I read Mark Divine’s book Unbeatable Mind a few years ago. It was great.
I’m somewhat of a junkie when it comes to “mindset” stuff. Since Mark was a Navy Seal with a couple of black belts who also studied with zen intensely, he seemed like cool guy to learn from.
One of the main programs he sells is his Unbeatable Mind Academy. I never joined it, but they teach things like mental toughness, focus, resiliency, fitness, and nutrition… A lot of that “Unlock your best self” kind of stuff.
I checked out his success story page because that’s the kind of thing I do on a Monday morning.
I noticed a few things they did really well. Plus a few things they could change to drive even more sales and increase retention for their membership.
Here’s my breakdown:
What’s awesome about this page:
The page mixes both video and text. So people can consume the content however they want. They can play the video while they do their dishes… Or read stories while they are on the toilet in their office.
Unbeatable Mind Academy Success Story Page
The videos show a wide range of people — men, women, people in their 20’s, people in their 50’s — all praising Unbeatable Mind Academy. This wide range makes it easy for viewers to find someone like them. So they can see “Ah, this is for people like me.”
They also dive into specific things taught in the course and how those things helped each member.
One man talks about the visualization techniques taught in the program helped him set a new personal best at a weight lifting event. Another woman talks about how the morning ritual helps her not feel stressed throughout the day.
Sharing specific results like this show the kind of real-world results the viewer can expect. It’s not just empty praise talking about how great the program is (like most testimonials.) It’s hard proof that this program creates positive change.
The other great thing about sharing the specific techniques taught in the program and the results they led to is it makes it easier for the viewer to imagine themselves using it in their own lives and getting results.
For example, take guy sharing the story about how the visualization techniques in the program helped him with his weight lifting competition. Visualization is something the reader knows applies beyond weight lifting. The reader will start to imagine how they could use it to solve a problem in their life — it could be they have a dance performance coming up, need to give a work presentation, etc.
You don’t always need a story that shows the exact result your customer wants. You simply need to prove your product helps people get similar results and let them connect the dots on their own.
Below the video, you see a wall of customer testimonials.
These seem to be copy-and-pasted emails from happy customers. That’s great because it adds a feeling that this is real. It appears these people were so pleased with their results they were compelled to email Mark.
Showing dozens of testimonial emails like they do is great to build credibility and social proof.
Unfortunately, these testimonials don’t do much to target specific avatars and get people to go “OMG this is perfect for me!”
They’re not super emotionally-engaging so many people may skim and never get the sense of how life-changing the program can be.
And they don’t prove to the reader that they can go from the exact spot they are in to achieve the success they want through the program.
But you can fix all that and more with the following changes:
6 Way to Make This Success Stories Page Even Awesome-er
1) Don’t force your customers to do the work
When we read success stories, we want to see someone like us having success.
We want to see them overcome the same struggle we have and get the results we want.
Unfortunately, the success stories here aren’t very fleshed out. So they don’t have this effect. (More on this in the in a minute.)
Some testimonials may do this to a degree. But if I’m a prospect I’d have a tough time finding which ones apply to me because all the testimonials blend together.
There’s no bold block of text calling out specific struggles and results that could suck the reader in.
There’s nothing that says “Hey! Look at this person who solved the same problem you did!”
So the reader is stuck scrolling through stories on their own. They have to weed through testimonials that may or may not be relevant to them. After a few minutes of trying to find something relevant to them, they may lose steam and move on to something else.
You want your reader to feel compelled through the entire sales process. You want to lead them to the finish line — not abandon them at the last mile and leave them to figure it out for themselves.
Sharing success stories that call out specific avatar types, pain points, and desires helps people see, “Yes! That’s exactly what I want.” It makes it easy for them to get sucked into the story which — if you follow the rest of the points I layout, will leave them itching to buy your product.
(BTW creating success stories that close sales is what I do for clients. Here’s an example of what my case study pages look like. If you want help creating them email me at [email protected] to get on my wait list.)
2) Beef up the stories
In both the video and text on this Success Stories page, we get quotes like this:
- “This program made me a better boyfriend, son, and brother.”
