betterfaith

Growth Working Session · Aug 7, 2026

The Lord's Giant, Story #1 — and the wall we hit.

Our first influencer story reached 43,400 people and sent 643 of them to us. Then we asked them to build an account before we gave them anything — and 634 walked. This session is about fixing the drop, not the reach.

Creator: The Lord's Giant 3-tile story → website 1 booked · $47 gross margin Red on throughput, not on fees

01 · Campaign Snapshot

What one story actually did

Strong top-of-funnel from a creator audience. The reach worked. Everything downstream of the click is where the money leaked out.

43,400
Story views
Reach was not the problem
643
Unique clicks
1.48% CTR · 733 total taps
9
Accounts created
Just 1.4% of clickers
1
Booked appointment
11% of the 9 accounts
$47
Gross margin
On $100 revenue, 1 session

The click-through rate is healthy for a story. The collapse from 643 → 9 is not a traffic problem — it's a front-door problem.

02 · The Funnel

Where we drop consumers

Four stages. Three of them convert like you'd expect. One of them — the account-creation wall — is where 98.6% of our hard-won, paid traffic disappears.

Story viewsThe Lord's Giant, 3-tile story
43,400
1.48% tapped through — normal / healthy for a story link tap
Clicks to websiteLanded on the homepage, then had to navigate
643 unique · 733 total
▼ 98.6% lost here — the account-creation wall
Accounts createdFull sign-up required before any value
9
11% booked — intent was high once they got in
Booked appointmentConverted to a paid first session
1 · $100

Bar widths are illustrative for readability; the conversion rates between stages are exact.

634

interested people we sent home empty-handed

They watched the story, felt something, and tapped the link — the hardest part. Then we met that intent with a sign-up form and lost all but nine of them. Once people were inside, they converted fine (11% booked). The problem is entirely the door, and notably we captured zero way to follow up with the other 634.

03 · The Economics

Why we're in the red — and why that's fixable

The transaction itself cleared +$47 of gross margin. This was a revenue-share deal, so there's no big fixed fee sinking us. We're red purely on throughput — and throughput is the one thing entirely in our control.

Story #1 unit economics

Views delivered43,400
Unique clicks643
  ↳ Revenue per unique click$0.16
  ↳ Gross margin per unique click$0.07
Leads / emails captured9
Booked appointments1
Gross revenue$100
  ↳ Ben's share (10%)−$10
  ↳ JayMike's share (3%)−$3
Net revenue$87
  ↳ COGS (session delivery)−$40
Gross margin$47

The bigger miss

We evaluated this story on 1 booking. But a spiritual-care relationship isn't a one-session transaction — it's multi-session packs and an ongoing 1:1. The number that should scare us isn't "$100."

It's this: of 643 warm, self-selected people who raised their hand, we can re-contact nine. The other 634 are gone — no email, no nurture, no second chance, even though our welcome and reminder email flows are already built and sitting idle.

Reframe for the session: the goal of a creator story isn't a same-day booking. It's captured intent we can nurture into bookings over weeks. Judge the channel on leads captured, not day-one revenue.

04 · Working Session Agenda

Three questions on the table

Each block below has starting-point thinking to react to — not conclusions. The goal is to leave with decisions, not more analysis.

1

How do we optimize the story post itself?

  • Lead with the wound, not the category. "Faith-led spiritual care" is a label nobody feels. Our audience research says the wedge is "you reached out, and got silence." Tile 1 should name that exact moment.
  • Match the creator's voice. A native, first-person "here's who helped me" from The Lord's Giant will out-convert a polished brand card in-story.
  • Three tiles, one job each: Tile 1 = the feeling / hook · Tile 2 = the promise (a real guide, 1:1, no judgment) + an engagement sticker (poll/question) to lift story ranking · Tile 3 = the ask.
  • Fix the CTA verb. Sell the outcome — "Get matched with a guide in 2 minutes" — via the link sticker, not "sign up" or "link in bio."
  • Test angle, not just creative. Deconstructor and "The Unseen" are our two sharpest cold hooks; pick one per story so results are readable.
2

Where do we drop consumers in the funnel?

