StoryBrand and hook, story, offer

StoryBrand is Donald Miller’s scheme of seven elements in which the customer is the hero and the business is the guide. Hook, Story, Offer is its short form.

A page in which the reader is the hero

Most small-business pages talk about the business itself: “We’ve been here since 2010”, “Our team”, “Our values”. The reader sits in the audience and watches others talk about themselves. The American writer and communications consultant Donald Miller proposed turning the roles around: make the customer the hero of the story and yourself their guide.

The idea grew out of Miller, an author of books, studying for years how stories work in film, and taking from there a simple frame. The frame goes back to the monomyth (more on it in the part on storytelling: the hero’s journey after Joseph Campbell) and to screenwriting manuals, not to advertising research, and it’s best understood as a working metaphor, not a scientific result. But the metaphor fits well with what you can already do: the reader’s level, the customer’s job, the pain.

The scheme is called StoryBrand, and its seven elements are SB7 (StoryBrand 7). Miller set them out in the book Building a StoryBrand (2017); his site is in the sources. In the part on storytelling you’ll assemble a whole page from them, and here we take the scheme apart and apply it to your brief. Put aside for a moment the formulas of the earlier lessons: they are about the text inside a block, and this scheme is about which blocks a page is made of.

Seven elements

Open the diagram below and choose “StoryBrand (SB7)”: it lays the seven elements out on your brief.

StoryBrand (SB7)Hook, Story, Offer

1. A character (the customer). The hero isn’t you and not your product. It’s a person who wants something. State the goal in one phrase: “wants to find out where their lot’s boundary runs”. That phrase nearly matches the “job” from the last lesson, and that is no accident.
2. Has a problem. The hero has a problem on three levels. External: what gets in the way in practice (“the fence is in the wrong place”). Internal: what they feel (“anxiety, a sense of being cheated”). Philosophical: why it’s wrong (“a person shouldn’t have to fear for their own land”). Miller stresses the internal level: people buy to solve an internal problem.
3. Meets a guide. That is you. The guide shows empathy (“I understand how unpleasant this is”) and authority (experience, documents, results). Empathy without authority is touching but doesn’t help; authority without empathy makes a person doubt they will be welcome.
4. Who gives them a plan. Three simple steps from “I want” to “I got it”. Miller distinguishes a process plan (the steps of buying) and an agreement plan (what you promise, such as a guarantee of terms). Three steps, because people won’t remember more than three.
5. And calls them to action. A direct call (“Book a consultation”) and a soft one (“see how it works”). The soft one is for those who aren’t ready: it keeps the contact without demanding a decision.
6. That helps them avoid failure. What will happen if they don’t act. This is what PAS called agitation, and the rule is the same: facts, without scaring. A short line, not a paragraph.
7. And ends in success. What comes of it when the hero reaches the end: their new position. This needs specifics, not “a better life”.

Besides the seven elements, Miller has a handy check he calls the “grunt test”: look at the main screen. Would a person understand within a few seconds what you offer, how it will make their life better, and what they need to do to get it? If not, nothing else matters. We already called this the five-second check in the first lesson of the part on texts, and it’s the same idea.

An example with the default persona (the invented Kate Alder).

• Hero: a landowner who needs to know where their boundary runs.
• Problem: external: the fence was put up by the old posts, and the map shows the boundary elsewhere. Internal: the worry that the neighbor will turn out to be right and you not.
• Guide: “I understand how unpleasant such a dispute is (empathy). I am a licensed surveyor and expert witness, and here are my license and my association membership (authority).”
• Plan: 1. A consultation and a look at the documents. 2. A site visit and measurements. 3. A boundary plan, ready to file with the county recorder.
• Call: direct, “Book a consultation”; soft, “See how a boundary survey goes”.
• Failure: “Without a confirmed boundary it is harder to get a building permit or to sell.”
• Success: “The boundary is on record, and you know where your land ends.”

When it works. For a home page and a landing page, when the message is blurred and you need to check that every element is in place. It especially helps to shift the focus from “we” to “you”.

Where it lets you down.

• Sameness. If everybody writes by one scheme, pages begin to sound alike. The scheme is an arrangement of meaning, and the voice is set by your tone (lesson 5 of the part on texts).
• The failure turns into scaremongering. Especially when you want to “strengthen” the call. Stay with facts.
• The film metaphor. People aren’t the heroes of a film, and not every reader likes being told “your story”. For some sites (reference, utility) the scheme is excessive.
• It does not replace research. The hero, the problem and the plan come from conversations with customers and from the canvas, not from imagination.

Check yourself: who is the hero of a page in StoryBrand, and who is the guide?

The hero is the visitor, who has a goal and a problem. The guide is you: the one who understands and can help, and shows it with checkable facts.

Hook, story, offer

Where from. This short scheme was popularized by the American entrepreneur Russell Brunson, founder of ClickFunnels, in the books DotCom Secrets (2015) and Expert Secrets (2017). He teaches selling through funnels (more on them in the eighth lesson) and holds that any message has three parts: a hook, a story and an offer.

How it is built.

1. Hook. The first line, which stops them. This is where knowing the levels of awareness works: the hook names what the reader already knows or feels.
2. Story. A short account that shows who you are, what you do and what the person can get. Brunson teaches building the story as a path from “before” to “after”, with a moment of insight. We treat it as a tool of trust: it’s easier for a reader to believe a person than a list.
3. Offer. One clear offer: what, on what terms, how to accept.

An example for a home page.

• Hook: “Is your fence not where the map says the boundary is?”
• Story: “A typical case, not a particular client: someone buys a lot and finds that on paper it is two feet narrower. To sort it out you need a survey and a boundary plan.”
• Offer: “A consultation: an hour on your documents. The price and the time are on the page. Book a consultation.”

Where it lets you down, and this matters. Brunson is also known for a school that sells aggressively: limited offers, inflated “values”, invented stories (“I was broke and now…”). We take the frame from it, not the pressure techniques. Three rules of the honest version:

• The story is true. An invented story passed off as real is deceit of the reader. If the example is a composite, write “a typical case, not a particular client”. If it’s real, you need the client’s written consent (and they must not be recognizable), and for attorneys and some experts it isn’t allowed at all (remember the lesson on legal and expert texts). Regulators agree: the US FTC’s rules on testimonials and reviews, the UK’s CAP Code and the EU’s unfair-practices law all treat a made-up customer story as a false claim.
• The offer is one, and honest. The terms are ones you’ll keep. No “today only” and “two places left” if it isn’t true.
• The hook doesn’t deceive. What it promises is on the page.

Check yourself: how do you honestly tell a case “from practice” on a page, without exposing a client or deceiving the reader?

Mark it as a typical (composite) case and not a particular client, or give a real case with the client’s written consent and anonymized. In regulated professions check the rules: sometimes case studies aren’t allowed.

Practice

Build an outline of your project’s home page. It all lies in a note, and you’ll see only the part that you put into the page later.

1. SB7. The hero (the visitor; the goal from “for whom” and from the customer’s job), the problem, the guide (you: empathy and a proof from the brief in full), a plan of three steps, the call (the direct one is the main action from the brief in the same words, the soft one is your own), the failure (facts) and the success.
2. In one line (at least fifteen words): the problem, the plan, the result.
3. Hook, Story, Offer. A hook, a story with a mark (“typical case” or “with the client’s consent”) and an offer that names an item from the brief and the main action.

The check looks at form: the seven elements, a proof in the guide, three steps of the plan, the mark on the story, the action in the offer. Whether the page is good is for you to decide: run the “grunt test” and see whether it’s clear within five seconds what you offer, how it will improve the hero’s life and what to press.