“My StoryBrand website isn’t working!”
I still have people reach out to me regularly to let me know they aren’t getting results from their new StoryBrand website. Or maybe they’re just looking at a newly built website, whether they’re using StoryBrand or not. And they want help troubleshooting the “problem.”
If you’re like most business owners, you want your website to give you results you can feel! And if you decided to follow the StoryBrand framework, you probably thought you’d see conversions skyrocketing immediately.
So, if you’re not getting results, what in the world is going on? Let’s dive into what might be happening to make the StoryBrand framework give you lackluster results.
What’s up With Nothing After Building a StoryBrand Website?
So, you trusted the process and followed the StoryBrand framework, and now nothing.🤷🏻♀️
Or at least it feels like nothing, and maybe it’s even worse than nothing if you were to take a look at the numbers. Believe me, I’ve seen my share of brand spankin’ new StoryBrand websites that actually deliver fewer results than the pre-StoryBrand marketing message.
So what happened?
Does StoryBrand just not work?
Or maybe your business really is a unicorn? 🦄
Probably not, but if you are having trouble with your website performance post implementation of the StoryBrand framework…
Before you throw in the towel and eat the cost, I want you to take a look at three possibilities for why StoryBrand might not be working on your website.
In 99 out of 100 cases, absolutely not a scientifically gathered statistic 😉, one of three issues is working against your website results. It has nothing to do with StoryBrand, and the good news is, it can be fixed!
So I want to dig in with you and get that StoryBrand message working for you on your website. In this article, we’re covering the first issue we find on StoryBrand websites that aren’t seeing results.
Are you ready?
1. Traffic
Let’s have some real talk here.
You may never have had traffic to your website in the first place.
We start here before we build a new website. Because I still believe StoryBrand provides the best business storytelling framework on the planet.
And I know it works across the board on websites, if you need to convert website traffic into buyers. Let me repeat that with a different emphasis, I know it works on websites across the board, IF you need to convert website traffic into buyers.
No Traffic? No Conversions!
And that’s kind of the rub with StoryBrand on your website. If you don’t have any traffic, you’re not gonna have any dice. 🎲
Now come with me on a journey real quick back to math class. Remember what a percentage of zero is? Yup, still zero. A good message on your website cannot convince zero people to turn into buyers.
Realistically, though, you have some website traffic. So the question is, how much? And are they really your target audience?
How Much Traffic do you Need to Know if Your StoryBrand Website is Working?
Here’s a quote from Mike Michalowicz’ book, Get Different…
“Data scientist Dr. Piroska Bisits-Bullen speaks actively on making data-based decisions. In here article, ‘How to Choose a Sample Size (for the Statistically Challenged),’ Dr. Bisits-Bullen shares some basic guidelines to ensure the data you analyze gives you an indication of whether the experiment will work on a large scale. She states that a good sample size is 10 percent of the entire target population, and that a sample size should never be below one hundred people or organizations. If your target market has five thousand prospects, then you’ll need a minimum of one hundred prospects and a maximum of five hundred for an effective marketing test. To gain the greatest assurance of your marketing effectiveness, test five hundred. To keep costs down, do at least one hundred.”
From working with website data over the years, here’s what we know.
One hundred website visitors in a month does NOT equal one hundred people in your target market.
One hundred website visitors does NOT even equal unique users.
So, it’s time to dig into your website data to see if you even have a good sample size to know if your website message is working or not.
How to Find the Website Data
If you’re reading this and now you think you might have a traffic problem, jump into Google Analytics. It’s a great way to find out what traffic is coming into your website and the demographics of the audience. Are you getting your message in front of at least 100 of the right people? If you don’t have Google Analytics on your site, get with your webmaster and set up a Google Analytics account or do it yourself.
And all you need is a Gmail address and access to the code section of your website. But if you’re not familiar with getting into the code section on your website, get your webmaster involved and get that all set up. Start tracking today!
It’s always better to have analytics information from a while back. But you’ve got to start where you are. It’s like the planting a tree analogy, the best time would have been 50 years ago. But the next best time is today. And it’s the same way with tracking data on your website.
Numbers That Matter
Once you’re tracking the data, you can decide if you have a traffic problem. At a bare minimum, you need at least 100 unique people, from your ideal audience, coming to your website each month to tell whether or not your message is working.
So, you want to look at demographic and location data. If you only serve a regional area, strip out the traffic that’s coming from the rest of the world and see what your numbers look like. If you only serve women, make sure you don’t count male users visiting your site.
Don’t forget, analytics can’t tell you everything. And I specifically mean whether or not your website visitors fall into your target industry, audience interests, etc. You can get some of that data but not all of it. And that’s why we prefer to see traffic in the 500 – 1,000 unique visitor range per month (within your target location, gender, age range, etc.) to assess whether or not your website is working.
If Website Traffic is a Problem, What do you do to Increase it?
Here are 3 of the most effective ways we use to quickly increase your website traffic.
- Ads. For a short-term, very targeted bump in website traffic, ads might be the easiest way to test your marketing message.
- Registry List Updates With Review Campaign. If you’re wondering what a registry is, think Google My Business or Yelp. There are hundreds of web registries across the interwebz. Getting your business listed, updating your profile, and generating new user reviews is a fast way to build organic traffic to your site quickly.
- Press Releases. Press releases can generate immediate traffic if they’re picked up on the wire. Here’s a list of topics you could cover.
Long-term Traffic Results – Working on SEO
SEO is a long game. But we prefer it over ads because it provides something of value to your target audience, while eliminating your long-term dependence on ads.
Not to mansplain, but just in case, SEO is search engine optimization. And that just means that you’re looking for people to be able to find you in search results like Google or another search engine. SEO translates into getting more traffic without having to pay for it.
→ Get an SEO Audit to see how your website is performing in organic search and how to build more traffic with SEO.
So if you want to know if your new StoryBrand website is working, the first thing you should do is drive more traffic to your site.
Do yourself a favor and use that StoryBrand message to do it (especially if you’re using ads, press releases or listing yourself on registries)!
You’ve spent money on a new message. You’ve invested your time. Put your investment to work, and then watch the numbers on Google Analytics. If your traffic is increasing, but your conversions don’t, then you might have a different issue.
But the first thing is you got to get people to your website, and making sure that traffic is coming your way is the best place to start.
StoryBrand Websites Work!
StoryBrand is a conversion message, so you have to have people actually coming to your site in order to convert.
In our next article we’ll dive into some StoryBrand website conversion problems. But for now, concentrate on getting people to your website before you decide your message doesn’t work.
