As a digital marketing agency, we like to stay on top of current trends in our industry and make sure our clients know the difference between helpful tools and shady gimmicks. As a StoryBrand-certified marketing agency, we got early access to StoryBrand.ai, a new tool that helps users create their own clear messaging, and from there generate marketing collateral like taglines, email sequences, and even domain names.
But is it worth using?
Our team did a deep dive into StoryBrand.ai to give you the inside scoop—how it works, how to use it, and if it’s worth your money.
What is StoryBrand.ai?
StoryBrand.ai is a new tool developed by Don Miller’s StoryBrand company (you may have heard of the book, the StoryBrand course, or even Business Made Simple.) It is a tool similar to ChatGPT to help you develop your company’s BrandScript. From there, it can help you generate other marketing collateral, like taglines, sales scripts, emails, website wireframes, and more.
StoryBrand.AI has a few unique components that make it different from other AI tools like Gemini, ChatGPT, or Claude:
- Create a Campaign: Starting with a BrandScript, you can create an entire marketing campaign for your brand.
- Create an Asset: You can create a one-off asset, like a social media caption or sales email.
- Ask Any Question: Ask the StoryBrand Brain anything. This section operates a lot like ChatGPT—simply ask a question and it will generate a response.
- Blank Canvas: This is simply a section for you to brainstorm, copy and paste content from your campaigns, and fine-tune the ideas StoryBrand.ai gives you. You can also “consult the StoryBrand brain” on this page if you need ideas.
How to Use StoryBrand.ai
Overall, StoryBrand.ai is easy to use. First, go to app.storybrand.ai.
Then, you will need to create an account (if you don’t have a StoryBrand or Business Made Simple account already). StoryBrand.ai offers a 7-day free trial to first-time users.
Once you’ve created an account, you’re in!
The best place to start is by creating a campaign. When you click create a campaign, the StoryBrand Brain will ask you questions about your business.
Answering the StoryBrand Brain will take some time, so be sure to set aside at least 15-20 minutes. Have information about your company ready (audience demographics, vision statements, your website, etc.)
Then, the StoryBrand Brain will ask you what assets you want as part of your campaign—a BrandScript is required for all campaigns, but beyond that, you can customize which assets you receive. They can include lead generators, emails, talking points, and more.
Once you’ve input information like your target audience, the problems they face, and how you help them, you’ll be ready to start putting together your BrandScript. It’s required to build your BrandScript before any other asset.
Here’s an example of what the BrandScript looks like using a made-up business, a financial advisor called ABC Corp.
If the StoryBrand Brain has incomplete information regarding your BrandScript, it will ask you further questions on this page to refine the BrandScript for you. Note that it won’t provide you with a BrandScript in narrative format—only the 7 pieces of the framework. You can edit any piece of the framework generated by StoryBrand.ai—so wordsmith away!
Once you are satisfied with your BrandScript, you can start generating other assets in your campaign. As you work through each asset, the StoryBrand Brain will have more questions for you based on the asset—for example, if you are generating a sales email, the model might ask you if the lead is warm or cold and what your last interaction with them looked like.
Pros and Cons of StoryBrand.ai
Now that our team has had the chance to play around with StoryBrand.ai, we can offer some pros and cons based on what we’ve seen—so you can make a more informed decision about whether it will work for you and your team. Here’s what we found:
Pros:
- Lots of capabilities: StoryBrand.ai can help you with a lot of different assets. Our team was pretty impressed with the scope—everything from copy for product packaging to sales talking points. That way, you don’t have to think up what collateral you want or need.
- Ability to edit: Once the StoryBrand Brain has generated your BrandScript and other assets, you can easily wordsmith and make edits. You can even ask the Brain to regenerate copy based on new prompts (though this is finicky—more on that in the cons section.)
- Great starting points: We love tools that help us brainstorm, and this tool is effective for that. It generates a lot of assets in a short amount of time, giving you a good starting point for retooling your messaging, writing emails, or even coming up with headlines.
- Integrated into the StoryBrand ecosystem: There’s a lot of support baked right into StoryBrand.ai, including the book StoryBrand 2.0 (an updated version of Don Miller’s bestselling book that can help you with the framework) and the ability to hire a coach or agency if you need more guidance.
Cons:
- Clunky user interface: As of the writing of this blog, the user interface of StoryBrand.ai still has a few bugs. Navigation isn’t the easiest, and some assets don’t load properly, even after inputting information.
- Ineffective output: We’ve run into an issue with the iterative side of the StoryBrand Brain. After it creates an asset for you, you can revise it with a prompt to the Brain—for example, make it shorter, make it more casual, etc. When we tried this feature, nothing changed about the original copy.
- The StoryBrand Brain doesn’t retain information: If you’ve used ChatGPT, you know you can “teach” the model and even create GPTs that retain information you give it. As far as we can tell, the StoryBrand Brain doesn’t have this capability beyond the individual campaigns. You can not upload key documents that might help the model or improve the output.
- Only as good as the input: If you have incomplete information about your audience or your business, the output will only be as good as your input.
- Lack of cohesive strategy: The StoryBrand Brain offers you all the assets you could want, but doesn’t provide a cohesive strategy to help put the pieces together. For example, it can generate a lead generator for you, but you’ll have to create a strategy around the lead gen using the other assets.
- Time-consuming: In our honest opinion, StoryBrand.ai is a very time-consuming tool. For us, marketing is our job, so we spend all day creating strategies and messaging for our clients. But if you’re a business owner, you don’t have enough hours in a day to sit down and teach a robot about your company. We’ve found that it takes longer to generate outputs than other AI tools, so in some cases, ChatGPT or other generative AI platforms can be more effective at helping you come up with ideas.
The Verdict from a StoryBrand-Certified Marketing Agency
After our research and weighing the pros and cons, here is the verdict on Storybrand.ai from a StoryBrand-certified marketing agency:
StoryBrand.ai is a helpful tool for your toolkit, but it’s not a magic wand that will fix ineffective marketing.
Here are our biggest takeaways based on this verdict:
- You still need strategy. Marketing collateral is only as good as the strategy tied to it. StoryBrand.ai could write you the best email you’ve ever seen, but if you have an unorganized CRM, your audience won’t see it. StoryBrand.ai can help you with the first step, which is to clarify your message. But it can’t help you with broadcasting that messaging to places your audience will hear it.
- You’ll still have to do it yourself. StoryBrand.ai relies heavily on your input—you need to set aside time to answer each question effectively in order to get a good result. And not just for the BrandScript—most other assets also require you to answer a handful of questions before it can generate an output. And since you’ll still have to come up with a strategy, it really doesn’t save you a lot of time.
- It’s a decent starting point for business owners. If you’ve come to a point where you are beyond frustrated with your marketing but don’t have a lot of budget to invest in it, StoryBrand.ai is a good starting point. It won’t solve all of your marketing problems overnight, but it can put you on the right track toward a clearer message.
After a seven-day free trial, StoryBrand.ai is $50/month to use. If that’s within the budget for you, it’s a helpful tool. But don’t expect immediate results. All marketing takes time, especially digital marketing.
We believe the best place to start with marketing is a clear message. As a StoryBrand-certified marketing agency, every member of our team at Hughes Integrated is StoryBrand certified, so if you have questions about StoryBrand.ai and how it works, we can help. We understand that throwing marketing ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks is exhausting and expensive. That’s why we’re all about a clear message and a cohesive strategy.
