Marketing Made Simple: A Step-by-Step StoryBrand Guide for Any Business

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 doesn’t 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 funnel—and 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, we’ve 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, you’ll 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 don’t 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 can’t solve their problem and they will leave in search of someone who can.

DON’T WASTE YOUR MONEY ON MARKETING THAT DOESN’T WORK

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

Over the years we’ve run StoryBrand, we’ve 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 won’t 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 you’re 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 DOESN’T WORK IS WRONG

It is wrong for a marketing company to charge you money and fail to get you a return on your investment. It’s 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 we’ve laid out in this book and you’ll have confidence in your marketing, you’ll grow your mission, and you will connect with customers.

Let’s get started.