Build Better Campaigns with Conversion Storytelling 1

Once upon a time...

Let us tell you a story: Maya is a thirtysomething professional working remotely. She loves exploring
the outdoors and is planning a multi-day backpacking trip with a friend. Between slaying work
emails, Maya gives herself a brain break by occasionally pausing to scroll Facebook on her phone.
On this particular day, her News Feed is full of the same old content, so she’s only half paying
attention when something comes on screen that catches her eye.

Mountain imagery captures her imagination. A bold headline secures her interest. Then she sees
there’s a sale on waterproof hiking boots—perfect for her upcoming mountain adventure. This ad
registers with Maya on a personal level and is able to connect with her in a crucial moment.

So she clicks.

But here’s where the story goes wrong. Maya clicks on the ad and she finds herself on a landing
page that feels completely foreign. Her waterproof boots are nowhere to be seen. The design
doesn’t match. The copy is vague. The page is a disorganized mess with no clear action. She looks
for the next step and can’t find it.

It’s dizzying. It’s time consuming. It’s not what she wanted.

“Where are those boots?” she thinks. Maya quickly loses interest and returns to her emails.

This story is unfortunately common. And at an enormous cost to marketers—a whopping 96% of
ad clicks don’t result in conversion.

Build Better Campaigns with Conversion Storytelling 2

Rewind. Let’s consider what the story might be if Maya’s experience had gone differently.

What if, instead of landing on a page jam-packed with irrelevant information, she was guided
through a narrative that reflected her unique situation and aspirations?

In this version, the page where Maya lands after the click matches the ad:
• She learns that these boots have been designed for mountain hiking and are endorsed by
some of the most experienced hikers in the world.
• The gap between Maya’s need and its solution shrinks to nothing, and the decision
practically makes itself.

Maya clicks the CTA, searches for her size, and heads for the check out. From the brand’s point of
view, she’s converted. For Maya, she’s gone from “once upon a time” to “happily ever after.”

That is the power of conversion storytelling. In this ebook, you’ll learn how to transform your
ad campaigns into end-to-end conversion narratives. We’ll explain the science that informs
conversion storytelling, and demonstrate how improving the narrative flow of your landing pages
can boost your conversion rates.

Let’s get started.

Build Better Campaigns with Conversion Storytelling 3

What is conversion storytelling?

To answer that question, let’s begin with some core principles of marketing.

As a marketer, you already know that improving digital ad strategy requires thorough customer
research, unique value propositions, and continuous testing, analysis, and optimization. Marketers
use these tactics to craft personalized digital ad campaigns that feature creative, compelling
content targeted to unique ad groups.

Conventional wisdom says that the more accurate your ad targeting, the better your return on
digital ad spend. And that’s largely true—these are undeniably important components of digital
advertising. The pre-click stage of the ad funnel is absolutely vital to campaign success.

The problem is that many digital conversion experts have learned that lesson too well. They end up
wasting time and money on laborious practices that simply don’t drive conversion results. These
include:
• A/B testing everything under the sun
• Only experimenting with design and layout changes
• Increasing advertising spend to “buy” better results

These short-sighted practices won’t improve results overall. Instead, marketers need a fresh
approach. Conversion storytelling is the overlooked piece of the puzzle that connects everything
from the first pre-click ad view to the post-click landing page experience.

Conversion storytelling unites narrative story creation with personalized, relevant experiences that
increase conversions and help customers achieve their goals. Why does this matter? Effective
conversion storytelling can drive significant improvements in:
• Revenue growth
• Ad spend efficiency
• Brand loyalty

So, let’s dig in to what we mean when we use “conversion storytelling.”

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Defining conversion storytelling

Conversion storytelling \kən-vər-zhənˈstȯr-ē-​ˌte-liŋ\ noun

The practice of developing ad narratives that flow from a targeted ad into a landing page
experience that continues the ad’s story and aesthetic, increasing ad relevance and
likelihood of conversion.

