Storynomics

Robert McKee

📚 GENRE: Business & Finance

📃 PAGES: 272

✅ COMPLETED: April 3, 2023

🧐 RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Short Summary

Storynomics is a story about how stories can help you sell products and services. For over 40 years, Robert McKee has been developing, refining, and presenting his famous story framework at seminars around the world. In Storynomics, he discusses why traditional advertising is declining and how storytelling can help companies get their message across in a way that delivers results.

Key Takeaways

1️⃣ Human Nature — Stories resonate with us so well because we create them in our mind to make sense of life. It’s something we’ve always done naturally. We like to connect the dots. We like to see things play out in our mind. A great story will hold a person’s attention, create an emotional bond, and inspire action. Understanding that people connect with stories really well helps when creating content.

2️⃣ Conflict Required — Conflict has a way of hooking and holding attention. There’s simply no drama without conflict. That’s why reality TV is so addicting. If the story is just an endless stream of happy events, nobody is going to pay attention. It’s when a main character faces conflict and has to overcome a challenge that people begin to pay attention. Find the conflict or villain and position your company or product as the sharp sword the customer can wield and use to win the battle. That’s how you tell a story in marketing. 

3️⃣ Story Framework — Just about every story ever told follows the same eight-step framework. Understand how it works and how to use it when crafting your own marketing stories. Try to position your company or product as the hero or sidekick that can help your customer overcome conflict, solve a problem, or live a better life. 

Favorite Quote

“Why do so many product and service ads deliver little, if any, impact? Answer: because their tellings deliberately avoid any hint of conflict.”

Book Notes 📑

Ch. 1: Advertising, A Story of Addiction

  • The Beginnings of Advertising — Advertising began to boom in the 1700s. As more and more immigrants began to settle, businesses opened and people needed ways to promote their offerings. They began to create and place ads in newspapers. Newspapers were desperate for a new stream of revenue because subscriptions weren’t reliable enough. They welcomed advertising. This led to the birth of interruption advertising, which occurs when publishers place ads in locations where the person basically has to consume the ad. Think radio and TV commercials. 
  • Advertising Gets Bigger — By the end of the 19th century, rail lines connected cities, allowing for regional and national ad campaigns rather than just small local campaigns. Ivory Soap was one of the first companies to ever launch a national ad campaign. The company was highly successful, which led to more established brands launching their own national campaigns. 
  • TV Advertising Is Born — When commercial television began in the 1940s, it quickly became the dominant form of media consumption. The major networks like ABC, NBC, and CBS began to make a lot of money selling ad space. TV was the best way to get your ads seen and still is one of the best ways. 
  • Rise of Other Media Platforms — The rise of the Internet and services like YouTube, Facebook, Google, Twitter, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc. have led to massive declines in traditional forms of advertising on television, radio, and in newspapers because most marketers began to realize that buying ads that appear on these platforms is more valuable than paying for a TV ad. By 2013, the cost of a targeted online video ad, on YouTube for example, shot past that of television advertising. 
  • Netflix & No Ads — Netflix was the first to offer a streaming service (2007) that didn’t have any ads whatsoever. They rely completely on subscriptions rather than ad revenue. Hulu attempted to show ads and in return offer users a price that was a little less than Netflix, but the attempt failed. The rise of these steaming platforms has really hurt traditional television, radio, and print advertising. Fewer people are watching cable television. As a result, the amount spent on TV advertising has declined rapidly since 2010. 
  • Interesting Fact — Netflix started as a DVD subscription service, like Blockbuster, in 1999. The company’s steaming service was later launched in 2007. It was one of the first streaming services available, and helped Netflix establish an early lead in market share. Netflix has been ad-free since Day 1. 
  • Banner Blindness & Ad Blocking — Since 2008, marketers have discovered a phenomenon called ‘banner blindness’ in which people don’t look at ads on a webpage. Researchers have used eye tracking technology to show that most people look straight at the content rather than the ads surrounding the page. It gets worse for advertisers — in August 2015, Adobe announced that 198 million people were using ad-blockers. One month later, Apple announced that it would allow ad-blockers on its devices. The result? Companies have begun to cut advertising spending because ads are not reaching people. 
  • The Marketing Crisis — Marketers have to find a different way to connect with their audiences. The truth is, people don’t like ads and avoid them by either simply not looking at them (banner blindness) or blocking them (ad-blockers).
    • Quote (P. 18): “For three centuries, most companies have used the same approach to reach, acquire, and retain customers: They advertised to them. The approach was simple and consistent. Marketers identified the news and entertainment stories that their customers enjoyed most, then interrupted those stories with ads describing their products and services. By showing those ads repeatedly to customers at scale, they built growing brand awareness… As consumers block, ignore, and pay to avoid advertisements, marketers must scramble to find a new way to reach their customers.”
  • Chapter Takeaway — Advertisements don’t reach people as well as they used to. People don’t look at them, pay to block them, and just generally tune them out. As streaming services have become more prominent, fewer people are watching cable TV. Companies have figured it out and are slowly spending less on traditional ads and interruption ads. Companies now have to find a different way to reach and connect with their audiences. 

