The Authentic Marketing Podcast
Join marketing experts Simon Harvey and Daniel Kleber on The Authentic Marketing Podcast, the bi-weekly show that provides proven tips to improve your sales and marketing efforts and help your business grow. Subscribe to our bi-weekly episodes dropping every other Friday on your favourite podcast platform.
The Authentic Marketing Podcast
46. My brand story in 15 minutes a day. Part 4 - The Plan
How to step forward and tell your customers that they need to do something. Heroes in any journey are often afraid to act. They never do something until there's some pressure and some need to actually do something.
In this episode of our build-your-own brand story sprints, Simon Harvey and Daniel Kleber talk about the call to action within marketing and sales conversations. It's the thing that tells customers they need to actually move forward because otherwise, you're not going to be able to help them solve the problem.
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):
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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.
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Heroes never respond until they're challenged to do so. So now it's time for you to ask for action. In this, the fourth episode of our build your own brand story sprints, we continue our deep dive into storytelling and see how you need to call your hero to action and how you can remove some of those buyer nerves by using story. 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 again. We're going through at the moment this series of special episodes where in each episode we look at a different stage of the storytelling process. So, so far we've gone through the hero and the problem and then in the last episode we also talked about the guide and the role that you play in the story. For this next step, what we're going to do is jump ahead a little bit further now and look at Basically the call to action. So the way that you actually step forwards and tell your customer that they need to do something, you know, heroes in any journey are afraid to act. They never do something until there's some pressure and some need to actually do something. And the call to action within a marketing and the sales conversations is that thing. It's The thing that tells them they need to actually move forwards because otherwise you're not going to be able to help them solve the problem. So as always with me today is Daniel. Hi there, Daniel.
Daniel Kleber:Hello.
Simon Harvey:And yeah, we'll dig into the call to action and see what some of the best practices in there and how you can actually build out your perfect call to action. So. Maybe a first question for you, Daniel. Give me some examples of some calls to action that you recommend or that you've seen used elsewhere that you think are good or bad.
Daniel Kleber:Okay, I'll give you some. Uh, book a meeting.
Simon Harvey:Yeah. Mm hmm.
Daniel Kleber:Um, get a free trial. Good. Yeah, I like that one. Um, meet
Simon Harvey:the team. Meet the team. Yeah, that's not a bad one. Yes. Uh, click me. Click me? No, I don't like that one. I'll tell you why in a minute.
Daniel Kleber:Um, read more.
Simon Harvey:Same goes again in there. You're going down. You're going down. Uh, let's get back up again. Um, meet your coach. Meet your coach. Yeah, that sounds a good one. So, you know, the thing is there, Good calls to action need to be specific. It needs to be very clear what exactly is going to happen when you click on that. So meet your coach is perfect. You're going to book a meeting with your coach or book a call, start a free trial, something like that. They're really obvious and so, you know, that's the sort of thing that you should be looking for for a call to action. So often though, yeah, you're right, I see things like read me, learn more, click here, download now, but they're just, they're not really clear what exactly is going to happen. Particularly something like read more or learn more. You know, they're very unspecific, they're non committal basically. It's almost like you're afraid to tell me exactly what's going to happen. And, and that's the trouble. If you're not specific, people don't click on there because they're afraid as well. They don't know what's going to happen when they're going to click on it. So they just don't take action. So yeah, when we're going through this section for calls to action, you know, everybody, I need to think about something specific that's going to happen. You know, book a meeting is a really key, clear call to action, or you could have buy now something like that, or put into cart if you're doing sort of B2B type things, you add to cart, something like that. It just needs to be specific in there.
Daniel Kleber:So you say it needs to be specific and if it's not, then people get afraid to click on it because they don't know what's going to happen after they click.
Simon Harvey:Yeah, yeah.
Daniel Kleber:So how can we overcome that fear?
