“LONG-FORM SALES COPY converts better or SHORT SALES PAGE is enough to sell my tripwire product?”, asked my client today.
Here’s what I told her:
**It** doesn’t really matter to the buyer.
Because..
1. The buyer is not here to measure the length of the sales page
2. The buyer is not here to count the number of words
3. The buyer is not here to admire the beauty of your design. If the design is fab, they’ll definitely admire it. But the sole purpose on the page is to **know** the product.
Your potential buyers are here to see if they’re:
1. Getting the right product – is it the right fit? What am I getting?
2. Is it worth the money – even if it’s a tripwire product
3. Who’s the creator? Is the creator credible?
4. What kind of results have past buyers seen?
5. What am I really getting if I buy this product today?
6. What will I lose if I don’t buy this product today?
7. What can I do with this product? The ROI?
8. What big worry can this product get rid of for me?
9. How much time can I save per week if I use this product?
What should you keep in mind before writing a Sales Page
1. What stage of the customer journey is my audience at? What are their major needs at this point?
2. What’s their biggest worry right now? What are their current roadblocks?
3. How are they looking at solving this?
4. List of product features + benefits
5. Prove your authority and credibility as the product creator
6. List of Frequently Asked Questions so that you don’t leave them frazzled at any point
7. Ample social proof to back up your claims and offer
8. What’s the purpose behind the purchase of a product like this?
9. Address the possible objections to buying this product
10. How can I speed up conversions and maximize sales?
Writing a sales page is not just about the number of words and the length of the page. It’s a multidimensional process that involves a myriad of moving parts to bring in conversions.
Is maintaining your business blog becoming a terrifying nightmare?
You know what the internet world calls a business owner with a stale blog? Non-existent 🙁
You have seen wrong writers, littered content calendar, that pressurizingly blinking cursor, the content marketing gurus who force you to take care of alt tags, meta descriptions and other robotic parameters you don’t understand and you think it is better to let it go?
Take a seat. I’ll be your blog-therapist for today. And in the end, I’ll leave you feeling good + a cheeky grin guaranteed!
You are tired of deception from the so-called “helpers”. You download all the free content creation calendars that promise you to take away your blogging woes.
But then, you end up staring at a blank worksheet that asks you the exact same questions … you have been digging the mud for??
And you graze your face exactly like that witch from a horror movie…That’s okay, swallow your snot. There is something more horrifying than this….that blank screen…it feels like your voice is being throttled. But sometimes, you go on a rampage and type out that entire paragraph like a solo engine taking test rounds around the station…and then when you read it, you press the backspace until you go back in time…to an intimidating-blinking cursor. Story repeats, yeah?
So, you make up your mind and you try to hire a “writer”…but, you end up scrapping all the work you were DELIVERED. You look at the chunks of kooky words that hang like your most ill-fitting garment catching dust. When you hit the sack, you are having nightmares where your prospects are barfing on your website. Eiks!
Forget all of this.
One fine day, you recover from all of this drama because it was a Sunday morning! You’ve had a fantastic week and now that you have an interesting incident to share with your audience, you decide to blog on your website. You grab your mug of fresh green juice and sit in the sun with your biz machine aka your laptop. All was good until you fall back trying to avoid the glaring sun … having no clue where to start, build context or structure your writing. Agghh, too much work! And you quit, right?
Or maybe you wrote it off that evening and then 11 months have gone by, your blog dons that stale blog.
If this is your story, there is help coming soon.
Look boss, I agree, you have challenges! You wanna go smash those sales figures, rock those goal-sy meetings, attend networking events, figure out the perfect funnel, grow your email list, hunt for the tech wizards who can set things up for you, go live on that podcast and the list never ends. You have A LOT on your plate!
But, are you putting your blog on the back seat because your time is TAKEN up?
Psst…aren’t you making a mistake big gun?
Tossing your blogging plan backward means you’re chapping up your business plan. Wanna know why? Here are 7 reasons (out of 119 reasons btw) to keep your blog active.
