April Sunshine Hawkins is a dynamic facilitator of StoryBrand workshops, a sought-after keynote speaker, and the co-host of the influential “Marketing Made Simple” podcast, which has captivated over 2M listeners.
She passionately helps businesses enhance their communication by teaching leaders how to leverage the StoryBrand framework to clarify and streamline their messaging effectively.
Read on to discover three insights Hawkins shares about storytelling, selling what you love, and understanding that you’re not the hero — your customer is.
1. Lead with Passion in What You Love
While it may sound like cliché advice from Liz Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love, embracing what genuinely excites you has profound implications for marketing.
Rather than focusing solely on profit, prioritize selling products or services that bring you joy. As Hawkins emphasizes, “You need to be selling the products that bring you the most joy. Why are you pushing something you hate doing? Don’t do that.”
She observes many small and medium-sized business owners feeling stuck because they sell products they aren’t passionate about. This doesn’t mean you have to abandon revenue-generating products instantly, especially if they sustain your business.
However, when you truly care about what you sell, your enthusiasm resonates with your customers. By sharing stories and values that matter to you, you can build deeper connections with your audience.
2. Prioritize Your Customer as the Hero
One of the most common mistakes in marketing is casting your brand as the hero. According to Hawkins, this is a critical misstep: “Everybody wakes up the hero of their own story. Your customers, the people you’re trying to draw in… The story needs to be about them.”
In essence, your role isn’t Batman; it’s Alfred, the loyal assistant who supports the hero. Consider a jewelry brand Hawkins worked with as an example. This brand, which manufactures pieces in Malawi and compensates workers at multiple times the minimum wage, initially wanted to highlight their ethical practices. However, Hawkins advised that the spotlight should be on the customers.
“We rewrote the campaign to ask, ‘How can these pieces help people celebrate milestones — like a promotion, an anniversary, a birthday?’ Suddenly, the jewelry wasn’t just jewelry; it became a badge of a customer’s significant life moments.”
When you align your products with your customers’ feelings and experiences, you create moments where they think, “That’s me! This is for me!”
3. Embrace Storytelling in Marketing
April Sunshine Hawkins epitomizes warmth and joy, fitting her name perfectly, and she has a deep-seated love for storytelling. This passion drives her work at StoryBrand, where she aids businesses in refining their messages through a structured framework.
“It’s just nice to have a framework to go to when you’re like, ‘Oh no, there’s a blinking cursor again. What am I supposed to say?’ You have a framework to work off of,” she explains.
For marketers, reinventing the wheel isn’t always necessary. Viewing marketing as storytelling allows for the creation of compelling narratives with heroes (customers), challenges, and triumphant resolutions.
Click Here For More Marketing tips and strategies.
External Resources:
Discover more from Make Money Online and Work From Anywhere
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