  • Kill the homepage hop. Today: story → homepage → browse → sign up. Every hand-off bleeds intent. The homepage asks people to navigate; they came to act.
  • Drop straight into a single-purpose destination that continues the story's momentum instead of restarting it.
  • Message match. The landing's headline should echo the exact angle of the story tile they tapped — same words, same emotion — so it feels like one continuous motion.
  • Mobile-first, full stop. 100% of this traffic is on a phone inside Instagram's in-app browser. Design for thumb, speed, and one decision per screen.
  • No dead ends. Whatever the destination, it must capture a way to follow up before it asks for a commitment.
3

How do we capture emails without full account creation?

  • The account is the leak. 643 → 9 is the whole problem. Asking for a password before delivering value is the highest-friction thing we do.
  • Trade value for the email, not the email for access. Let people do the thing first, then offer to email their results — an ask they'll happily say yes to because they get something back.
  • Progressive profiling. Collect the email at the moment of peak investment (after they've answered), not on arrival.
  • Defer the account. A magic-link in that results email becomes the account later — no password wall up front.
  • Every email is a saved lead. Even non-bookers enter the already-built welcome + reminder nurture instead of vanishing.

05 · The Recommendation

Drop them into Get-Matched — and email the results

Dakota's proposal, and the through-line that answers all three questions at once: replace the homepage-then-signup path with the onboarding wizard itself, and swap the account wall for an "email me my matches" step.

Dakota's Recommendation

Send the click straight into the Get-Matched wizard — no homepage, no account wall.

People answer a few quick questions, see the guides they'd be matched with, and are offered a single low-friction ask: "Email me my matches." That one field captures the lead. The account gets created later from a magic link in that email — after we've already delivered value, not before.

✕ Today — 9 leads from 643 clicks

Tap the story link
↓
Land on the homepage — now navigate
↓
Find your way toward getting matched
↓
🚧 CREATE AN ACCOUNT — password wall · 98.6% quit here
↓
Finally, book a session

✓ Proposed — capture the lead, then convert

Tap the story link (message-matched)
↓
Land directly in the Get-Matched wizard — no homepage
↓
Answer 3–4 quick, warm questions
↓
See your matched guides — value delivered
↓
"Email me my matches" — one field, lead captured
↓
Book now — or enter nurture (account via magic link)

Why it works

It removes the single biggest friction point (the password wall) and replaces it with an ask people want to say yes to. The wizard is the value, so the email feels earned, not extracted.

What it unlocks

Every completed wizard becomes a re-contactable lead, not a lost visitor. Non-bookers flow into the welcome + reminder emails we've already built. The list compounds across every future story.

What it costs us

Build: a message-matched wizard entry route, an "email my matches" step, and a magic-link account-creation path. No new brand, no new pricing. Mostly a re-sequencing of flows we already own.

06 · Projected Impact

Same 643 clicks, a very different outcome

Illustrative model on the same traffic we already bought. The point isn't the exact figures — it's the order-of-magnitude shift from removing the wall and capturing the email. These are assumptions to pressure-test live.

From 643 unique clicks Today Conservative Base Stretch
Click → captured lead 1.4% 30% 40% 55%
Leads / emails captured 9 193 257 354
Lead → booked 11% 6% 8% 10%
Booked appointments 1 12 21 35
First-session revenue $100 $1,200 $2,100 $3,500
Gross margin (@ $47/booking) $47 $564 $987 $1,645

Booking rates are set below today's 11% on purpose — a captured-lead pool is colder than someone who pushed through a signup, so we model it more conservatively and let nurture + volume do the work. Even so, gross margin moves 12–35×, and we end each story with a list of 193–354 to nurture toward multi-session packs — the real compounding asset.

07 · Decisions & Next Steps

What we want to leave with

A short list of decisions and owners so the next story runs on the new flow, not the old one.