I was working with someone who had a consumer packaged goods business. She was getting all these amazing views on social media, but for some reason, it wasn't turning into sales.
And she was frustrated. She was looking at marketing as one whole thing, from the first time someone saw her video on Instagram to when they made a purchase on the website. The views were there. The sales weren't where she wanted them to be.
I said, let's break down the stages.
Someone sees your video. They look at your bio. They go to your website, then the homepage, the product page, the checkout page, and eventually they buy. Those are different steps, and we can look at what's happening at each one.
We were losing people at the homepage
When we started looking at the journey, a lot of people were making it to the homepage and then leaving. So the first question became, can we improve the homepage?
We started tinkering with it. Little changes here and there. Things got a little better, but we were still looking at the same problem.
Then I asked, why don't we test taking people directly from social media to the product page? Let's take the homepage out of that particular route and see what happens.
Sales went up. And when we looked at what those people had already seen before they clicked, the reason began to make sense to us.
The videos had already shown the product in action
A lot of her videos were showing people how the product worked. By the time someone clicked through, they were already interested in buying it. The questions they wanted answered were things like, how much is this going to cost me? How long is shipping going to take?
But we were taking them to the homepage and showing them all these other items, asking them to sign up for an email list, and putting more things in front of them.
We were overwhelming people who were trying to get to something specific. Taking them directly to the product page made that next step easier.
This is why I keep talking about stages. When she looked at marketing as one big thing, she could tell that something was wrong, but it was difficult to know where to work. Breaking down the journey gave us a place to look and a change we could test.
What question are they asking you now?
This is part of what I teach through Brand Curiosity Theory. As people move through a journey with you, the questions change. Someone finding you for the first time is going to need different answers from someone who's already seen your product work and wants to buy it.
So when you look at a page on your website, include what happened before someone got there. What did the post show them? What did the video explain? What are they likely trying to find when they click?
The homepage can be a useful place for someone to learn about a business. In this particular route, we found that people were ready to move further along. The page we kept trying to improve was adding another step between them and the thing they wanted.
You can start with one route through your own business. Follow a piece of content through to the page it sends someone to, then ask what question that page answers. Does it help them do the thing they came for? Where do they have to work harder than they need to?
Before you decide your whole marketing strategy is broken, where in the journey are you losing people?
About this teaching
Adapted from an earlier Fraternity Foodie Podcast interview. This is my account of past work, with a qualitative sales outcome. It is not an independently audited case study or a promise that changing a landing page will produce the same result for another business. The recording date is unknown.
