Tripwire Sales Page Copy 101: What converts better?

What works better? Long-form sales page or quick short copy?
“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.

Questions? Ask me in the comments 🙂

How To Attract Ready-to-Invest Leads With Empathetic Copywriting

How to attract ready-to-invest leads with empathetic copywriting

3 years ago, I met up with an app developer at a local startup meet. He had a painful story of losing $25000 building an app whose ROI was less than one dollar.

He tried to understand why his product failed when:

  • the end-users loved the demo
  • they loved using the app
  • they appreciated the UX and UI too
  • the target audience appreciated the idea
  • they thought it was useful as well

Yet, the product failed.

Devastated, he narrated the story to the crowd, seeking for answers in their eyes.

A sassy marketing expert came forward and asked, -“Did you refer to your market research material while you designed it’s features?”.

After a few seconds of embarrassing silence, the app developer asked – “What is market research?”!

So, this passionate startup owner went straight into building the app ASSUMING all of the features himself and he ran into a debt of $25000 that he had invested out of his pocket.

Lesson? It was an app loved by many, but utterly un-needed.

Learning about the user journey helps you shape your product AND your marketing. You sell well when you know what you’re building, for whom and why you’re building it.

You see? The first step to a successful product launch is to create a product your audience NEEDS and then market around those needs to attract qualified leads.

How to Qualify Leads and Convert Better

To connect with your readers on an emotional level, you should know them inside out.

How do you do that?

By asking questions like:

  1. What makes your prospects happy?
  2. What makes them cringe?
  3. What keeps them worried?
  4. What gets them excited?
  5. What are their priorities?
  6. What are their apprehensions and expectations?
  7. What outcomes do they dream about all the time?
  8. What makes them feel threatened?
  9. What are their biggest challenges right now?
  10. What makes them nervous?

Understanding the underlying problems and creating a solution around these problems gives you a solid product that people actually need unlike the one this passionate startup owner had created.

With a solid product, built on people’s real demands, you can set-base to market.

You now have full permission to go tout about how YOU know to fill that aching gap your audience couldn’t

You don’t qualify leads, you qualify your marketing content. Quality leads begin to flow when they can empathize with content that brings clarity.

Tip: Read more about writing with clarity and establishing authority.

Brain Chemistry and Empathetic Copywriting

Your readers dig details.

  • If it’s a physical product, they want to know exactly what it’s made of.
  • If it’s a service, they want to know what they get.
  • If it’s a solution, they want to know how it works.

Once they know the details, they’re ten times more likely to buy from you.

Now, why does this work?

The ever-curious human mind stops releasing the stress hormone, cortisol, the moment it understands that you are in a familiar environment.

By giving out the exact details of working with you, you’re creating a safe, future environment for the reader by telling the reader’s brain that:

  • You’re in a safe, familiar environment
  • You’re with someone who knows how you feel and empathizes with you
  • You can stop being in the fight-or-flight mode

Marketing is about understanding your audience, empathizing with them and inviting them to know more about your offer – nothing more, nothing less.

You’re here to talk about how you can free your audience from that big fat suffering that’s been hindering their growth and transformation.

How to keep your audience thinking about what you said

The reason you remember the story from the movie you watched when you were 10 but not the history lesson is because you mirrored and experienced the emotions played in the movie.

How you can use this technique to win your audience over:

  1. Pinpoint your audience’s exact pain points and address that in your copy
  2. Identify with their fears and anxieties and acknowledge that in your copy
  3. Promise the desired outcome (and deliver it in your product please)

What not to do in your copy

Okay, if you don’t keep the conversation going between you and your reader, the connection dies.

So, make your reader feel heard, understood and important.

This is how you roll:

  1. It is when you DON’T make them feel zoned out – they start relating to you.
  2. It is when you DON’T make them feel like a faceless speck from the masses – they start valuing you.
  3. It is when you make them feel understood – the chemistry of liking strikes.

So it all boils down to understanding your reader. Inside out.

When you synthesize your audience’s thoughts that they find difficult to express, you win their trust.

When your audience feel understood, they take the first step toward trusting you and believing in what you have to say. This tells them that you know where they’re coming from – a point of stress and struggle – a point that YOU have surpassed – a point in place they want to be

How to develop a memorable voice and brand personality through copywriting

Now that you know what to say, let’s focus on how you say it.

Your voice is nothing but your thought process – how you identify what to say and when.

Your tone is the language and mood and feelings you use to convey the message.

I’ve always loved Mailchimp copy. And you know what makes readers love Mailchimp? The tone. It’s easy, flowy and minimalistic. Notice the adjectives I used to describe the tone? That’s how you develop a personality around your brand.

Look at this example here.

How to build a friendly voice and write with empathy

The above form makes it want to sign up and see how easy it can actually be to get started with a Mailchimp account. You too, right?

That’s the magic of having a distinct voice and tone. People actually listen to you speak.

You too can develop a tone. Let’s run through these examples quickly to find out how.

1. People are addicted to cell phones.

2. Smart screen toxicity is harming youngsters.

What sounds more vivid and powerful to you? 1 or 2?

The first statement is normal that uses everyday words.

But the second one? It’s exactly pointing out who it’s harming the most – the youngsters. What is harming? – Smart Screen Toxicity. It’s done in an unconventional manner – yet without using any jargons that a layman wouldn’t understand. That’s how you develop a voice.

How not to sound in your copy

Let’s get straight to the point.

  • Don’t sound like you and your competitor are cut from the same cloth
  • Be different but never be inappropriate
  • Think aloud, but don’t harm
  • Don’t force/coax/pressurize/confuse your readers
  • Don’t limit user personas to a set of demographic data but also care about your audience’s tastes, traits, and behavior in as much.
  • Don’t talk. Make a statement.

Okay, these are the 6 big tips to follow every time you start with a copywriting project.

To practice, today you go back and pick a page of copy.

Rewrite the page by applying the tips and techniques you read just now and tell me how you feel about it at the end of the exercise 🙂

7 Pressing Reasons To Have An Active Business Blog

Business Blog

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

  1. Recommend products you use (clink clink..already making money from affiliate marketing? Nice uh!)
  2. 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)
  3. 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)
  4. 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.
  5. 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.