If you’re regularly losing a huge amount of work to your competitors (on your ‘patch’) then grab a pen and prepare to take some notes. Because I'm sorry to say it, but you’re missing one of the biggest lead generation opportunities and it's costing you sales everyday.

And that’s a big deal.

But there’s a solution.

Get your brand storyselling strategy straight, backed up by a solid business proposition, and you have a winning — unbeatable – combo. (If you want that as a formula, you’ll find a link at the end.)

After all, no other brand can copy YOUR story, right?

If your art or your brand or your product or service aren’t head and shoulders above the competition, if you can stand on their shoulders by virtue of telling — selling — a better story, you’ll attract the lion’s share of the audience.

An audience hardwired since before we left Africa 60,000 years ago to want to hear and share and be a fully paid up part of the next great story.

But here’s the thing:

Every great brand story is a cover story.

A cover story cunningly designed to mask a sales funnel.

I know: Sales funnel.

Sounds like something that comes right out of a Masters in Business class.

And it is.

And you know what, it works.

According to Marketo, companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at a 33% lower cost.

Marketing funnels. Sales funnels. Conversion funnels.

Whatever you call them, funnels are like spider webs, designed to lure clients in and keep them there, wrapping them in information and stories deliberately designed to be music to their ears just long enough for the client not to even realise that they are trapped — and ripe for the kill.

Okay, that was a bit dramatic — even creepy — but essentially that’s the deal with marketing funnels.

And so long as the client doesn’t realise they are being entangled in a web of conversion and snap out of it, they are your best weapons.

So you need to ensure your marketing and the user journey down the funnel you want your clients to take is snap-out-of-it proof.

To begin let's imagine you’re writing a blockbuster movie.

But in this movie, you’re not the hero — the client is the hero.

You’re role is the guide.

The sage that the hero turns to in the course of the story when they have a problem they just can’t solve.

You see, the great storyselling brands — and with it the great web designers behind their digital storyselling strategies — use storyselling as the structure of their sales funnels.

Now, just like a background story in a movie, the hero’s journey follows a sequence of chapters:

• Chapter 1: the hero learns about your problem-solving existence.
• Chapter 2: the hero checks out your values and backstory.
• Chapter 3: the hero decides they can trust you to solve their problems.
• Chapter 4: the hero becomes a client (and a hero in their own eyes).

All your client (your hero) needs to see is a vision of the future and to find his or her way through a logical and sequential sequence of short problem solving messages: from Awareness to Action.

You see, marketing funnels are designed to take each stage of the process from traffic attraction, lead conversion and sales conversion.

And if the story — and the funnel — coalesce to solve a BIG nagging problem, to win hearts and minds as well as change beliefs along the journey your brand story and your sales funnel are one.

The sales funnel trick — a trick very few visionary marketing professionals have mastered — is to design a way to let the audience engage with their own personal story and ‘discover’ your services for themselves.

To let them enter a labyrinth without even knowing they have entered one.

I know, that all sounds so bad!

So manipulative!

And it is!

The Artful Science behind all business is designed to manipulate us into parting with our money — whilst feeling good about doing it!

And the first step is to understand how your hero thinks about their current problematic situation.

And to do that, you need to get answers to the following:

Think about:

1. How does my client (hero) describe their problems, goals or challenges?
2. How do they currently educate themselves on these problems, goals or challenges?
3. Are there common misconceptions in how they currently address and ultimately solve these problems, goals or challenges?

Knowing this, you can start fashioning yourself and your marketing as their true guide:

1. Creating a mini series of inspiring social media posts or video clips.
2. Winning them over with a PDF guide tailored to their needs.
3. Creating an email sequence beneficial to solving their problems.

None of these come out of thin air; they are ‘planned’ touchpoints that reflect the values and attributes that best resonates with your hero as they seek answers.

You see, brands don’t tell stories, they sell stories.

And you — dear reader — are the often more than willing mark.

Think Apple, Nike, Airbnb.

Brand stories imperceptibly entwined with sales funnels have become blockbuster material.

Think of it another way before we get really going: think of all those times you’ve encountered a new brand and:

Found it impossible to understand what their brand story is or got part way into engaging with their brand story when you got hit by a freight train of a sales pitch so awkward that you got out of Dodge?

You see, blending artful brand storyselling with sales funnel science is a trick few pull off.

But if you get your #storyselling sales funnel straight, backed up by your irresistible offer, you have a winning — unbeatable — combo.

Clients (as readers) will flow over to you almost automatically.

Business opportunities and deals will land on your lap.

Brand evangelists will share your story from the rooftops (whilst making your brand story part of their own).

For want of a better phrase, you’ll become The Only Story in Town. (If you want that as a formula, you’ll find a link at the end.)

And so long as you keep telling — selling! — that story, you’ll rake it in.

Okay, I hear you.

You get it.

More, you want to re-design your website right now with the very goal of selling a great brand story (with its own inbuilt James Bond style secret sales funnel).

How do you evaluate which designer or agency gun to hire?

Because, in my humble opinion:

Most Website Designers Don’t Get Brand Storyselling.

Nevermind storyselling marketing funnels.

Sure, they might — might — read your content and they might — might — have a good idea on how to tart up your About Us/Me page.

And they might have a firm grasp of the value of publishing great 10x content and understand the art of web typography.

And I’m not going to argue with that as the barest minimum starting point.

But here’s the deal:

As invaluable as all these skills are — and believe me you get what you pay for — the site they create might look nice, read well — we’ll take it as given that your content rocks — but all of this will still FAIL if everything isn’t designed to funnel the audience into making a sale.

Because as I keep stressing to you: telling a great story isn’t the same as selling a great story.

And the difference is HUGE.