Conversion storytelling is a combination of compelling, emotionally resonant narratives and highly

personalized experiences that build strong relationships between brands and potential customers.
This approach encompasses:
• Voice-of-customer research
• Relevant emotional storytelling
• Psychographic segmentation and message pairing
• Understanding customers’ motivations and goals

In practice, this means carefully planning your campaign messaging across both ad and landing
pages, ensuring that every piece of the funnel functions as a part of your overall narrative. Building
a conversion storytelling narrative in your ad campaigns requires following these steps:
1. Define your goals and explore narrative concepts
2. Develop personas around your audience segments
3. Build relevant narratives for each persona
4. Implement those narrative flows across your ads and landing pages
5. Analyze results, experiment, and continually improve

Let’s walk through the process of building a conversion storytelling narrative in detail. Grab a
notepad or iPad and follow along!

Build Better Campaigns with Conversion Storytelling 5

Developing your narrative concepts

The first step is to align your persuasive storytelling narratives at the conceptual stage. In this stage,
ground yourself and establish your goals by asking these questions:
• What is the product or service you’re advertising?
• Who is the audience or persona you’re speaking to with this campaign?
• Why do they care? What are they trying to achieve?
• How does your product or service solve the problem better than any other?
• How will achieving this solution help the audience feel successful?

Answering these questions will give you much-needed context that will help you prepare the
rest of your campaign narrative. Remember: An effective conversion story is tightly focused on a
specific goal and audience segment.

In Maya’s story, the right product was presented to the right person at the right time. The targeted
ad created an emotional response in Maya and began a story that she wanted to continue.

By crafting their message to the audience, the advertiser was able to motivate Maya to click. That
kind of ad targeting requires a thoughtful understanding of your audience.

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Identify your audience segments

To know which stories will be most effective, you have to understand your audience. Start by
identifying the most valuable segments of your audience and build a persona for each one.

A persona is an amalgam that pulls qualities from your real-life customers. Your personas are a part
of your conversion strategy—they are, in a sense, the protagonists who use your product or service
to solve their problems and achieve their goals.

Developing audience personas requires careful customer research. You’ll need to consider a wide
range of data to develop your audience personas, including:
• Demographic (e.g., age, gender, income)
• Psychographic (e.g., values, attitudes, interests)
• Firmographic (e.g., company, industry, title)
• Geographic (e.g., city, state, country)
• Behavioral (e.g., page views, downloads, signups)
• Transactional (e.g., purchase history)

Think about Maya as an example of an audience persona. We know her age, her profession, her
income level, her hometown, her leisure activities, and which brands and company pages she
follows. We know she searches online for local hiking spots and outdoor weekend destinations and
that she browses social media at certain times during the workday. With this information, we can
locate the Mayas of the world and present them with ads that they actually want to see.

Most digital advertising platforms, like Facebook and Google, have tools for creating custom
audience segments based on these factors. Carefully targeted audiences allow you to speak to
each potential customer in the way that is most likely to convert that specific person. Essentially,
when you develop personas, you are creating the main characters in your ad story, so you need to
know them inside and out.

By understanding our persona’s wants, needs, challenges, and aspirations, we can shift advertising
so that the brand is essentially in conversation with the audience, guiding them toward the action
that concludes the story.

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Psychographic segmentation and the human brain

Conversion storytelling relies heavily on psychographic segmentation. People tend to see

themselves as the main characters of their own lives, so their attitudes and values are essential in
crafting a conversion story.

Marketers who leverage psychographic data to personalize their ad campaigns report impactful
results. According to our 2021 State of Ad Personalization Report, the outcomes of personalization
include stronger customer relationships, increased purchase intent, and elevated brand loyalty,
which translate into a 20% lift in sales, 40% or higher ROI, and 30% or higher marketing spend
efficiency.

There’s a reason psychographic segmentation is so important. Effective psychographic

segmentation allows you to speak to your audience in a way that both confirms their self
perception and feels natural.

