Building a StoryBrand

Empathetic statements start with words like, “We understand how it feels to . . .” or “Nobody should have to experience . . .” or “Like you, we are frustrated by . . .” or, in the case of one Toyota commercial inviting Toyota owners to engage their local Toyota service center, simply, “We care about your Toyota.”

Your transitional call to action should also be obvious, but don’t let it distract from the direct call to action. I like featuring the transitional call to action in a less-bright button next to the call to action so the “Will you marry me?” and “Can we go out again?” requests are right next to each other. Remember, if you aren’t asking people to place an order, they won’t.

Everybody wants to experience a better life in some way or another, and while it may seem simple, images of people smiling or looking satisfied speak to us. They represent an emotional destination we’d like to head toward.

Above the fold, make sure the images and text you use meet one of the following criteria:

• They promise an aspirational identity.

By offering to make my wife a pro in the kitchen, the school in Seattle could have let her know “what’s in it for her” by appealing to an aspirational identity. Can we help our customers become competent in something? Will they be different people after they’ve engaged us? Let’s spell it out clearly.

• They promise to solve a problem.

If you can fix a problem, tell us. Can you stop my cat from clawing the furniture? My car from overheating? My hair from thinning? Say it. We didn’t go to your website to read about how many company softball games you’ve won; we came here to solve a problem.

• They state exactly what they do.

The easiest thing we can do on our website is state exactly what we do. There’s a shop down the street from us called Local Honey, which would cause anybody to think they sell local honey. They quickly overcame this confusion, though, with a tagline that says, “We sell clothes. We do hair.” Gotcha. Local Honey sells clothes and does hair. I’ve now filed them away in the Rolodex of my brain and will remember them when I need new hair or new clothes.

Take a look at your website and make sure it’s obvious what you can offer a customer. Some of our clients do spell out their offer, but they spell it out in the middle of a paragraph that starts out, “We’ve been in business since 1979, committed to excellence and caring about our customers . . .” That’s all nice and sweet, but J. K. Rowling didn’t start her first Harry Potter novel with “My name is J. K. Rowling and for a long time I’ve wanted to write a book . . .” The fact that she always wanted to write a book wasn’t part of the actual Harry Potter story, and she was smart enough to know it. She got straight to the point. She hooked the reader. She was smart, and we can be smart too. An offer above the fold is a sure way to get a customer hooked on the story we’re telling.

There are two main places we want to place a direct call to action. The first is at the top right of our website and the second is in the center of the screen, above the fold. Your customer’s eye moves quickly in a Z pattern across your website, so if the top left is your logo and perhaps tagline, your top right is a “Buy Now” button, and the middle of the page is an offer followed by another “Buy Now” button, then you’ve likely gotten through all the noise in your customer’s mind and they know what role you can play in their story.

For best results the “Buy Now” buttons should be a different color from any other button on the site (preferably brighter so it stands out), and both buttons should look exactly the same. I know this sounds like overkill, but remember, people don’t read websites, they scan them. You want that button to keep showing up like a recurring theme. A person has to hear something (or read something) many times before they process the information, so we want to repeat our main call to action several times.

THE FIVE THINGS YOUR WEBSITE SHOULD INCLUDE

1. An Offer Above the Fold

When people go to your website, the first thing they see is the images and text above the fold. The term above the fold comes from the newspaper industry and refers to the stories printed above where the newspaper folds in half. On a website, the images and text above the fold are the things you see and read before you start scrolling down.

As I mentioned earlier, I like to think of the messages above the fold as a first date, and then as you scroll down you can put the messages you want to share on a second and third date. But as we’ve talked about, the stuff you share on a first date should be short, enticing, and exclusively customer-centric.

Who does your customer want to become as they relate to your products and services?

HEROES ARE DESIGNED TO TRANSFORM

At the beginning of a story, the hero is usually flawed, filled with doubt, and ill-equipped for the task set before them. The guide aids them on their journey, rife with conflict. The conflict begins to change the character, though. Forced into action, the hero develops skills and accrues the experience needed to defeat their foe. Though the hero is still filled with doubt, they summon the courage to engage, and in the climactic scene defeat the villain, proving once and for all they have changed, that they are now competent to face challenges and are better versions of themselves. The story has transformed them.

Transcendence: Brands that invite customers to participate in a larger movement offer a greater, more impactful life along with their products and services. Tom’s Shoes built a name for itself by selling stylish shoes while simultaneously giving a pair to somebody in need in what they called a “one for one” model. Those who wore the shoes claimed a major factor in deciding to make the purchase was a sense of involvement with a larger movement. At less than ten years old, the for-profit brand sold for more than $700 million. Another example of a brand that helps customers achieve a level of transcendence is Daymond John’s clothing brand FUBU, an acronym for “For Us By Us,” in reference to the African American community being represented in the marketplace. The brand offers more than fashion; it offers a sense of unity, transcendence, and entrepreneurialism for the African American community.