Discover 4 Reasons Why HubSpot and StoryBrand are a Perfect Combination for Your Growing Business

by Kim Garmon Hummel

Hard work for the sake of hard work is a losing strategy. You are not in the business of struggling—you want to succeed by building a sustainable, scalable business that serves your customers.

The big trap marketers from all over fall into is trying to service everyone. Don’t do it! Sometimes, it feels like a requirement to try and speak to everyone and solve everyone’s problems.

That’s how you end up working harder, not growing smarter. That’s why you need to define your audience, their problem, and how your business solves that problem. How? Instead of guessing about what works and stressing out about the eventual poor results, use powerful tools and strategies that are simple, cost-effective, and serve your ideal customers.

This is a blog about why HubSpot and StoryBrand are a perfect combination for business growth and customer success.

HubSpot allows you to automate the work that takes up the most time in your marketing: communication, email campaigns, data reporting, and lead generation.

StoryBrand empowers you to build a direct, clear message that you can use in the tools HubSpot provides. A clear message must address your customer’s problem, identify the solution, and position your business as the guide to help them reach their goals. That is the path to better business.

In short, this is the match made in marketing heaven.

We like to think of HubSpot and StoryBrand as two sides of the same coin:

Both are committed to delighting customers by building relationships
Both offer tools and steps to build better marketing and messaging strategies
Both are accessible for business owners of all sizes and industries

What is HubSpot?

HubSpot is a software as a service, or SaaS, that offers all-in-one software solutions to grow your business. From website building to communication, HubSpot’s tool suite has everything you need to start strong and build better.

For more information on why HubSpot is right for your business, visit our blog detailing HubSpot’s value, features, and pricing. This is the blog to read for anyone committed to spending less time on marketing tasks and more time building relationships with your customers.

What is StoryBrand?

StoryBrand, developed by author Donald Miller, is a popular messaging framework that helps your brand tell a clear and compelling story. We’ve covered StoryBrand quite a bit here at Sauce. Here are several helpful blogs about the StoryBrand marketing framework:

If you clarify your message, customers listen. There are two key things to keep in mind before crafting a StoryBrand strategy:

Is your messaging about your customer’s survival?
Is the message clear and simple?

If you answered “no” to either of these questions, then your customers do not understand you or your product. Don’t get caught in the weeds. Bring your language and product marketing down to the level of the decision-makers. Don’t scare customers at the door—invite them into a story, present a solution, and guide them to success.

1. Clear and simple wins the day

Your website is the first thing customers interact with. To generate interest and close sales, it needs to do the following two things:

Open a story by stating a compelling reason and addressing the customer’s problem
Be easy and effective to navigate, interact with, and work through

Your website is your most important employee and most dedicated salesperson. A website that confuses, loses. Your business isn’t about losing. It’s about understanding your customer’s needs, offering a solution, and guiding them toward an informed purchase.

HubSpot allows you to build a simple, effective website without touching a line of code.

StoryBrand is the secret power behind giving customers a reason to visit, click, and keep coming back.

We’d love to talk with you about adopting HubSpot and StoryBrand, but here are two free tips we use in our own strategy processes that make our lives easier:

Use a StoryBrand BrandScript to flesh out an entire website from start to finish
Use HubSpot’s SEO tools for research and tracking words and phrases that speak to your customers

The StoryBrand BrandScript is a powerful, internal tool that drives compelling strategies around wants, problems, and solutions. It’s the scientific method of StoryBrand!

2. Action speaks louder than words

From day one, HubSpot and StoryBrand demand that your digital presence, whether it’s a website, email, or social media, offers a clear path to action and success. We’re not saying fantastic copywriting doesn’t move products and services, but we are telling you that clever messaging without a call to action, or CTA, is distracting and likely results in lost business.

Your call to action needs to bring value to your customer. HubSpot communicates the value of a CTA without detailing the motivations and purpose behind user engagement. That’s where StoryBrand comes in to win the day.

When you confuse, you lose.

Most well-meaning marketers offer choice—and lots of it. That’s a problem! Does your website have high bounce rates? Maybe it’s because your website offers too much choice. HubSpot loves choice and it loves delighting customers. StoryBrand recognizes this and hones the delighting stage by offering just one primary choice. Why?

Because it’s clear, simple, and direct. Don’t confuse your audience with clever copy and multiple CTAs. Win the sale and delight your customers with copy that identifies a problem and positions your primary CTA as the solution.