Blogging cuts down your sales time by 50%
Your blog is the place where your prospects get to know you, learn about your personality and identify your voice. It is where you show them who you are, instead of telling them what it is about you that they should know to buy from you. I mean, that’s what you do in a sales call, right?
By reading one piece of writing on your blog, your prospect has a registered impression about you. Now, it is up to you to build the tempo from here. A job well begun is half done? Obviously! You are already half your way through in winning that prospect. So, go blog darling!
Blogging gives you fodder to feed your social media profiles
You cannot go live 14 times a week to share your thoughts on social media. But, you can have blogs written to let the world (your customers) know, what your opinion on an issue is.
Now, why do you want to lose a stream of high-quality traffic just because you lack a blog?
Why do you want to send back those interested prospects to your competitors?
I repeat, why leave money on that frickin’ table?
Blogging makes you that money-making list
How else do you want to grow your email list? Yeah, you can tell me we have chatbots. But you know what? The chatbot is a vulnerable media. One click and poof, your messages are muted. You wanna talk to deaf ears? Nah…
I’d love to know if you have another method to grow your list (I am curious)
So, listen to me, get your blog up and going. Because honey, in that list is your money!
Nurture your authority. Earn respect as an expert
Imagine you are an authority figure or an influencer in your industry. If I meet you downtown and won’t stop admiring you and your work, how’d you feel? Mind=Blown!
That’s why, grow your authority. And this is a no-brainer. Come on, you are an expert already, and that’s why you are running a business. IT’s not just about someone admiring you. It’s the recognition that fetches you reputation. Your reputation is everything when you’re in business.
I’ll show you 5 easy ways to build authority…right here, right now
Recommend products you use (clink clink..already making money from affiliate marketing? Nice uh!)
Give your audience helpful tips that they can ACT upon (they’ll thank you forever and feel indebted to you even if they are paying money to get your secret tips and saucy advice)
Get yourself featured on elite publications and look at how clients swarm your doorway. (In case you don’t know, check out my piece on the prestigious Thrive Global that got me 3 new leads within a week of posting it)
Make powerful connections and flaunt them. This isn’t hard at all. All you have to do is one round-up post on your blog featuring influencers from your industry and you have an invaluable network in your back pocket.
Once you do these 4 steps, you become a “credible source of valuable information” naturally. You become more authoritative.
Now, all you have to do is, share information + ideas consistently.
Blogging brings Traffic + SEO
If you have a website and do not want traffic, you are mad. I mean, not you you..come on you obviously want traffic. Imagine leads come and land on your website and they head to your services page and end up hiring you. All because you shared a blog post of yours on social media. And, if you have kickass copy + a fantastic funnel, nobody can stop you from building your list, growing your biz and making a ton of money.
Plus, there is a lot of noise out there. You can cut through that noise by talking to people in your voice on your blog, on your uncluttered space. So, my dear, get a blog!
Tip: If you need more information on SEO, check it out here.
Strike conversations with your clients over a blog post
Your blog can act like an intense knowledge dissipating FAQ repository. The information can itself act as sales objection tackling mechanism which puts your prospects in your pipeline. Having your would-be clients in your digital vicinity is cool, right?
Also, who doesn’t want an opportunity to talk to clients isn’t it?
Offer YOUR solutions (services) to your clients’ problems (opportunity)
Imagine talking about a meeting in your office that sped up productivity that leads to you landing a high-ticket client. If you talk about those innate occurrences and unique experiences, you are making your clients believe you are a real, working breathing human being. And they trust you enough to buy from you.
Quick Recap
To conclude, your blog is not just beneficial for your business, it is your creative asset. It helps you capture your voice and your reader’s attention.
Your blog is the virtual bridge that connects you with your customers. If you want to resonate with your clients, build your personal brand, grow your authoritativeness, drive traffic to your website and benefit from all of the other advantages it comes with, get your blog running.