In his behavioral economics bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Nobel Prize–winning psychologist
Daniel Kahneman posits that the human brain employs two thought modes—one fast and one
slow. Think of it as a split between our instinctual brain and our rational brain. It takes very little
effort for our brains to enter fast mode, or autopilot, where we rely on intuition and instinct to
navigate our surroundings. In contrast, the slow brain takes a great deal of cognitive energy to
operate. This makes sense—it’s easier to zone out than it is to focus on what’s in front of you.
Most buying decisions are made in “fast brain” mode, and marketers can take advantage of this to
increase sales and conversions.

What does this look like in practice? Let’s return to

the Maya example. When Maya leaves her emails for
a Facebook break, she’s switching from slow brain
to fast brain. In this mode, she is reacting to input on
instinct. When she sees the ad for hiking boots, it
speaks to the same desires that led to her planning
her hiking trip, registering on a subconscious
level. Storytelling can act as a shortcut to guide
passive readers toward new ideas.

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As a marketer, when you champion authentic and specific product narratives, then match your
message to consumer psychology, you’re proactively addressing those emotional needs and
desired outcomes, while building trust and lifetime value for your product and brand. With this in
mind, your conversion story needs a few things to be effective: A relevant emotional narrative, a
compelling value proposition, and the answer to a simple question: “What’s in it for me?”

Structuring your story

Once you’ve identified your core audience personas and learned what inspires that audience to
convert, it’s time to start crafting your narratives.

You may be familiar with the classic storytelling structure. Let’s examine.

In a conventional story, the protagonist begins their journey, experiences challenges and tension
through rising action that culminates in a climax, then ends in a resolution that leaves them in a
different place than where they started.

Let’s consider an example. A young man dreams of climbing mountains. He begins to summit peak
after peak, climbing ever higher. As he climbs, he learns about himself, makes new friends, and
overcomes incredible odds. In the end, he stands atop the highest mountain in the world, the first
person ever to look down from those heights.

That’s a real story—it happened to Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, the first men to
successfully climb Mount Everest. Not everyone can summit Everest. But the goal of conversion
storytelling is to make audiences feel like they can make the climb—like their dreams are within
reach. Keep this in mind as you consider your narrative flow.

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Conversion storytelling structure

In conversion storytelling, the model looks more like this:

Here’s how that might work in the Maya example:

1. Maya begins the story by clicking a captivating ad that offers to solve a problem or achieve a
goal. By clicking, she shows intent to reach the desired outcome.

2. Maya is taken to a
landing page where
her questions are
answered and the
claims in the ad are
validated.

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3. Maya reaches the moment of decision.
She chooses to purchase.

4. After the decision is

resolved, Maya feels secure
and gladly follows through
with the purchase.

5. Satisfied with her decision, Maya’s

day is changed for the better. She
even posts about her new boots
when she returns from her trip.

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How do we translate this structure into an advertising campaign? We need to start with the basics.
• Tension. What is this persona trying to achieve? What problems do they wish to overcome?
• Solution. How does your product or service give the persona what they want?
• Resolution. When their tension is resolved, how should the persona feel?

These questions aren’t new and you’ve surely considered them before now, so let’s put this into
practice. Write a short, one-to-two-sentence story about your product or service and how it helps
a particular persona. Here’s an example.

Persona: Active backpacker millennials

Want: Boots that are comfortable, durable, and ready to wear
Emotion: Challenge, adventure, confidence

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Conversion storytelling on your page

Creating your narrative is just the start. To get customers from ad to conversion, you need to tell a
story on your landing page.

We’ve discussed how to view your advertising strategy from a storytelling perspective. You now
have all the pieces of a story—character, audience, and conflict—you just need to put it all together.

The landing page is your best opportunity to tell a compelling story in your campaign. Take another
look at the narrative flow illustration. You’ll see that between the start (ad) and climax (conversion),
most of the story takes place on the landing page. But the landing page can’t be a one-size-fits-all
solution, or your story could fall apart. Creating a unique landing page experience for each of your
personas carefully guides the viewer toward conversion.