People head toward a vision of an improved, happier life. As customers research how to improve their lives through a purchase, they ask the following questions:

Where does your product or service take me?
How will my life improve if I engage with your business?
Will I feel better about my problem?

Your marketing needs to tell and sell. Show your customers the happy ending that awaits when they do business with you. Tell your customers what happens if they don’t! If you are honest and communicate to your customers, they will reward your efforts by purchasing your products or services.

3. Stories that tell and sell

Every story starts with a character that encounters a problem. From billion-dollar blockbusters to amateur poems, the story offers characters, conflict, and a path to success. Reading this may ruin movies for you, but most popular stories we know and love follow the hero’s journey.

As a business, you’re here to do two things: spend less time guessing about what works and more time generating revenue. And that’s exactly what StoryBrand and HubSpot do for you.

Remember: clarity sells. Don’t introduce variables and friction in your website design, marketing collateral, and strategy. Start simple. Follow the StoryBrand framework to build a compelling story that sells again and again. Once you have actionable data, assess and address small but meaningful changes to optimize your messaging. That’s where HubSpot’s powerful suite of tracking integration comes in.

We keep coming back to this: In nearly every way, HubSpot complements StoryBrand and vice versa.

HubSpot’s inbound methodology requires buyer personas: fictional characters that represent your ideal customer. You build a persona with data insights from your clients and customers. It’s an involved process, but that’s why it’s so valuable. Considering your customer at every stage of the marketing process is the path to a strategy and story that sell and delight.

StoryBrand builds on HubSpot’s buyer personas by defining a character. Personas inform your character just as much as characters define your personas. Once you understand the motivations behind your personas, you can craft their wants, problems, and solutions. Again, that’s an involved process. But the result? Marketing that delights, messaging that compels, and customers that keep coming back.

4. Build better leads

HubSpot and StoryBrand are on the same page: automated sales and nurturing email campaigns are the best way to generate interest and capture leads.

Lead generation is more than just word of mouth or guesswork. It’s about finding the right tools for the job and the best way to deliver a clear message. Tinker and build powerful automation with HubSpot. Create and optimize an inviting, problem-solving story with StoryBrand. It’s everything your business needs to delight customers and grow.

There are a lot of email clients and automation software out there. None can compare with HubSpot’s powerful marketing tool suite:

Forms to capture leads at multiple website touch points
Email marketing tools, like newsletters and email client integration
Advertising tracking and management
Landing page development with inbound methodology guidance
Helpful conversation inbox for easy internal navigation and organization

So, now you know that HubSpot’s email and marketing tools provide actionable value to your business. But how do those tools translate to value for your customers?

That’s where StoryBrand comes in.

Let’s assume you’ve captured a lead. Now it’s time to nurture. StoryBrand offers the framework to craft a powerful nurture campaign that keeps audiences engaged. Here are the three points to consider as you build a nurturing campaign:

Generally, an email needs to provide meaningful value to customers. What’s the cost of a click to your business? And more importantly, what’s the investment your customer needs to make in order to engage?
Lean into compelling, leading copy in your email titles. We find most people push back on this pretty hard—that’s totally normal. The truth is clickbait and spam headlines increase engagement. But this is where you deviate and improve on the tired spam formula: provide meaningful value in your email that follows the StoryBrand framework through compelling copy and impactful value additions, like resources and products.
When new customers purchase your product or service, how can you set them up for success? One way you can bypass the algorithm and hit them right in the inbox is to set up a customer onboarding email after a purchase or service agreement. This is a great way to welcome customers into a story, speak to problems, and offer helpful solutions to the problems plaguing their daily lives.

Growing a business is hard—don’t do it alone

Marketing is complex. But that doesn’t mean you have to do it alone. At Sauce Marketing, we’ll help you identify areas of improvement and develop a strategy guaranteed to improve your messaging and marketing so you can delight your customers.

That’s why we’re certified in both HubSpot and StoryBrand. We’re the only marketing agency in Memphis that can make that claim. What does that mean for you?

Clear, compelling messaging that results in more sales
A powerful suite of tools to execute automated tasks so you can live your best life
An entire team aligned and prepared to grow your business

You have what it takes to grow. We help you get there. Take the first step toward accelerating revenue generation by identifying and eliminating friction in your organization. Download the free tool below to get started!