Ch. 2: Marketing, A Story of Deception

  • Distrust & Deception — People generally don’t trust ads. They know the company is trying to sell them something, so they’re naturally skeptical. They’ve also seen decades of false promises from companies. All of it has led to a distrust of advertising. The two types of marketing deception marketers have used to drive sales are below. These strategies have relevance today, but aren’t effective if they are executed poorly.
    • Rational Communication — Marketers have tried to persuade consumers by appealing to rational reasoning using statistical numbers and by providing a list of factual advantages of their product. Companies like to publish checklists showing consumers the advantages of their product stacked up against a list of advantages of a competitor’s product. Naturally the company publishing the checklist has more advantages, or checks, in the side-by-side comparison. People don’t trust these. They know you’ve hand selected the advantages to show that yours has more.
      • Ex. Stereo Study — One study gave two sets of people a chance to read about a stereo and play with the stereo. The people who read about the stereo in the unbiased Consumer Reports magazine reported liking the stereo more than the group who read about it in the company’s brochure. People are naturally skeptical of a company’s marketing materials.
    • Emotional — Appealing to emotion works, but only if it’s done well. People have seen so many ads now that they can easily tell when you’re trying to manipulate or scare them to get a sale. It offends them. 
  • The Power of Story — If rational arguments are sometimes seen as BS and emotional appeals sometimes anger people, what’s the best way to connect with people? The answer is story. With story, you can wrap emotion and logic into a package and deliver it to consumers in a way that they enjoy and are more likely to trust.
    • Quote (P. 29): “We advocate a solution that’s tens of thousands of years old, the mode of communication that best fits the mind, that best connects one mind with another, that wraps the clarity of a rational message inside an emotional package and delivers it with sticking power: story. A well-told story captures our attention, holds us in suspense, and pays off with a meaningful emotional experience.”
    • Quote (P. 30): “If you study story technique, you can learn to hook, hold, and reward your audience’s attention, as do the finest of films, plays, and novels. If you refine these skills, you can build bonds of loyalty between your brand and your clients.”
  • Chapter Takeaway — As people continue to ignore ads and distrust information put out by companies, storytelling has become the way to go. You can use emotional and rational appeals in a story and deliver it in a way that a consumer will enjoy and understand. Stories have a way of connecting with people.