P.S: If you are totally convinced that your blog has to have a game on but you do not have the time or capacity to maintain your blog, click here.
SEO is overwhelming for beginners. You write an article and keep wondering if your article is good enough for search engines to pick it. Do you also scratch your head over the innumerable tips and tricks on SEO that confuse you? SEO in simple steps is possible.
The moment “SEO” is spelled out, there is a wave of scare in the air like it is something unachievable. If you own a website or a blog or a store, it is essential to know the basics of SEO. But, how do you learn about SEO without being anxious?
Quality content is a pre-requisite
Recently, a company approached me for an ad campaign. I had a look at the website and guess what? There was no information present. What is the product about? What does the company do? Is there a business model? What has it achieved? There was nothing relevant on the website except a few pictures and some videos as proof of sales. My first suggestion to the company was that they build on their content strategically in order to establish trust amongst existing customers and referrals. I am a huge fan of word of mouth marketing. Despite the lack of content, the company insisted on the ad campaign. I tried my best to convince them that even if the campaign worked, which was unlikely with no content on the website; even if the potential customers did land on the page, they did not have anything to convert them into customers.
Data Works
This is the Digital Era and data works. Information works. If sufficient information on the product, methodologies, and strategies is not provided, no ad campaign will achieve the base purpose you put up an ad campaign for.
For example, if you are trying to apply for jobs on LinkedIn and you have no data about yourself there, what happens? Nobody trusts you if yourLinkedIn profile is blank. Isn’t it? Likewise, nobody trusts the website if the product profile is a no-show. Hence, building on relevant content for your website is as important as your digital presence itself. Write for humans first, search engines later.
Once relevant content has been planned, little SEO tweaks can bring humongous power to achieving optimized data.
What are the little SEO tweaks?
Hashtags
At a point, much to my annoyance, everyone on Facebook had status updates with at least 15 hashtags. They seemed to serve the purpose of broken expressions. Was this an efficient way to use hashtags? Not at all! A hashtag is like a ticket to board that visibility train where you could meet people who want to meet you.
Hashtags and SEO
Hashtags are powerful search facilitators that help index the information achieve ‘discoverability’. Therefore, one would assume, the more hashtags there are, better the reach. However, research shows that the optimal number of hashtags to be used differs from one platform to another in terms of performance. Overdoing it can hinder the reach of the article or post. Do not underestimate the power of hashtags.
Low-Competition keywords
Ranking for keywords amongst business giants is almost impossible. In the SEO nation, the only way to get ahead of the competition is to cheat the competition. Expanding your keyword list walks you through low competition keywords that enable better visibility of your website. Learn how to find those low competition keywords and measure their powerhere.
Images
Using visual content spikes the growth graphs. Incorporating relevant images into the blog content adds immense value. Although adding images keeps the readers on-page, including videos drastically reduces the value of the content. Giving meaningful descriptions to the images boosts its reach.
Naming the images with appropriate keywords that describe the image is also an important factor. SEO is a little AI engine that understands. This gives the image more accessibility. Enablingalt tags is encouraged for thispurpose. Search for a building in Google images and the pictures of buildings come up. Why? Because they have described the images as buildings in the alt description for SEO.
Fresh content
SEO loves fresh juice; why not squeeze it? Stagnant content does more bad than good, to your website. Fresh juice can be squeezed only once. Likewise, creating fresh content on a regular basis makes for better rankings in search engines, not rewriting the same content. It means planned, timely content. This is best achieved through blogging. An updated blog gets indexed again by search engines. Indexing again implies a revision of the ranking of your website. Of course, the content ought to be plagiarism free to be loved by the search engines. Fresh, original, educative and keyword rich content backed by appropriate reference links to any statistical data gets the content on top.
Length of content
Long form content is king
A lengthy post, anywhere between 1200-2000 words, earns more views than the short ones. This is true across platforms. More words in a structured manner with more specific information means that there is valuable, in-depth information on offer in the post. Long-form content has evidently proven to have garnered more conversions and higher ranking than content with less than 1000 words. For more information, delve into the study bySearch Engine Land.