There’s an explanation for why cluttered landing pages fail to convert. According to psychologist
Barry Schwartz, people are vulnerable to the paradox of choice. When a consumer has too many
options, it can cause stress, complicate decision making, and ultimately result in analysis paralysis.
A narrative flow helps guide audiences from their initial interest in the ad toward conversion on the
page with as little friction as possible.

The narrative flow serves as a blueprint for the story the landing page experience is going to tell. It’s
created by drawing on data, storytelling principles, and creative insights to answer the questions:
• Who are we talking to?
• What are we talking about?
• What is their problem?
• How do we solve it?
• How do they feel once it’s been solved?

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 Above the fold
Start with the story you created in the last section.
In this exercise, we’re going to follow Maya through
another journey based on a Facebook ad—getting
food delivered when she’s stuck at her desk.

You should have a short story that identifies the

tension, solution, and resolution in your customer’s
journey. This story might resemble your ad copy or
product taglines. Now, revise that story to be as lean
Call to action as possible. With a little revision, this copy can serve
From the moment your audience as the hero copy for your page. The core emotional
expresses interest by clicking your ad, appeal should shine through in at the top of your
they should be empowered to convert. landing page.
Make sure you have a call-to-action
button clearly visible above the fold of
your landing page, without any scrolling
or searching required. Your call-to-action
text should be a part of your story. Try to
evoke the desired emotional outcome in
your CTA text, implying that their reward
is a click away.

Narrative flow
Your post-click landing page must be
focused and easy to navigate. When your
potential customer lands on your page,
they expect the visuals, copy, and tone to
remain consistent with the ad, and stay
focused on what prompted them to click
in the first place. If they begin to scroll
down the page, you know they’re hungry
for more information.

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This is your opportunity to draw them into the story and develop a narrative flow—a fleshed out
version of the short story you created earlier. Answer these questions as you move down the page:

1. Why?
Illustrate the tension. Explain
why there is a need in the
persona’s life. Why does 2. How?
this matter? What data or Illuminate the solution.
evidence demonstrates the What’s unique about
challenge? What emotions your product or
does the tension create for the service? How does it
persona? work? What will it help
your persona achieve?
What emotions does
3. Who?
the solution inspire?
Indicate trust. Who else uses
this product? What results
have they gotten? What
emotions did they feel?

This cascade is called the information hierarchy. By presenting information in this order, you
preempt questions and handle objections without ejecting the audience from the emotional core of
your story. By the time they reach the conclusion, they have all the information they need to convert
without feeling overwhelmed.

Once you write this narrative, refine the copy until it’s ready for prime time. See how effectively
your ad copy and design flow into your page narrative. It should feel cohesive and natural. Then,
collaborate with UX and visual designers to lay out the page design so that the reader is naturally
drawn into your story.

For a deeper dive into the world of building high-converting landing pages, check out this ebook
on the subject.

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Conversion storytelling
in digital marketing

Today, ad platforms like Google and Facebook absolutely dominate the pre-click stage of the
ad funnel. But the evolution of data utilization—particularly the newfound ability to slice and dice
data into minute user demographics—as well as innovations in machine learning and experience
design, are transforming digital advertising.

Advertisers recognize that more personalization means better results, but the cost of scaling
landing page personalization has made conversion storytelling difficult for most marketers.
Building and maintaining landing pages can be a costly and time-consuming effort, and companies
that leverage digital ads don’t have the head count or budget for a web development team. Plus,
there are additional demands like customer data insights and conversion UX design. So, many
digital advertisers have chosen to settle for poor returns on their advertising spend.

In the past decade, companies have wasted as much as 96% of their direct response digital
advertising budgets, resulting in a loss of $870 billion. These figures are reason enough to move
away from their “get more clicks” mentality.