Ch. 3: The Evolution of Story

  • Stories & Values — Why do stories connect with us so well and get our attention? The answer is that stories have a way of taking us on a journey. Every main character in a story has one “binary value” that defines their current life: success/failure, truth/lie, loyalty/betrayal, love/hate, right/wrong, winning/losing, or something else. The character usually starts the story in perfect balance with their core value. But for a story to get our attention, one of the values in the relationship has to change. Otherwise, nothing notable occurred and it’s “happily ever after.” We want to know the journey and how someone succeeded or failed, for example.
    • Quote (P. 38): “For an event to be meaningful, the mind must sense that the charge of at least one value has undergone change. The reason is obvious: If the charge of a value at stake in a situation does not change, what happens is a trivial activity of no significance. But when a value’s charge changes from positive to negative or negative to positive (for instance, from love to hate or hate to love; from winning to losing or losing the winning), the event becomes meaningful and emotions flow. Because a well-told story wraps its telling around emotionally charged values, its meaning becomes marked in our memory.”
      • Takeaway — What makes stories so compelling is the change in a person’s state. We want to know the outcome and what happened. When a person breaks off a relationship, for example, a change in state has occurred. Others who know the person are immediately curious and want to know the story. What happened? Stories tap into our curiosity, which is one of the key ingredients to gaining and holding attention. 
  • Bridging the Gap — The mind builds stories to bridge the gap between itself and the universe, between itself in the past, present, and future. It unifies events to bring meaning out of meaninglessness. Our tendency is to use story to make meaning of life — that’s ultimately why stories connect with us so well. 
    • Quote (P. 44): “So, in the marketing context, the takeaway is this: Storified communication is the most powerful form of messaging because story fits the mind; story fits the mind because the mind converts actuality into story in the first place.”
  • Story Structure — Stories connect things by looking at cause and effect. At the end of the story, meaning is not only understood but also felt emotionally. Almost every story follows this basic structure:
    • Open — The primary character’s life, as expressed in its core value (happiness/sadness, for example) is in relative balance.
    • Conflict Ensues — But then something happens that upsets this balance. He could, for example, fall in love (positive) or out of love (negative). 
    • Restore Balance — The character then goes on a quest to restore life‘s balance. A sequence of events ensues where the character is taking measures to restore balance, in the process swinging the core value back-and-forth from positive to negative, negative to positive.
    • Climax — The story’s final event swings the core value for good and the character’s life returns to balance.
  • Chapter Takeaway — Stories resonate with us so well because we create them in our minds to make sense of life anyway. That’s ultimately why we’re so receptive to stories and why they grab our attention so well. They have a way of peaking our interest and tapping into our curiosity. And curiosity is one of the best ways to get and hold someone’s attention. 

Ch. 4: The Definition of Story

  • “Conflict Changes Life” — Conflict is the core element that lives in every story ever told. Conflict drives struggle and triumph. Conflict is what makes a story a story. Conflict is what earns people’s attention. The definition of a story is this: a dynamic escalation of conflict-driven events that cause meaningful change in a character’s life. In other words, when conflict interrupts the balance in a character’s life, the character must struggle and stretch himself to overcome the conflict to restore balance. Without conflict, there is no struggle. Without struggle, there is no achievement or suspense. Without conflict, there is no story to tell because everything remains balanced and dandy. With conflict, there’s a beast to slay and something to achieve.
    • Quote (P. 47): “But the protagonist of a well-told story is not a passive passenger; she struggles dynamically through time and space to fulfill her desire.”
  • Four Types of Conflict — There are generally four types of conflict that a story can utilize. These points of conflict put the main character in a position where he has to take action to overcome the issue. The actions he takes, and the reactions he gets from those action, are what create the curiosity and emotion we want.
    • Physical — Examples include battling a hurricane, disease, or the ticking clock of time. 
    • Social — Examples include struggles against institutions, perhaps, discrimination, or power plays. 
    • Personal — Examples include antagonism inside intimate relationships or the battle to make friendships. 
    • Inner — Wars within the mind over conflicting desires. 
  • Chapter Takeaway — The absolutely essential ingredient in story is conflict. Conflict, conflict, conflict. Without it, you have no story. When writing stories for your marketing content, you must identify some kind of conflict that affects your target customer. From there, you position your company or product as the thing the customer can use to slay the beast, overcome the conflict, and restore balance in their life. 