Title
The title tag should generally be less than 70 characters to fit into the results page completely without broken titles or explanations that leave the readers dangling.Ideally, the first 20-25 words of the post should be keyword rich for the web robots or crawlers to identify, weigh, prioritize, and rank your website. The title tag enables the outputting of the website when a search is made whereas a header tag introduces page content.
Header tags
Readability of an article increases when it is efficiently structured. A well-structured article consists of a promising title, connecting introduction, conversational tone to make the transition from introduction to the body smooth. Making use of appropriate headers to detail the subject being written is a plus. Header tags are not only for formatting purposes in HTML. Header tags can be exploited to achieve SEO preferences through categorization of content based on these tags.
HTML is a discerningly powerful tool disguised as simple UI language. The H1 tag is ideally the title of the post and therefore should comprise of thefocus keyword. When a search is made, this enlists the valuable introductory content on the website that will persuade the visitor to seek more details. To diffuse the confusion that stems from a header tag and a title tag, readthis.
To get a better understanding, search for say, “What is Copywriting?” Click on the first link that appears and view the page source. Compare the header tag and title tag by looking for the text on the website. You will be able to map what text fits in what tag.
Meta tags
Meta tags or Meta descriptions are snippets of text that introduce the web content to search engine crawlers. This description is embedded only in the HTML code and is not visible on the website. If you do not set a meta description for a page or post, Google picks up the initial lines from the content of the page as the meta description. To make the description more persuasive, customize it. The meta description is solely for human readers although the tag is for the search engine programs.
Example: The title tag is a Meta tag.
Slugs
Slug is a word that originated in the WordPress circle. A slug is the part of the link or URL that categorizes the post. Slug gives you the power to control the content that gets ranked in the search engines.
Internal Linking
Internal links direct you to another page from the same website. They make website navigation easy and also retain traffic. They also increase link juice which boosts the ranking amongst search engines. The tree hierarchy is the best way to design a website to increase its reachability. More information internal linking ishere.
Sitemaps
A sitemap is an XML file which lists all other pages on your website. It comprises of URLs of all the pages. A sitemap is designed to facilitate the Search Engine crawlers with information that indicates the presence of other web pages. Do not confuse sitemap with internal linking. They are entirely two different concepts. Internal linking is for user navigation whereas sitemap is for site discovery purposes.
Robots.txt
The web artificial intelligence understands. The “robots.txt” is a text file with a set of commands. It is created to instruct the search engine spiders to crawl the pages on a website. There can be multiple robots.txt files on a website. If you do not have a robots.txt file for your website, learn how to create onehere.
These are the simplified steps to achieve SEO. SEO is an endless ocean which takes time and effort to explore. But, this is how you get started. Of course, you won’t see results in a day or week or even a month. Why should you go ahead with it? Because it is slow yet effective medicine. Starting from the above steps can help you master SEO. Tell me in the comments if you could implement any of the above SEO techniques. What are the problems you are facing while you conduct a SEO audit on your website?
NOTE: More about low-competition keywords and long tail keywords will be introduced in How to achieve SEO in simple steps PART II.
If you want to grow your business 10X faster, do what the other 86% of B2B businesses are doing. Get a Business Blog.
The customer isn’t a fool anymore.
She is well informed and will not fall for old-school advertising tactics. Hence, advertising has become extremely competitive.
The customer base is aware of the psychological schemes behind an ad.
They have learned to say NO to urgency based ads because they know offers are recurring. They have adapted to the parity of the persuader making standout copy a rare asset.
A B-Blog helps customers make informed decisions through educative posts. It is a web point that provides informative content in an ocean of chaos. It is a medium to prove your mastery in your industry by providing detailed information.