Break-through, savvy marketers can see the proverbial writing on the wall—in turn, they’re
adjusting their digital strategies to invest more in the post-click stage for high ad-to-page
relevancy, emotionally driven conversion storytelling, and a focus on granular audience
segmentation. Together, this formula delivers measurable ROAS and a dramatic uptick in
conversion rates. Relevant, strategic post-click experiences target high-intent audiences, which
further boosts performance. As an added bonus, highly personalized content helps marketers
save on cost per click due to improved Gogle Quality Scores.

It’s a fact that ad-to-landing-page misalignment loses customers. It’s also a fact that audiences are
exposed to more digital advertising than ever before, and the threshold for capturing attention is
much higher.

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 A 2015 Microsoft study found that the human attention span is
about that of a goldfish, topping out at a dismal eight seconds.
With shrinking attention spans and a never-ending stream of
distractions, how do we capture and hold audience attention?

Conversion storytelling is a significant departure from the current state of digital advertising. No
longer able to rely on mere design and testing approaches, marketers must learn to tell emotional
stories that are relevant to their target audiences. Advertisers have to evolve their digital strategy
with conversion storytelling principles top of mind.

Postclick uses conversion storytelling to improve conversions

If you want to see the ROAS benefits of conversion storytelling but need support scaling your
landing page experiences, Postclick can help.

Postclick delivers a strategic solution for conversion storytelling that significantly increases ROAS,
then boosts it with best-in-class technology to deliver relevant post-click experiences at scale—
meaning higher conversion rates, faster experiences, and more effective, efficient ad spending.

Instead of a single page that tries, unsuccessfully, to speak to everyone in a catchall fashion,
Postclick’s strategic approach emphasizes the creation of multiple micro-stories for each set of
customer segmentation: Relying on demographics like age or gender, psychographics such as
interests or general attitudes, and geographic information to target climate and other location-
specific needs.

Our methodology creates campaign continuity instead of a disjointed, one-size-fits-all approach.

A user can fluidly go from a relevant ad to a matching, highly personalized experience. We tailor
our emotional narrative and product benefits to hyperspecific user needs, which results in a fluid,
harmonious journey at an individualistic, human level. It’s a better user experience than the status
quo many brands pursue today, often at great cost.

Rather than simply chasing clicks that are a budgetary and conversion dead end, our
dedicated team of expert conversion storytellers focus on highly personalized narratives to
turn those clicks into paying customers.

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In practice

At Postclick, we’ve created 500 million conversions, gathered from thousands of customers across
two million pages. In the following section, we’ve selected a few best-in-class references from our
extensive client portfolio as well as a few other top industry examples.

With our persuasive storytelling and deep customer knowledge, leveraged from granular data
segmentation, we join forces with clients for compelling, relevant experiences—experiences that
resonate with your target audiences, resulting in more conversions, stronger brand loyalty, and
increased customer lifetime value.

Postclick conversion storytelling pays for itself. Let us show you how.

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Boll & Branch Partner

Bedding company Boll & Branch used conversion storytelling on their pages to lower bounce
rates, increase conversion rates, and eventually lower the cost of customer acquisition.

Compelling, value-driven
headline and CTA
Consistent imagery
Offers easy next step
from ad to page
to convert
Secures audience interest
and establishes confidence

Note the similar headboard

and color scheme

Narrative flow
below the fold

Answers audience questions

and tells the brand story

Customer testimonial

Provides social proof

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KOS Partner

Plant milk company KOS partnered with Postclick to improve their conversion rates. Their product-
focused page speaks to customers who are intentional about diet and nutrition.

Front-and-center
purchase flow

Simplifies decision-making by
shortening path to purchase

Organic and dietary icons

Answer common questions

just below the fold

Health-focused
messaging

Addresses the
audience’s priorities
“Vegan” hook

Anticipates audience needs

High ratings and

testimonials

Serve as social proof

to establish trust

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ARCADE by Output Partner

Music software company ARCADE wants page visitors to feel like they could be a professional
music producer.