Ch. 5: The Full Story

  • Story Design — There are eight main phases that make up a story. This chapter goes through each of the phases in detail. 
  • Stage 1: Target Audience — The first element of a story is the target audience. You want to think about how you would like the target audience to react to your story. What is it you’re trying to get them to think, feel, etc.? What’s the ultimate goal of the story as it pertains to your target audience?
  • Stage 2: Subject Matter — The story’s physical and social setting, its protagonist (hero), and its core binary value are the components that make up a story’s “subject matter.” You want to be specific when building your story’s world. Be specific about the time, location, cultural and social background, and overall surroundings in your story. These make up the world your characters will be involved in. The story’s core binary value (i.e. love/hate, success/failure, winning/losing, etc.) is crucial to identify because that’s what gives the story an emotional edge as the main character swings in and out of balance with the core value. In this stage of a story, everything in the main character’s life is in complete balance. Nothing is wrong. 
    • Quote (P. 62): “A telling may incorporate any number, variety, and combination of values, but it anchors its content in one irreplaceable binary — the story’s core value. This value determines a story’s fundamental meaning and emotion. Suppose a story’s core value is love/hate. How and why a person moves from love to hate or from hate to love gives the events meaning. As the story moves back-and-forth between negative and positive charges, emotions flow, not only in the characters but in the audience as well.”
  • Stage 3: The Inciting Incident — At this point something happens to throw the character’s balance out of whack as it relates to the story’s primary binary value. Maybe the character wins the lottery. Maybe he quits his job to open a business. Maybe he falls in love with a girl. Something happens that throws off the balance. This is when the story gets interesting. The event does a few things to the audience:
    • Attention — It captures the audience’s attention and interest. 
    • Curiosity — The event raises the question: “How will this turn out?” This keeps the audience engaged and curious. 
    • Suspense — Suspense builds.
    • Expected Resolution — Once the event takes place, the audience knows something has to happen to solve the issue. They just don’t know what it is yet. 
  • Stage 4: The Object of Desire — When the main character’s life is thrown out of balance, he naturally wants to get it back and regain control. At this point, the character identifies an “object of desire” that, if acquired, will restore balance. He sets out to get this object. In the process of going for the object, the character experiences swings of highs and lows, triumphs and setback. But it’s all in pursuit of that shiny object. 
  • Stage 5: The First Action — To rebalance his life, the main character has to take action. As he does, the actions he takes and the reactions he gets move him either closer to or farther from his object of desire.  
  • Stage 6: The First Reaction — The main character’s first action is usually always the one he expects to work; the one he expects to restore balance. He assumes high probability before he acts. But normally the character gets an unexpected reaction that he didn’t see coming that sets him further back. Now there’s an antagonist in play; some force or person (villain) that’s standing in the hero’s way.
    • Turning Points — Turning points are a big part of Stages 5 and 6 because they involve unexpected reactions to a main character’s actions and attempts to restore balance. Turning points trigger change. Change triggers emotion. Emotion keeps the audience invested in the story.
      • Quote (P. 79): “To grip and hold emotional involvement, a story’s values must transition dynamically from change to change to change. For without change, events, no matter how cheerful and energetic, dissolve into an emotionless, boring recitation of ‘… and then and then and then…’”
        • Takeaway — Unexpected reactions to a main character’s actions are called turning points, and they cause change in the character and in the story. The highs and lows of change trigger emotional responses from the audience. These emotional responses cause the audience to pay attention. If your story lacks enough dynamic change to the main binary core value (success/failure, happiness/sadness, etc.), it becomes a repetitive list of events that will not capture or hold the audience’s attention. 
  • Stage 7: The Crisis Choice — Every story comes to a climatic point where the main character has done all he can do and is down to one last shot. At this crisis point, there’s just one option or action left to try to restore balance. The final showdown. In this moment, the character has to make a critical or life-defining choice.
  • Stage 8: The Climatic Reaction — The final action works and the main character successfully restores balance in an even more perfect way than before the story started. Happily ever after.
  • Chapter Takeaway — There are eight stages that almost every story follows. The stages help build anticipation, emotion, and curiosity by creating conflict within the story that the main character has to overcome. It’s this conflict and the character’s actions to overcome the conflict that draws us in and holds our attention. 