Blog posts are educational and inspirational. A blog post doesn’t have an immediate sales objective, but it does have a marketing purpose. By sharing your knowledge, experience, and skills, you grow your authority. Once blog readers get to know you, like you, and trust you, it becomes easier to sell to them.
– Henneke Duistermaat
How is a BLOG the solution to growing your business?
The approach is more humane with a blog. A blog serves the purpose of an expert educator. This means it is about how much a reader gains from the valuable information.
By having a blog, you are devising an interface that opens up opportunities for both the parties. It is an opportunity for the customer to learn more. For a business, it is a pass to build trust amongst your customers by providing detailed information. An expert is deemed as the authority and has the power to persuade through higher knowledge.
For example, if you are looking to invest in a Marketing Solution like Hubspot, you land on their site and look for the product listing tab.
Hubspot’s Content Flow
Once you have seen the product and pricing, you DO linger over the website to find out more about the product. What do you do next? You hit the very inviting “Resources” tab.
What does the “Resources” tab tell you?
It throws arrays of options for the potential customer to derive value and access the company’s success stories. All the freebies, trainings, comprehensive courses, eBooks, Blog and everything under the tab is done for a purpose. The purpose is to provide VALUE.
A business can win over the trust of a customer only when there is the provision of value. Employing content strategy to design the website directs the business to bring in more leads. If you read the blog, notice how many links point back to Hubspot’s other content? That is visitor retention.
How do the FREE Resources benefit the business?
The FREE resources are designed to solve a particular set of problems faced by a certain set of audience. This set of an audience is the circle of potential customers to the company. When the company is investing time and effort to solve its audience’s day to day problems, it is building a relationship with the audience. Therefore, Relationship Marketing comes into the picture.
Now, because the company has already established a truly helpful relationship with the audience, the audience is willing to listen. The next step is to capture emails by proposing an enticing freebie offer, through a blog post.
How do the FREE Resources bring in prospects?
Access the blog and see how one blog arrives at a point of conclusion to point at another blog post. This creates the train of information that retains the visitor. At the end of every post, the content leaves the reader wanting for more of such helpful information. The cycle of continuous data consumption is triggered to keep the visitor feelinterested. From one blog post to another and up comes the prompt with a “Download eBook” message.
The moment you see a ‘FREE Download’ image, you are willingly offering your email id in a quest to learn more about the subject. You did this because the information offered you value. You would have bounced if the headline promised something and delivered things you don’t want. And, you just became a prospect.
What happens after a prospect becomes a subscriber?
As a general process, a subscriber is scooped into the company’s information exchange community. She now receives tons of relevant information spiking her learning curve. Over a period, now that the company has helped the subscriber with her needs, the subscriber has a higher chance of buying a product from the company. Do you appreciate how the traffic is routed through the blog by providing targeted content?
A business blog acts as a source to display the company’s expertise and project mastery. By delving deep and denting those details, the business establishes authority in that niche. So, if you have a problem pertaining to that niche, you look up to the master and not the minion.
This is not the end. A purposeful blog post makes the reader FEEL more knowledgeable and powerful. By discovering knowledge in the areas of her interest, the reader feels the same relief as she would feel in finding a solution. That is the power of writing. The intrinsic synergy and excitement in the moment, persuade the reader to share the blog content online. This promotes the online visibility of the brand.
Why is online visibility a concern?
If you are reading this, you know that online visibility is important. Today, the spine of any business is its content system. If you do not distribute content, it goes stale. Content distribution or social media sharing brings warm organic traffic. A warm audience brings natural engagement and genuine distribution. This results in boosting traffic leading to some fresh link juice. This is a cycle that keeps generating traffic.
In the digital world, traffic is money. Website traffic coupled with power-packed copy and persuasive blog content is a goldmine for a business online. But, this is no cakewalk. Writing content that pleases the reader, as well as the search engine, needs experience. It involves strategy, planning and conviction.
Do you have a business blog? What are the challenges you are facing with your B-Blog? Comment below or know more about Business Blogging here.
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