Donald Miller - Marketing Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Storybrand Guide for Any Business

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2020 Donald Miller

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published by HarperCollins Leadership, an imprint of HarperCollins Focus LLC.

Book design by Aubrey Khan, Neuwirth & Associates.

Interior art by Kyle Reid.

ISBN 978-1-4002-0380-2 (eBook)

ISBN 978-1-4002-0379-6 (HC)

Epub Edition January 2020 9781400203802

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020930312

Printed in the United States of America

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CONTENTS

1. Part I
   The Three Stages of Relationship
   1. CHAPTER 1
      The One Marketing Plan You Will Never Regret
   2. CHAPTER 2
      The Actual Stages of a Relationship
   3. CHAPTER 3
      An Introduction to the Marketing Made Simple Checklist
2. Part II
   Create Your Marketing Made Simple Sales Funnel
   1. CHAPTER 4
      Create Your One-Liner
   2. CHAPTER 5
      A Wireframed Website That Works
   3. CHAPTER 6
      Lead Generator
   4. CHAPTER 7
      The Power of Email
   5. CHAPTER 8
      Nurture Email Campaigns
   6. CHAPTER 9
      Sales Email Campaigns
   7. CHAPTER 10
      How to Execute the Marketing Made Simple Sales Funnel

Marketing should be easy and it should work.

Whether you run a small business or a large business, the easiest and best marketing plan starts with a sales funnel.

It doesnt matter what you sell, if you use words to sell your products, a sales funnel will work.

A sales funnel is the basic foundation of a good digital marketing plan. Once you create a sales funnel, your advertising can then support your sales funnel.

While there is more to marketing than a digital plan, your digital strategy, including your website, lead generator, and email campaign will serve as the foundation for all your other collateral.

But, most importantly, you need a sales funneland this book will teach you to create one.

A sales funnel is a way to capture and convert leads.

Every entrepreneur, business owner, and marketer must know how a sales funnel works. Whether you create a sales funnel yourself or have somebody else create it for you, the checklist in this book will spell out everything you need to know to build a sales funnel that works. Each chapter of this book will give you tips and strategies for creating each piece correctly.

At MarketingMadeSimple.com you can download a free paper wireframe that, along with this book, will save you an enormous amount of time and mental anguish.

At StoryBrand, weve helped over ten thousand small, medium, and large size companies create sales funnels that work. Nearly all of them started by simply filling out these pieces of paper.

When you download your paper wireframe, youll also get two sample wireframes to help you understand where you are headed.

This book is all about making the execution of a marketing strategy easy. We can talk about marketing all day, but you will only make money on what you execute.

Most marketing plans do not fail in intent or philosophy of communication, they fail in execution. People simply dont get it done.

Last year, my contributing writer Dr. J. J. Peterson turned in his doctoral dissertation on the StoryBrand messaging framework. In the dissertation J. J. defended the idea that the framework works for any kind of business, large or small, B2B or B2C. However, J. J. found that success with the framework hinges on one crucial imperative: execution. This book is all about execution. It exists to help you get the job done.

If you have a clear message and no sales funnel, your business will not grow. Your visitors will assume you cant solve their problem and they will leave in search of someone who can.

DONT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON MARKETING THAT DOESNT WORK

If you havent started spending money on marketing yet, this book will save you thousands if not millions of dollars. And if youve been wasting money on marketing, this book will stop that waste in its tracks.

Over the years weve run StoryBrand, weve met lots of marketing agencies that will sell you new logos, color schemes, and brand guidelines followed by Facebook ads and slick landing pages. Without a sales funnel in place, most of that stuff wont work.

J. J. and I have trained hundreds of StoryBrand certified marketing guides and in that time experimented with dozens of marketing ideas. Yet we keep coming back to the old, trusty sales funnel.

The checklist in this book will get results.

If you are an entrepreneur, a business owner, or serve in the marketing department of a large organization, this book will serve as an easy-to-understand blueprint.

If youre in charge of the marketing for your company, consider this your new playbook. And if you run a company, hand this book to your marketing team and ask them to create exactly what is in this checklist.

PAYING FOR MARKETING THAT DOESNT WORK IS WRONG

It is wrong for a marketing company to charge you money and fail to get you a return on your investment. Its an equal injustice that you, personally, would spend your time on an effort that does not pay you for your work. Your time is too valuable for that.

If you read this book and need help, visit MarketingMadeSimple.com where you can find a StoryBrand certified guide to create your sales funnel for you. Even if you hire a guide, however, this book will be important to show you what the guide will be doing. You will be able to offer valuable direction and feedback in the creation of your marketing plan after you fully understand what your marketing plan should be.

Marketing does not have to be complicated. Do what weve laid out in this book and youll have confidence in your marketing, youll grow your mission, and you will connect with customers.

Lets get started.

Twenty years ago Id just written my first bestselling book. Id written a book before that but my mother was the only one who bought copies, so that doesnt count. It took me two tries to write a book people actually wanted to read, and from what I hear, even hitting it big on your second try is pretty rare. More than 99 percent of book writers fail to sell enough copies to make a living. I was lucky.

After writing a bestselling book, I thought, everything else would come easy. I assumed every book Id release after that would also be a bestseller. I assumed thousands of people would show up every time I gave a speech. And I supposed I could make movies out of my books and become some kind of literary/Hollywood phenomenon.

It turns out that for more than 99 percent of writers who write a bestselling book, none of that other stuff happens.

Writing a bestseller is a huge help, but thousands of bestselling authors have dwindled away their money and influence so that, in the end, they had nothing to show for it. And thats what nearly happened to me.

Instead of building a platform, I rested on my past success. In my calculation, I wasted about ten years not taking my opportunity as a successful author (and human being) seriously.