Simon Harvey:Yeah, okay. So there's another technique that we use as part of our work. Part of the storytelling process. And this again is a, is a helpful tip that a lot of people don't do, but a lot of the best site books already do in there. And that's what we call the plan. So you've got a plan section in the brand script there. So the plan should consist of about three steps. And the idea of the plan is, as you rightly said, if you put a call to action in there that says book a meeting, people don't know exactly what to expect from there. You know, I'm going to click on that button, book a meeting, submit my email address or whatever, and what's going to happen is my email going to go to somebody and I'm just going to get a bunch of emails back and I'm going to get stuck onto a sales email list. Am I going to get 20 calls from cold sales reps trying to sell me something that I'm not really that interested in? Even if it's a good sales process, am I expecting initially? If I've got book a demo, am I going to get a demo straight away? Or am I going to get somebody send me through to some prequalification person first that asks me what I want to see a demo of, and then I've got to allow more time later on down the line to actually go through that demo. There's just a lot of questions that people are asking at this point. Yeah, it's the first point now that they're really sort of sitting there thinking, yeah, I've got something to lose. Yeah, whether it's my time that I've got to lose or whether it's money that I've potentially got to lose. So, yeah, the idea of the plan is to help to describe to them what that process potentially looks like.
Daniel Kleber:You want to be transparent.
Simon Harvey:Yeah, yeah, you want to be transparent. So, three steps, as I said. So what I would do in the plan, step one. Normally, I would put into there, whatever your main call to action is. So if your main call to action, or rather, if you're selling a software product, for example, maybe your initial call to action is start a free trial. So in step one, I would put start a free trial, you know, sign up and get a three 30 days trial. Step two needs to describe what will happen after I've done that. So, you know, step two could be something like during your 30 days, You'll be able to play with the full product and see whether it works for your business use case. So it's going to describe some quick win or some result that I'm going to get from whatever hat takes place on step one. And then step three needs to look forwards into the future. So step three. typically assumes that they've purchased your product or service and now it's going to explain to them what their life will look like when they've actually used your product or service. So in step three, it can be, you know, if we'd use our time tracking example with our new time tracking system, you'll be able to sit back as your consultant's times automatically tracked and your invoices are automatically generated. So what does the future look like for them? You know, sit back and relax basically in that case.
Daniel Kleber:Okay, so I see you want to take the fear out of the people by being transparent and showing them what will happen after they click and also showing off a plan that they will follow when they click the CTA. Yep. And, um, you know, A lot of businesses already have, uh, established sales process and often I see sales processes that have more stages than just three steps. Mm hmm. Uh, what happens in that case, you know?
Simon Harvey:Yeah. Okay. I mean, that's a very good question. And again, a common mistake that people think about when they're talking about the plan, this isn't supposed to be a representation of your sales process. So you're right, your sales process may be five or seven steps. Steps where you have a discovery call and then some sort of follow up call and then some sort of meeting to go through a demonstration and you know, whatever else this isn't supposed to represent that this is supposed to be a sort of a marketing focused plan and a customer focused plan describing what your initial stages look like in your customer's world, not in your world. So yes, You might have four steps inside there. You might only have two steps in there, depending on how quick and easy your product is to understand. But yeah, I would normally keep it at three steps. And as I say, focus it from your customer's perspective, not from your sales process perspective.
Daniel Kleber:All right. Well, that makes sense. So it doesn't have to do anything with my sales process.
Simon Harvey:Exactly right. Yeah.
Daniel Kleber:Now, When it comes to displaying your plan, you know, do I have to show all three steps at once, or should I show like step one first and then if they accomplished step one, then I will show the next step and you know, and so on. If they accomplished step two. Two, then I will show the third one.
Simon Harvey:So a bit like one of these forms that shows you through different pages, you mean something like that?
Daniel Kleber:Exactly, yes.
Simon Harvey:Um, no, I probably wouldn't do that sort of thing in there. The idea of the plan is that, like you write, you said earlier, it's about transparency and if you've hidden those other steps, then you're not really being transparent because until they've completed step one, they can't see what step two is. Makes sense, Chris. But no, I I would usually lay them out next to each other or one above the other towards the middle of your main landing page. Just describing exactly what's going on so that they can see in one quick take. This is exactly what the process will be.