Ch. 6: The Purpose-Told Story

  • Creating the Purpose-Told Story — Much like the fiction story framework outlined above, there is a certain pattern and set of guidelines involved with creating a marketing story. This chapter gets into each of those steps. They are basically the same as the steps involved in a fiction story. 
  • Stage 1: The Three Targets — The first stage involves having a clear picture of who your target audience is. Be as specific as possible. Identify exactly who you are targeting and what you want them to do. Figure out what their pain points and how your product or service can help them solve a problem or live a better life. Define the exact action you want them to take. 
  • Stage 2: Subject Matter — This is where you choose the core binary value that you want to use to create turning points in your story. Choose a binary core value that best dramatizes the solution to the customer’s problem. This is also where you want to choose what, or who, will serve as the protagonist in your story, as well as the story’s setting (location and time period). 
  • Stage 3: The Inciting Incident — Just as in a fiction story, some event or incident throws the core binary value off kilter and puts the main character out of balance. The event will grab the customer’s attention by raising curiosity: “What’s going to happen now?” The main character’s reaction to the inciting incident should generate empathy and emotional concern from the customer. 
  • Stage 4: The Object of Desire — To regain balance, the main character identifies and pursues an object of desire. This focus could be a physical thing, like a new iPhone, or a condition that improves life, such as financial security, a career promotion, or even something more abstract like a dream of romance. This is usually where you position your product or service as the object of desire or solution. 
  • Stage 5: The First Action — Just like in a fiction story, the main character has to take a first step towards acquiring the object of desire. He takes an action that he expects to work. 
  • Stage 6: The First Reaction — This step describes what happens when the main character takes action. The first reaction is always the opposite of what the main character expected to happen, therefore creating conflict. An antagonist force is now working against the main character as he tries to restore balance. Keep in mind here that repetition kills impact. A positive ending where the main character “wins” and restores balance requires a negative setup. If it’s just the main character winning over and over again, there’s no conflict. No change. No curiosity. No emotion. It’s that up and down journey that draws people in. But many people in marketing are scared to associate any kind of negativity or conflict with their brand.
    • Quote (P. 112): “Marketing stories move from problem to solution, not solution to solution to solution. A positive climax demands a negative setup. For no matter how happy a happy ending may be, if nothing but uplifting scenes precede it, redundancy erases those images from the audience’s memory.”
    • Quote (P. 113): “Why do so many product and service ads deliver little, if any, impact? Answer: because their tellings deliberately avoid any hint of conflict.”
  • Stage 7: Crisis Choice — Unlike a fiction story, the decision that must be made in this seventh stage is pretty clear to the main character. The insight gained from Stage 6 leaves one obvious choice that should help the character regain balance. He draws up a plan of action and takes it. 
  • Stage 8: Climactic Reaction — Stage 8 delivers the goods. The main character’s second action leads to a positive reaction from his world, giving him his object of desire and reestablishing the balance in his life. This climactic event not only satisfies the audience’s emotional curiosity about the outcome of the story, but also dramatizes how they can solve the problem in their own lives — how they, too, can get what they need and desire.
  • Chapter Takeaway — Crafting a marketing story for a company follows the same fiction story framework with a few small exceptions. 

Ch. 7: Story and the CMO

  • Authenticity — Customers know that nobody is perfect. You have to embrace and call out weaknesses. If you’re just giving them positive brag after positive brag, there’s too much repetition and not enough conflict. You lose their interest. They also won’t trust you because they know you’re not being authentic by hiding weaknesses. 
  • Story Progression — Focus on the main character’s progression through the story. As discussed earlier, the character begins in balance, experiences an event that throws him out of balance, takes action to overcome the conflict, experiences setbacks and triumphs to those actions, and then wins at the end with one last climatic move.
    • Quote (P. 130): “Your story’s progressive complications hold the attention of your audience while sharing a more complete, trustworthy, and convincing version of what you do.”
  • Chapter Takeaway — As a CMO in today’s world, you have to understand that the traditional “talking at customers” way of advertising isn’t going to work. The new age of advertising is all about stories that hook and hold a customer’s attention, produce emotion, and compels the person to take the action you want them take. 

