I’ve written a lot of sales pages over the years, and there are a lot of things that seem like good ideas to write — that aren’t. To put it plainly, it’s easy to make well-meaning mistakes that cost you sales when you’re writing your copy.
Here are the major lessons I’ve learned after writing hundreds of sales pages that you can implement to make your copy better.
Billboard mentality and lack of specificity
Lack of specificity waters down your message and its effectiveness.
Everyone tries to write one sales page to every prospect they want to talk to, but you should write multiple sales pages to talk to multiple prospects.
If you want to multiply your sales conversions, drilling down into specificity is the secret sauce.
For example, how often have you seen (or used), phrases like, If you’re a coach, consultant, entrepreneur, or thought leader…?
Well, that’s how you know you’ve already lost them before they got into your copy.
Next, you have to identify their situation. That way you can talk to them directly in their unique experience.
So instead of writing; For Coaches, Consultants and Course Creators… your headline should read: For coaches who make less than 6 figures a year.
Specific and gives you the wiggle room to talk directly about their experience.
Repeat as necessary.
Failure to launch
Interviewing prospects is the thing that will make or break your copy. Whenever an offer isn’t converting, it usually comes down to two things: they either don’t want what you’re selling or you’re using the wrong words in your copy. Both of those situations are fixed by interviewing prospects.
It’s very simple. The fastest way to get money in your hands is to get on the phone, find out what they want, and then give them what they want.
What is that one thing all of the prospects want? What is the one problem they all have in common? Is it something that they want, or is it something that’s nice to have?
If it’s something they want that solves their primary problem, and you’re using words they understand to tell them about it, then you’ve got winning copy.
“Decide the effect you want to produce in your reader.” — Robert Collier
The 3 Ds make the difference
There are three parts to any sale. First, there is desire. The prospect has to already desire your solution or you have to create that desire within them. The second D is delivery. Delivery is all about how you’re going to deliver what they want.
For example, if your prospect wants to lose weight but they suffer from knee pain, your delivery method needs to avoid causing them more knee pain or injury. This could look like:
- “We have modifications on every exercise to protect you from knee pain or injury.”
- “Lose weight without doing exercises that put stress on your knees.”
“Lose weight without exercising. Just follow our method and watch the pounds melt off.”
If you try to deliver your offer in a way the prospect doesn’t want to receive it, then you’re not going to make a sale.
This happened with a friend of mine who was buying an exercise program. The program included HIIT workouts that were hard on her knees. When she asked the company if there were modifications, they said to go slower. That was a sale lost because she couldn’t do the exercises.
This story isn’t just about making sure your delivery method is acceptable to your prospects, but it also points back to making the time to interview them. If the company had interviewed their prospects, they would’ve known that knee pain affects 25% of adults, and they could have tailored their delivery or put disclaimers upfront about who this offer was not for.
The third part of the sale is the decision. Everything you share in your copy on your sales page, your sales video, or your webinar, needs to be relevant to your prospect making the buying decision. Don’t teach. If they’re on the sales page, the time for teaching has passed. Don’t go on tangents about anything else. This is not content. It’s a sales page.
Focus on what they need to know to make the decision so they can move forward (or part ways) with you.
It’s a higher priority for your prospects to deal with good people than it is for them to have good products. You can go in confident, telling them why you’re the best and why they should hire you, but that’s not typically going to make the sale.
But if you take that confidence and turn the conversation into an emotional connection, then you have higher conversions.
For example, if I was selling to dermatologists and I told them, “I’m awesome, here’s why, hire me—” I’m not making that sale. But if instead, I lead with, “Dermatologists saved my life. When I was 21, I had skin cancer and a dermatologist took great care of me.
I’ve been cancer free since—” that’s a sale-producing conversation because I recognized why my prospect is important. I built an emotional connection and validated what they do (because in most scenarios, people feel taken for granted).
Now here’s the key. Don’t lie in your copy. Tell your prospect a true story about why you care and why you want to help them. Coming up with reasons why you’re selling something is half of the battle and most people don’t think about it which is a huge mistake. There’s no emotional tie without having a reason for why you care about your prospects.
Take the time to do what other people gloss over, and craft the reasons why you want to work with your prospects and why you have to help them. Make sure your offer is what they want (and delivered in the way they want). And speak to them directly. Do those things on your sales page, and you’ll be further ahead.