- “It saved my life, dredging me from the depths of depression and darkness and grief”
- “It helped me get out of a domestic violence situation… stand up to my abuser… and build a new life with my child in a new city”
Ummmm these stories sound amazing!
That last one, in particular, is incredibly compelling. People in that same situation would obviously want to read more. But other people may get sucked in by the drama and inspiring turnaround this person made.
It’s a shame these stories aren’t shared more fully. Because doing that could:
- Inspire people to make big change in their life (and join the program)
- Get people emotionally engaged (so they read the full case study and learn all about how this program could help them.)
- Inspire readers to share this success story with others (so traffic and sales increase automatically)
3) Share specific moments from the journey
This point piggy-backs on #2.
As you go deeper into the story, you’ll want to share specific moments from the story. These will help draw the reader in. They also get the reader to see how this could help them in their own life.
These moments could include:
- The “rock bottom” moment where the person knew they needed help
- The moment they decided to join
- The moment they started to use the program
- A moment they wanted to quit the academy and how they got through it
- A highlight “Oh my god I can’t believe I did this!” moment that came as a result of what they learned in the Academy
Sharing moments like these are huge. They paint pictures in your reader’s mind. That helps the reader connect with the person in the story and makes the results more desirable.
Take that line from earlier: “It made me a better son…”
What is more compelling, that… or a story of how he was estranged from his father and barely talked to him for months… then he joined this program and it gave him the courage to have a difficult conversation that ended with a moment where he and his dad cried and said how much they loved each other…
(I totally made that up but whatever the story is will be more compelling than simply saying “I’m a better son.”)
4) Teach more
This page already does some of that in the video when customers talk about the importance of routine and visualization. But I’d go deeper here. I’d teach more around one of those points to the point where it’s useful to the reader.
The more useful your case study is the more likely people are to consume it and share it.
It’s very rare you see a case study that teaches the reader anything. That’s why many are dismissed as “fluffy marketing” and don’t close as many sales as they could.
(This is especially important if you use case studies in your cold traffic funnel or early in your welcome email sequence. People don’t know you yet so if you’re just pitching and not teaching people will be more inclined to turn away. But if you teach you’ll build trust and authority. So it’s more likely people will stay with you and give you a chance.
It’s also huge if you have a membership site like Mark does. Because sharing success stories to your existing members can inspire them to stay with the program longer.)
5) Make it pop
Everything below the video is basically a big wall of text. That can be intimidating to readers.
You could make the page pop by highlighting certain lines from each testimonial and putting that on top. So each testimonial has its own “headline” to pull people in.
You can also add photos to show what people accomplished. This can break up the text wall and put a picture in the reader’s mind of how their life can change if they join the academy.
6) Share what makes this program different
The testimonials do a nice job proving this program can help you “find your purpose”, be “mentally tough” and other benefits that people specifically mention in their testimonials.
But a lot of programs make those same promises. And many of them have similar “testimonial walls” that look no different than what Mark has.
So a great thing to add here would be what makes this program better/different than the alternatives.
There are a couple ways you could do this.
First, have the customers talk about their own journey in more detail. This likely isn’t the first program they tried. They may have joined other programs or thought they could get all they needed from books and podcasts.
Going into detail here gives you a chance to show why those other options don’t work and what makes your program better.
Doing this eliminates objections and gets your readers to see that your program is the only option.
Another thing they could do here is talk about specific things they get in this program you can’t get anywhere else.
It could be the quality of the people in the academy… specific techniques only Mark teaches… or other helpful parts of the program that are not available anywhere else. You could introduce and teach a little around them, (maybe label it something like “The Divine Visualization Technique”) to make people go “Ooooo that looks awesome, I need that.”
A simple way to make all these changes
Mark clearly has tons of amazing success stories. If these stories were told in-depth, they could connect with readers, educate them on how awesome his program is, and close more sales.
The Hero’s Journey Case Studies I create for clients do exactly that. They automatically include all the pieces mentioned above in the “6 ways to make it even awesome-er” section. Here’s an example of what the case studies I create for clients look like.
If you’d like to create them for your business, you can check out my book: Case Studies that Close Sales to learn my system.
Or if you’d rather go the done-for-you route, shoot me an email at [email protected] to get on my client wait list.