Ch. 8: Storified Branding

  • Interesting Fact — On April 10, 2010, BP’s Deepwater Horizon — a mobile, offshore drilling unit that was drilling a deep water well in the Gulf of Mexico — experienced an explosion and sank to the ocean floor. The resulting oil spill was the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. An estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil spilled into the ocean. The incident costed BP $62 billion and the company pleaded guilty to 11 felony charges.
  • Interesting Fact — On September 18, 2015, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) accused Volkswagen of knowingly and willfully violating federal law by selling 428,000 diesel cars equipped with “defeat devices.” Volkswagen programmed these cars with special software designed to evade environmental tests. When tested in the lab, their diesel engines operated more efficiently (but far less powerfully), meeting required environmental standards. When on the road, they operated differently, emitting nitrous oxide at 40 times the legal limit. Volkswagen paid $20 billion for its crimes.
  • Types of Corporate Stories — So, we know how stories are constructed, but what kind of stories can we tell? There are five primary types of stories that a corporation can create depending on its situation. These include:
    • Origin Stories — How did the company come to be? Consider constructing a story based on the founder’s vision that led to him or her to start the company. The story can highlight the courage and bravery it took for the founder to start his or her own business. The founder would normally be the main character in this kind of story. 
    • Corporate History — Detail the struggle and triumph the company has gone through to get to where it is today. Don’t just provide a never-ending list of accomplishments; that’s boring. Remember that it’s conflict and overcoming struggle that resonates with people most. 
    • Mission Stories — What is the company’s mission and what is it doing to accomplish the mission? Form a story around this topic. Young people these days expect public service from corporation. Make sure you’re making a difference in the world beyond business and then use stories to create content that shows that. 
    • Product Stories — Build creative stories around your product and how it can help the customer. Apple’s “1984” commercial is a great example. The main character represented Apple’s new Mac computer. The commercial took viewers through the character’s journey as she rebelled against traditional computers. That was the Mac’s purpose — to break the status quo. Apple formed a great story around that with the commercial. 
    • Consumer Stories — Identify the core binary value that you want to hit on and then find ways to take consumers through a journey with that value. Red Bull is a great case study for this. Most of Red Bull’s marketing, advertising, and content is selling a consumer lifestyle rather than a product. Their product — an energy drink — fits naturally into that lifestyle without them even needing to say it. 
  • Red Bull Case Study — Red Bull is one of the companies that has mastered storytelling with its marketing, advertising, and content. Everything is about selling a lifestyle of adventure, energy, fun, and risk-taking. Red Bull has followed a few of the key stages of storytelling perfectly:
    • Target Audience — Red Bull determined its target audience is young people who love extreme sports and adventure. 
    • Feeling — Red Bull then asked: “What do we want our customers to ultimately feel?” The answer was “frenetic energy.”
    • Core Binary Value — The first two steps led to Red Bull identifying its core binary value: excitement/boredom. 
    • Tell Stories — Using this information, Res Bull creates content that takes viewers and readers through a journey around the core value of excitement/boredom. 
  • Chapter Takeaway — There are five basic story types that companies can tell. The stories a company should tell are based on its unique situation. Some young companies will find it easier to tell origin stories. Others will focus on product stories. It depends on each company’s circumstances. 

Ch. 9: Storified Advertising

  • Stories and Ads — Although traditional advertising is declining in usage and effectiveness, it’s still a powerful way to reach customers. When crafting ads or commercials, make sure they tell a story. 

