Photo by Nancy Center Photography
Can someone tell you what you do and how you make their life better after looking at your website for 5 seconds? Are you regularly making tweaks on your website to clarify your message? If not, I can guarantee that you’re losing people and you’re losing money.
If your website message isn’t clear, you’re bound to confuse people. When you confuse people, you lose people. None of us want to lose people or confuse people, right? If you’re reading this, you’re ready to stop losing — you’re ready to get your next win. You’re ready to clarify your website message.
Does your website pass “The Grunt Test”?
At the very least, your website should pass The Grunt Test with flying colors. The Grunt Test was created by StoryBrand.
To conduct "the Grunt test" on your own website, show someone your website for FIVE seconds, then close your laptop and ask the following three questions:
What does my business offer?
How will it make your life better?
What do you need to do to buy or get started?
Write down their answers.
Now you can begin to see where your website message needs to be clearer. Start with the header area of your website because this is what people see first when they come to your site!
Use Their Language to Describe Your Product
Find out what your user or client experiences when they interact with your product or services. You may have one way of describing it, but how do they describe it?
What do your people see?
This funny little illustration is the perfect example of the completely different perspectives we have as business owners versus our clients. It’s the difference between the product that we think is perfect versus the person who uses our product or service.
Put yourself in your user's shoes today. What do they see when they come to your website? How are you describing your product or services? Are you speaking in a clear language that solves their problem? Do you communicate clearly to them or do they feel like they are looking at a circle of turning butts?
Ask your customers questions about how they use your product or services. Ask questions like, how does it make you feel? What do you like about it? How does it make your life better? What would you tell your friends about it?
Use your customers’ language to help you to describe your product or services in a way that will be more relatable and clear.
What are you already writing that’s communicating clearly?
Take a moment to dissect what you're already doing that’s working. Pay attention to the posts that you write on Facebook that get the most engagement.
If you're communicating well about something, it means that it stirs up interest and engagement. People will tell you what's working through their response to your content that is resonating with them.
Five years ago, I was hired by an agency for a sales position. They saw the amount of engagement that I created on social media, so part of my role included social media management. In the beginning, this was a fun but also a confusing process for me. Looking back, I know why I was confused. I had no idea what I was doing that was working! Maybe I was great at creating engagement on social media — but it was happening organically. I had no idea how to replicate my supposed “skillset” for someone else.
Figure out HOW and WHY you're already communicating well so you can do more of what’s working.
What are the core motivations of your people?
This is not about you. This is about your people.
If you set yourself up to be the hero, you’ll inevitably let people down. An effective website message makes your customer the hero of the story. You’re here to serve them. This means that you need to understand what they need.
In the years since my job at that agency, I’ve obviously taken an invested interest in marketing. I’ve even taken a class on human psychology to figure out what the core motivations of all human beings are. Did you know there are around seven core motivations that each of us has? When I do a brand discovery session with a client, we go through these motivations together. I can speak from real-life experience because I’ve learned from doing the work. I’ve learned it with my boots on the ground, through failing and succeeding.
Before I coFounded Urban Southern with my cousin and we rebranded it as a lifestyle leather bag brand, we had a vision for what it could become. However, this vision had to align with what Urban Southern’s audience also needed. As we went along and I got to intimately know Urban Southern’s audience, I developed it’s brand language to communicate clearly and effectively. This played a key role in the brand’s success and its new owners are still using the language I wrote for the brand.
In the beginning, Urban Southern wasn’t a sustainable business. The business had a total of 45 online sales when I designed a new website and launched Urban Southern as a revised brand, along with email campaigns and new social media content. The new, clear language of the brand began speaking to and connecting with its audience. In the first year, I worked hard and increased sales by 8788%. In less than three years, the Urban Southern brand brought in nearly a million sales, online and offline. The marketing worked because we essentially figured out the core motivations of Urban Southern’s audience and spoke their language.
A clear website message will always be clear because you understand what motivates your people.
BONUS TIP: Know your own motivation!
When I was building the Urban Southern brand with my cousin Regina, I had two core motivators. My first “why” centered on a spiritual calling to empower and give a voice to women from my Amish/Mennonite background. I didn’t decide to take the leap until I had prayed about it and received a word from the Lord about this business venture. This was the number one motivation that kept me going. Today, multiple women from our background have started their own businesses as a result of seeing Regina and I step out of our comfort zones!
My other motivation was financial survival. I jumped in to build the Urban Southern brand as a single mother while trying to survive on a Denver-based lifestyle budget. I saw a fresh opportunity with Urban Southern to not only pay my bills, but to build a bridge to a financially secure future for my family.
For better or worse, having a strong “why” has helped me to succeed in life and business. I don’t give myself the option to quit or fail, therefore I am absolutely relentless in working toward my goals. I have worked far beyond what is required of me because I always have my own goals to meet. Today, I use what I’ve learned to build my own business and to help others win.
I know my people very well. My people love to win, both in life and business. They want to get their next financial win. They’ve already tried to do a lot of things themselves and they’ve gotten great results, but now they are ready to level up. They aren’t interested in working with someone on the internet who regurgitates knowledge — they want to work with someone who’s already done the work to get REAL results.
My people want to work with someone who thinks outside of the box. They are ready to work with someone who cuts right to the chase and helps them get their next win. And so, they decide to work with me. I have to personally believe in what they are doing to work with them, and then when I do, I give it my best shot. I’m willing to admit when I don’t know something and I’m willing to admit when I’m wrong. But we always get a win of some kind, that’s the goal. I love people who are relentless — that’s the only way any of us will truly succeed.
Do you know your people? What do they want? How are you helping them achieve their goals? How are you making their lives better?
Answer these questions, clarify your message, and get your next win!
JUST FOR YOU: FREE DOWNLOAD
Want more homework? Tap the button below to download this printable PDF from StoryBrand that will help you clarify your website message.