Sticky CTA button

Travels as you scroll

Free trial offer on ad and down the page
landing page

Gets customers interested How-to video

at no risk
Motivates visitors to
experiment with a free trial

Producer testimonials

Establish credibility
through star power

Narrative flow saves

details for last

Product details
are contextualized

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Evolve Partner

Vacation property management company Evolve’s wants their property owner audience to feel
relaxed and carefree with their property in Evolve’s care. Their page flow includes an interstitial that
directs motivated visitors to sign up.

Vacation imagery
Poolside image aligns
with landing page Creates an emotional connection
with property owners
Ad copy sets up tension
that is resolved on the page

Well-known
business partners

Establish trust and reliability

Common questions,
answered

Uses narrative flow to

address and ease concerns

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HelloFresh

Meal-kit company HelloFresh leads visitors from the mouthwatering ad directly into a landing
page—with customization options front and center.

Celebrity partnership

Adds social proof and

cultural relevance

Value propositions
above the fold

Curious visitors have their

questions answered

Speaks to a
foodie audience
Tells a consistent story
With recipes and guides
Picturing quality
ingredients and easy
prep throughout

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Lola

Feminine health company Lola sets the visitor at ease with reassuring product images and
straightforward copy. The page flows into product categories presented with a directness that is
still fairly new for brands speaking about personal health and wellness products.

Clean and direct design

Imagery communicates a
sophisticated, feminine aesthetic

Ad copy matches above-

the-fold page copy

Creates easy-to-follow
continuity

Carousel of key messages

Covers trust-building
points without taking up
too much space

Testimonials support
the narrative

Quotes support both product

efficacy and the company’s
mission statement

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PMD Beauty

PMD Beauty transitions from a video ad introducing their cleansing tool to a full-page background
video on the landing page that shows the product in use.

Video header

Demonstrates the
product in use

In-app messaging

Offers a free consultation and

answers common questions

Product video

Explains product benefits in

an easy-to-digest format
Consistent imagery

Across ad and
landing page

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Ruggable

The clean design and adorable dog that greet the visitor on the page speak to pet owners who
have strong emotions about their furry friends.

Headline and CTA copy

Create an emotional connection

with the target audience

Images forge an
emotional connection Videos of easy cleanup

The ad and landing page Address a common

are geared specifically pain point
toward pet owners

Multiple CTAs

Offer paths to conversion at

each step in the narrative

Instagram carousel

Adds social proof via

user-generated content

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The results

Postclick’s conversion results speak—and pay—for themselves. Whereas the industry average
conversion rate hovers somewhere around 4%, Postclick consistently delivers conversion rate
increases as high as 175X for our clients.

Our expert team develops best practices that are unique to your industry and use case. We rely
on data insights and user empathy to build more effective experiences, which result in higher
conversion rates and more happy customers.

Here are a couple of recent client results from Postclick partners.

Arcade achieved: Ancient Nutrition achieved:

+11.13% conversion rate +9.76% conversion rate

175% over industry average 117% over industry average

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Postclick tells your story

Postclick’s approach can benefit your ad strategy and business goals, which is why it’s important
to harness the power of conversion storytelling now. In the short term, it improves conversion rates
ad spend efficiency for your post-click ad strategy. In the long term, it builds stronger relationships
between your brand and your potential customers, eliciting emotion, building habits, and inspiring
brand trust and loyalty. Our approach results in better conversion rates, and ultimately, more repeat
customers.

Conversion storytelling is the core of what we do at Postclick. As conversion experts, our team
has amassed a wealth of learnings and knowledge spanning multiple verticals and industries.
We’re happy to offer insights on your current level of ad-to-page relevancy, as well as find
opportunities to increase relevancy and conversion rates for your campaigns. Take five minutes for
a complimentary conversion analysis and learn how we can help you tell your story.

Get my free conversion analysis >

Build Better Campaigns with Conversion Storytelling 28

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