create something like that and you can very quickly explain exactly what you do. Teach it to everybody that's on your booth. When somebody comes up, that's what they kick off with. Really quick and easy. Other things that you can do. These talking points work great in social media. So, you know, we've talked about this in a previous episode where we talked about how to explain yourself on social. So I'll put a link into the chat about that one and where you can go that. But we've seen how each of the individual talking points can be used to stop people scrolling or to get people to click on there. What other channels can we talk about? Customer case studies we talked about the other day. So again, we've got templates that you can use for creating a customer case study based around storytelling, uh, customer success story. So you can use it to build those sorts of stories. Of course, you can use it if you've got a product to explain your product, you know, telling stories is a far more effective way of selling any product than giving feature function demonstrations, whether that be live demonstrations that you're giving. Or recorded screen cams or click tours. You know, so storytelling plays a really important role in all of those things as well. And then, as I mentioned at the top of this session today, the other thing that you can use it for is building up sort of employee branding or employer branding things. So you can build stories that explain how it is to work in your organization. So you can actually build up some great ideas there. And again, rather than just talking about technically. What your job entails paint a picture of what it's like to work within the business So there's just so many ways that you can use storytelling. Of course, the obvious one that I've forgotten is your website, of

Daniel Kleber: 16:35

course

Simon Harvey: 16:37

Put it onto your home page put it onto landing pages landing pages. It's really great You don't need your whole story on a landing page, but if you pull out a few key things in there You know, what's going on? What's the problem that your asset solving and what's the actual solution that it's delivering? We've seen massive increases, you know, several hundred percent increases in click through rates by telling a story in a landing page rather than just sticking a set of bullet points that says, here's what you're going to get by joining our webinar, or here's what you're going to get by downloading this white paper. Tell a story and people are engaged and people want to know more.

Daniel Kleber: 17:09

Okay. So those are the channels where I can use my elevator pitch. All right, Simon, thank you very much for telling me the difference between those different channels. I guess this is enough for today's episode. And uh, we mentioned everything that there is to be mentioned and uh, yeah, I will hand over to you now.

Simon Harvey: 17:30

Thank you very much. Yeah. Well, hopefully we've given you over the course of this season, some inspiration as to how you can build your story and how you can use your story. You'll find the elevator pitch and things linked online. Of course, you can go to wantauthentic. com slash brand script to download that and get the template and go through these things yourselves. And if you followed through as we've gone through this, you know, by now you should have basically your business story and an elevator pitch that you can use, you know, soon as soon as you get back into the office, you know, start testing it out, test it out on your staff, get your sales people using this, test it out on your customers and just see what a reaction it has. Going through that exercise that we've done, it really doesn't take much more than a few hours, particularly, you know, sit down with your team. But I promise you that if you do spend a little bit of time and you spend some time learning the secrets of story and how to communicate what you do without having to fall back to, like, a list of features, People are going to understand you better. People understand you more quickly. And at the end of the day, you know, people don't buy the best products. They buy the products and services that they understand the fastest. It's proven over and over again. So you're going to be inspired. You're going to be able to inspire them to join your cause. So if you're having troubles, you want any help with any of this, you want somebody to walk through a brand script with you, then come and join me. You can go to onceauthentic. com slash. Coaching and find out more about my coaching community there. You can find a whole bunch of different people and you can test out your own ideas in a safe environment. So yeah, wantauthentic. com and then look at coaching in there and you'll find that. That's all for today's episode. Thanks very much for joining us. Thank you, Daniel, as always. I hope you found this series of special episodes useful. If you'd like us to do more of these sorts of things on particular areas, then jot me a note on LinkedIn, put some notes into the podcast chats, and you know, we'd love to know what you want to know more about. Thanks for listening, and I look forward to talking to you on the next episode. Bye for now.