From Curious to Closed - Boost Sales With a 3-Step Plan

Your marketing is always competing with whichever social media app your audience is addicted to.

This means your marketing needs to be so clear and compelling that your customers would rather continue to read your website than get a dopamine spike from TikTok. One of the most effective ways to win this battle in your marketing is by having a clear and concise plan that describes what its like to work with you or buy your product, making it easy for prospects to understand what to expect when doing business with you and understand how it will make their life better.

 In this blog post, we'll discuss how to create a simple 3-step plan using the StoryBrand Marketing Framework, and why it's important to keep things simple in order to drive customer engagement.

Why a 3-Step Plan?

The human brain is constantly bombarded with information and distractions. If your marketing messaging doesn't tell your audience about your process for solving their problems, you risk losing potential customers to a competitor who does or to the social media distraction of their choice. A 3-Step Plan will help you do this.

How to Create Your 3-Step Plan:

Keep it concise: Studies have shown that website engagement plummets when brands have a 4 or 5-step plan in their marketing. 2 steps feels a little too unclear, but 3-steps is the sweet spot. The human brain likes groups of three. Red, yellow, and green, for stoplights. First, second, and third base for baseball. Your marketing is no different. 

Write at a 5th-grade level: Regardless of your industry or target audience, your plan should be written in simple language that's easy to understand. Avoid using industry jargon or complex terminology that might alienate your audience. I mean it when I say it doesn’t matter if you’re a rocket scientist or brain surgeon. Your 3-step plan needs to be written at a 5th-grade level using simple words. Using high-level industry jargon makes readers feel stupid, and nobody wants to do business with someone who makes them feel stupid. 

Focus on what's relevant: Keep your behind-the-scenes processes out of your customer-facing marketing. Only include information that directly relates to the customer experience, saving detailed explanations for sales calls or free resources when prospects ask.

How to Simplify Your Current Plan:

If you're struggling to condense a more complex plan into just three steps, consider the following strategies:

1. Combine steps: It's okay to merge steps as long as your copy is concise and easy to understand. Remember - 5th-grade reading level! 

2. Remove Extra Info: Eliminate details that don't contribute to the customer's sense of safety and security. For example, if you're a travel agent, you wouldn’t mention potential flight delays or turbulence in your plan. Focus on what will make your audience feel confident that nothing can go wrong.

Having a simple 3-step plan is crucial for capturing the attention of your leads and prospects, ensuring they have a clear understanding of what to expect when doing business with you. By following the guidelines provided in this post, you can effectively boost customer engagement and drive the growth of your business. Remember, your 3-step plan should be on your website, printed materials, and anything else that gets consistent traffic. You can also create a few different 3-step plans for various marketing campaigns and different products if necessary. 

If you’re struggling to apply the StoryBrand Framework to your business, we’re here to help. We can help you with a 1-Hour Coaching Call, a 1-Day Worksop, or One Big Project!

You’ve got this, 

Jonny 

About South Mountain Messaging:

Bad messaging is holding too many businesses back. We help our clients apply the StoryBrand Marketing Framework so they know exactly what to talk about in their marketing and have content that works.

Here's how we do it:

1. First we learn about your business and your customers.
2. Next, we apply build out your StoryBrand framework
3. Then, we write StoryBranded content 

If you're interested in applying the StoryBrand Framework to your marketing, you can schedule a time to talk with us here.