Daniel Kleber:Yes, uh, definitely makes sense. Yeah. Wouldn't be good to hide it. So yeah, in your example earlier, you said it could be something like start a free trial and then The second step would be test with your team, and the third one would be simplify your hourly billing, right?
Simon Harvey:Yeah, yeah, that would be a good example, yeah.
Daniel Kleber:But what if we don't have the possibility to let the hero test our solution? You know, like you mentioned in the first step, start a free trial. Yeah. How could the plan look in that case if we don't have that possibility?
Simon Harvey:Yeah. Okay. So, I mean, your first step is going to be whatever your primary call to action is. So it could be if you're doing consulting, it could be book an audit could be the first thing in there. It could be book a call as your primary call to action in there. So, you know, if you were running gardening services, yeah, you could start off with, you know, Let's just look. Book a call, you can tell me about your garden. I'll come to you with a plan as to how we're going to maintain that across the course of each month. And, you know, you can sit back happy in the knowledge that you've got a good looking garden with no effort, something like that. So. That first call to action can be basically whatever you want, but focus it on your primary CTA, the thing that we were talking about at the beginning.
Daniel Kleber:Okay, the first CTA has to do with your core business. Yeah. Okay. All right, so you said we should use this plan on our website, right? Mm hmm. But can we also use it somewhere else, like in emails? Mm hmm.
Simon Harvey:Yeah, I think exactly right. You can use it in emails. I mean, maybe if you're using it in an email, you might not want to break it out into individual paragraphs. That's probably too long, but you could certainly summarize it within a few words. So exactly like I just did a minute ago, just say this is what we're going to do now. This is what's going to happen and this is going to be the result. So that could just be one sentence for an email. Other places you could use it, you could put it into your social posts. Instead of just saying, get in touch or download here, you could summarize it again in a couple of quick steps in an email, uh, or sorry, in a social post or in an image, uh, a great place that I've seen people put plans before is in LinkedIn, um, where you've got your personal profile in there. Um, you know, a lot of people just go and describe what they do for their job actually, but the best profiles will go and describe how people help. Other people as part of their job. So the problem that they're solving. And again, you can put that three step plan in there. You reach out to me and let's talk more about how I can help you to solve this problem. Send me a message. We'll set up a time for a meeting and I'll give you a solution to your problem. So you can use that three step approach and lots of different places quite easily.
Daniel Kleber:Okay. So I get the idea. You create this three step simple plan and replace Your normal CTAs with it. You give the people transparency and you can use it across all different channels. I like it.
Simon Harvey:Yeah, it's a very good, it's a very powerful thing. Certainly.
Daniel Kleber:Good, good.
Simon Harvey:Good. Okay. So, I think we've gone through most of the bits with regards to calls to action and the plan. So, I would say today's 15 minute task is to go through and fill out the plan and the call to action sections within your brand script. So, you'll see in there a plan. With places for three parts, you'll see in there a direct call to action and you'll see in there an indirect or secondary call to action. We haven't talked about that specifically, but the secondary call to action is an alternative call to action that you can get somebody to do that isn't necessarily ready to buy or ready to take your primary steps. So it could be your main call to action could be book a call. Your secondary call to action could be download a template and download it. Try it yourself, something like that. So think about those things. So, I want you to go through fill in that as before. If you haven't downloaded the Brandscript template again, you can find that on our website. You can go to wantauthentic. com slash brandscript and download that document there and start filling in the word document. If you need more help, of course, you can rewind and listen to this discussion again and go through some of those points, particularly on the plan. Or if you want somebody to actually review your story, give you some thoughts and feedback, you know, you want to be able to do that in a safe environment, then you can come and join my authentic engagement coaching community. So again, just come to wantauthentic. com and click on the coaching link at the top there, and then you can join myself and a group of other like minded small business owners helping each other basically to communicate clearly and grow our businesses. So, that's it for today's episode. Thanks again for joining us. If you found this episode useful, Bookmark the rest of the show, listen in for the next few episodes and of course, share it with anybody else, you know, anybody in your company or anybody else that you know, that runs their own business that might find this useful. Thanks very much. And yeah, I look forward to speaking with you next time. Bye for now.