Ch. 10: Storified Demand and Lead Generation

  • Content Marketing — Things have changed. Traditional outbound advertising is fading and is being replaced by more inbound, customer-centric strategies like content marketing. Content marketing creates material your customers want or need, instead of repeating messages describing the features and benefits of your company or products. The idea is to find out what your target audience is searching for on Google using keyword research and then create content on your website that answers their questions or gives them the information they’re looking for. By being the source that gives customers the information they need, you position yourself as the answer to the customer’s problem. They’re then more likely to buy your product.
    • Ex. The Furrow — In 1895, John Deere launched The Furrow, a magazine that helped farmers work more skillfully and profitably. The Furrow still exists today and reaches 1.5 million readers in more than 40 countries. Explicitly, it provides the innovative techniques farmers need; implicitly, it builds awareness of John Deere products. 
    • Ex. Colgate’s Oral Care Center — Colgate set up an ‘Oral Care Center’ section on its website to help customers and prospects find information they need on various dental topics. Colgate finds the topics customers are searching and then creates content to match. They also make sure the content ranks well in search using SEO principles. 
    • Ex. SecurityIntelligence.com — IBM created SecurityIntelligence.com to provide the information IT professionals need to do their job. The website also breaks news on hacks, malware, data, theft, and software vulnerabilities that can put enterprises at risk. IBM does not push its products. When executives at companies decide it’s time to make new investments to keep their company safe, their first call goes to IBM because the brand became their trusted advisor through the stories shared on SecurityIntelligence.com. This is how content marketing works. 
  • Chapter Takeaway — Content marketing is the way to go. With content marketing, the focus is not on bragging about or promoting your products; it’s about giving customers some kind of value through education, entertainment, or something else. Your brand is associated with the valuable content being consumed, which allows you to position yourself as the answer to the customer’s problem. Content marketing involves a lot of keyword research and SEO to optimize the content on Google. 

Ch. 11: Building Audience

  • SEO — One of the best ways you can build an audience and get your content in front of people is by optimizing it with SEO so it ranks well in Google’s search algorithm. SEO involves using various tools to find out what people are searching for related to your company or product and crafting content that answers those questions. The keys to ranking well with Google include:
    • Quality Content — The No. 1 thing Google’s algorithm values is quality content. You have to make content that provides value or education to the customer. Think of it from Google’s perspective. Google (the company) wants to continue to be the top search engine in the world. To do that, it needs to give users access to the best possible content that gives them what they’re looking for. That’s why the algorithm values quality content over everything. 
    • Keywords — Using keywords effectively and in the right places is important because that’s what will get the algorithm’s attention in the first place. Using the right keywords will signal to the algorithm that your content might be what the user needs is looking for. Never engage in keyword stuffing. Google AdWords and other platforms like SEMrush will help you with keyword research. 
    • Website Optimization — Again, think of it from Google’s perspective. Websites that are fluid and deliver a great user experience will rank higher. Websites that are clunky will not. 
    • Backlinks — Backlinks establish credibility. When other websites link to your content frequently, it tells Google that your content is the real deal and might help a user. 
  • Case Study | Mastercard Priceless Surprises — In the early 2010s, Mastercard created a great way to get customers involved and deliver an experience that would lead to serious social media interaction and word of mouth advertising. The company began ‘surprising’ loyal cardholders with small and large gifts here and there. One of them involved Justin Timberlake showing up at a fan’s house to hang out for the day. The experience gives cardholders a story they could tell friends and family and share on social media.
    • Takeaway — This is what marketing is all about today. It’s all about delivering a unique, memorable, and emotional experience. It’s about getting customers involved in the content. Mastercard’s Priceless Surprises are a great example. 
  • Paid Search — Sometimes SEO can take awhile to produce results. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising allows you to pay to get your content at the top of Google’s search results. This can be really effective if you have a piece of content that is already performing pretty well. Using PPC can help amplify the content and get it in front of even more people. This is another way to generate brand awareness, build an audience, drive more website traffic, get more leads, and get more sales. 
  • Chapter Takeaway — SEO and PPC Advertising are great ways to drive more website traffic and generate more sales. With SEO, there’s a bit of a lag because it takes longer to work. With PPC, results are immediate because your content will instantly rank towards the top of Google’s search results. Keyword research is critical in both strategies. 

Ch. 12: Storified Sales

  • Using Stories in Sales — You can use the story framework to pitch a product or service to a prospect in a sales email or phone call. 

Ch. 13: -Nomics

  • Tracking Success — As with anything in marketing, it’s important to track the success of your story-driven content using analytics. You’ll need to show leadership that stories are the way to go now. The best way to do it is to use Google Analytics and other data platforms to measure your ROI, reach, engagement, and anything else you can track.