leadership

As a Leader, You Own Your Communications Bubble

All leaders build a bubble around themselves. They can’t help it. It’s an inevitable part of being a leader.

Cold Email

Is MailerLite Better than MailChimp? A Quantitative Approach

We wanted to see if the data we looked at for The Touchpoint Envelope really showed that MailerLite was better than MailChimp

Outreach

The Touchpoint Envelope: What Open, Click, and Buy Rates to Expect from Outreach

What open, click, and buy rates you might expect from your outreach efforts

Big Idea

How to Capture Product-Market Fit Metrics and Act Upon Them to Grow Your Company

It's never a good idea to leave Product-Market Fit to chance. That's why having a quantitative methodology to figure it out will save you time, money, and frustration.

blog

The Missing Link in Your Product-Led Growth Strategy

Product-Led Growth (PLG) is using your product as an active element in your go-to market strategy.

RevOps

The Missing Link in Your RevOps Strategy

Everyone can benefit from a Revenue Operations (RevOps) mindset. RevOps is all about alignment of sales, marketing, and customer service.

Paying Off Advocates

Parts of the Pay Off Stage

The future health of your brand and your follow-on products and services you provide heavily depends on this stage because your fans and advocates are the ones that will tell their friends and family about your brand and are the most likely folks to buy from you again.

Paying Off Advocates

What is Your Brand's Thru-line

A thru-line is a theme or idea that runs from the beginning to the end of a story. For us story nerds, it’s the story arc/spine that hooks us in in act one, builds our suspense in act two, and payoffs the result in act three.

Paying Off Advocates

What Are the Conventions & Requirements for your Brand?

Conventions and Requirements are the frameworks in which all similar offerings must adhere. If an offering does not comply with generally accepted conventions (e.g. testimonials from medical doctors) then prospects will be skeptical.

Paying Off Advocates

Paying Off Advocates with Ethos

Ethos is all about the credibility of the messenger or their bonafide’s. We look up to those that have achieved what we want to achieve or look/act/like what we like. That’s part of the reason celebrities endorse products and services -- it signals that said brand can be trusted.

Building Customers

Parts of the Build Stage

The build stage starts off with the first goal of Story Funnel which is to get a prospect to buy. Once we get our new customers, we want our interaction with them to be stellar

Building Customers

What is Your Structure and who do you Serve?

What are you selling and who do you sell it to. That seems like a simple question but if you don't have your story straight, it can get confusing.

Building Customers

What Are Your Customers Wants and Needs?

Your messaging needs to pull at the need while also giving the dopamine hit of want. You can never get to the need without the want satisfied. It’s like the gatekeeper to the inner sanctum.

Building Customers

Building Customers with Logos

At this stage, we want our new customers to be so happy with their purchase, that they don’t unsubscribe or return our offering. The way to do this is to make it as easy as possible to start using your offering to do the intended job.

Story Funnel

6 Commandments of Copy

A systematic way to analyze and write compelling copy that tells the story you want to tell.

Hooking Prospects

Parts of the Hook Stage

The hook stage is the noisiest stage of the Story Funnel because it’s the one with the most amount of competition and literal noise.

Hooking Prospects

What's Your Big Idea?

The big idea is your brand's north star. Without one, you will be lost in the sea of noise.

Hooking Prospects

What's Your Core Value?

Val·​ue: something (such as a principle or quality) intrinsically valuable or desirable -- Merriam-Webster

Hooking Prospects

Hooking Prospects with Pathos

The first part of the Story Funnel is how we hook prospects. If this were a play or a movie or a novel, this is Act 1 or in Story Grid nomenclature, The Beginning Hook. During this part, we’re going to use Pathos (emotions) as our main tool in hooking prospects into our story funnel.

Introduction

Introducing The Story Funnel

At its core, the Story Funnel concept is how to tell a brand’s story depending on what stage someone is in -- all why not straying from the brand’s core values. This is what we mean by keeping the story straight and it’s an essential part of building a brand.