The full title of this book by Donald Miller is Marketing Made Simple: A Step-by-Step StoryBrand Guide for Any Business, so you can see why I shortened it for the title of this blog post.
I have a client with someone on her sales and marketing team who just loves StoryBrand and recommended I and some other people read it before we launch a new campaign for this client. One of my goals for this year is to expand my working knowledge of my own profession, so I figured I might as well start by reading this book. Also, it’s super short and there’s an audio version, so I blew through it pretty quickly while doing housework.
There is a lot in here that already knew, but I still learned a fair amount, and even with the things I already knew, it’s always great to get a refresher course on some things.
The book came out in 2020, so it’s still fairly new, which (hopefully) means it’s still relevant. That said, the point of the book (and Miller’s company, StoryBrand) is to provide a timeless marketing framework that works for anyone in any industry. That means this should apply to me and my coaching clients and my attorney clients and my bookkeeping clients, etc. At the same time, I couldn’t help but compare Miller’s points on web design to something I recently read over at Orbit Media, which is all about collecting the most recent data on what works and what doesn’t when it comes to web design (specifically home pages).
Miller pointed out that people tend to scan websites in either an F pattern or a Z pattern, meaning they scan the top for information, and then scan down. Or they scan across the top to the right, then across the middle to the bottom left, and then over to the bottom right. I’m not a web designer, but when I get to the point of getting my website redesigned by a professional instead of relying on a free template, I’ll definitely be keeping this in mind.
Even the things Miller pointed out that I already knew had the wheels in my brain spinning to come up with ideas for how I could apply his recommendations to my client’s website – not to mention my own website. I’ve been playing around with the layout of my own homepage for a while, so I’m definitely going to be taking these recommendations into account in future tinkerings.
I did catch one inconsistency in this book, which is that at one point Miller says no one cares how long you’ve been in business, then later says you can put how long you’ve been in business as a way to gain authority. Granted, I think he was talking about different parts of the website, so maybe you should avoid talking about your longevity on your home page, but talk it up on your About page.
Despite that one inconsistency, I can stand by all the advice Miller gives related to content. I can’t speak to the web design aspect, but he seems to have done his research as far as the data, so I’ll take his word for it on those.
One point is that he says that, if you have an automatic slideshow on your home page, to make the text on those slides short so visitors have enough time to read it before it moves to the next slide. As a viewer of many homepages, I agree with that assessment, but Orbit Media recommends getting rid of slideshows altogether, so you might be better off taking that advice.