Your headline draws them in, while your opening copy maintains the magnetic hold. The express benefits give them hope that…
Continue Reading
The post 5 Ways to Convert More Prospects by Making Your Case appeared first on Copyblogger.
Category: Conversion
No, Content Marketing Is Not a ‘Soft Skill’
We tend to divide business writers into two types. “Hard” writers are the conversion copywriters. The gangsters, the ones who…
Continue Reading
The post No, Content Marketing Is Not a ‘Soft Skill’ appeared first on Copyblogger.
How to Fix 5 Conversion-Killing Copywriting Mistakes
A sales page lies at the end of the conversion path. When a prospect arrives on that page, it’s the result of a lot of planning and hard work. So the next part really sucks. Because most of those visitors will leave the page without buying anything. Fortunately — a small silver lining — there Read More…
The post How to Fix 5 Conversion-Killing Copywriting Mistakes appeared first on Copyblogger.
Ethical Marketing in an Age of Creeps
The phrase “ethical marketing” has always struck some folks as an oxymoron. Isn’t “marketing” just another word for lying, deceiving, and manipulating someone into buying a product or service? Yeah, no. There have always been plenty of good folks in the selling and marketing game. They just tend to be a little less noticeable than Read More…
The post Ethical Marketing in an Age of Creeps appeared first on Copyblogger.
Web Personalization: The Future of Digital Marketing and Sales Is Now
In the beginning, the business website was a mere brochure. Low value, low shareability, low findability. Around 2005, a big shift happened thanks to content. Cutting-edge business websites became educational resources with valuable content that ranked well in search engines and benefited from the sharing functionality of emerging social media. Soon, “cutting edge” became the Read More…
The post Web Personalization: The Future of Digital Marketing and Sales Is Now appeared first on Copyblogger.
3 Smart Moves that Supercharge Sales Funnels with Content
The problem with many business blogs is that they’re boring, product-centric, and full of corporate jargon — not exactly the juicy, engaging, personality-filled content that readers love to consume and share.
While you want to establish trust and authority with your audience, content that helps you meet business goals also fills your sales funnel with interested prospects.
So, if you’d like your content to be share-worthy and generate leads, this post is for you. Read on for three ways to supercharge your sales funnel.
1. Eliminate fuzzy funnels
If your current sales funnel is vague and amounts to something like, “I’ll get people onto my email list, and then when my bank account gets low, I’ll make an offer,” don’t worry; you’re not alone! But as a Copyblogger reader, I know you can do better.
At its most basic, your sales funnel is an intentional path that turns a website visitor into a paying customer — and then into a happy, repeat customer.
Your sales funnel might be an email autoresponder that utilizes marketing automation. It helps your audience get to know your business, builds credibility, and makes an introductory offer.
Here’s my main point: if you create content to generate new leads, you first have to establish what your sales funnel looks like.
Action step
Draw out your sales funnel, digitally or with good old pen and paper.
What are the steps that turn a website visitor into a paying customer?
How do they hear from you?
What offers do they receive
Does Your Copy Pass the ‘Forehead Slap’ Test?
One of the most repeated rules of writing compelling copy is to stress benefits, not features.
In other words, identify the underlying benefit that each feature of a product or service provides to the prospect, because that’s what will prompt the purchase.
This is one rule that always applies, except when it doesn’t.
We’ll look at the exceptions in a bit.
Fake benefits
The idea of highlighting benefits over features seems simple. But it’s often tough to do in practice.
Writers often end up with fake benefits instead.
Direct response copywriter Clayton Makepeace asserts that fake benefits will kill sales copy, so you have to be on the lookout for them in your writing. He uses this headline as an example:
Balance Blood Sugar Levels Naturally!
That sounds pretty beneficial, doesn’t it? In reality, there’s not a single real benefit in the headline.
True benefits
Makepeace advises to apply his patented “forehead slap” test to see if your copy truly contains a benefit for the reader. In other words, have you ever woken up from a deep sleep, slapped yourself in the forehead, and exclaimed “Man … I need to balance my blood sugar levels naturally!”
I think not. So getting someone to pull out their wallet to buy that so-called “benefit” will be difficult at best.
Here’s how Makepeace identifies the real benefit hidden in that headline:
“Nobody really wants to balance their blood sugar levels. But anyone in his or her right mind DOES want to avoid the misery of blindness … cold, numb, painful limbs
The #1 Conversion Killer in Your Copy (and How to Beat It)
What makes people almost buy?
What makes them get most of the way there and then drop out of your shopping cart at the last second?
What makes them stare at your landing page, wanting what you have to offer, and yet, ultimately, close the page and move on to something else?
It turns out there’s a hideous troll hiding under the bridge. Every time you get close to making a sale, the troll springs out and scares your prospect away. Get rid of the troll and your copy will start converting better than it ever has before.
The ugly, smelly, dirty, bad-mannered troll is prospect fear.
And it’s sitting there right now, stinking up your landing page and scaring good customers away.
Fear of wasting money
Remember when you were a kid and you went to that rinky-dink carnival that came through town? After eating all the cotton candy you could manage — and throwing it all back up again on the Tilt-a-Whirl — you checked out something called the midway.
Remember that persuasive fellow who convinced you to spend a whole month’s allowance throwing softballs at those damned milk bottles?
It looked so easy. He showed you exactly how to do it. Toss the softball, knock over the milk bottle, win a cool stuffed animal for a prize. Simple.
You spent quarter after quarter trying to do it yourself.
When all your quarters were gone, you got an inkling. It looked easy, but if you were actually standing at the
How to Price Your Product so Your Prospect Says Yes (Yes!)
It was the year 2003.
I was in Australia speaking at my first marketing conference.
Well, not quite. It was billed as a marketing conference, but it was really a pitch-fest. The speakers delivered their speeches, and then sold their products from the podium.
And there was one speaker who literally got people pushing and shoving each other to get his product.
So what caused all the pushing and shoving?
The “yes-yes” system
It’s a concept called the “yes-yes” system.
When you’re selling anything to your audience, there’s a pretty good chance that you’ve got a single price — a single “buy now” button.
Your audience is therefore faced with the option of choosing “yes” or “no.”
The “yes-yes” system consists of two offerings: a “regular” and a “premium.” Instead of choosing between “yes” and “no,” your clients have to choose between “yes” and “yes.”
Why do they “have to” choose? Why can’t they just leave?
Let’s say you step outside to buy a coffee. The cafe gives you two options: a regular (at $4.00) and a premium (at $4.40).
There’s no difference between the coffees, by the way. They’re both exactly the same size, the same type of coffee, and have the same taste — in short, they’re so incredibly identical you could swap the cups of coffee around and no one would know the difference.
There is one difference, however.
While the coffees are the same, only one option has a bonus.
With the “premium” coffee, you get a tiny, scrumptious
Deadly Conversion Busters: How to Fix a Horrible Headline
Headlines can make or break your conversions.
How do you craft a headline that works every time?
In this episode of The Mainframe, Chris Garrett and Tony Clark reveal:
Why being clever might be the easiest way to tank your offer
How your audience targeting is the key to developing your headline strategy
Testing and getting out of your own way
What your headlines really need in order to connect with your prospect
The 4U technique for getting your headlines right
Click Here to Listen toThe Mainframe on iTunes
Click Here to Listen on Rainmaker.FM
About the authorRainmaker.FMRainmaker.FM is the premier digital marketing and sales podcast network. Get on-demand business advice from experts, whenever and wherever you want it.
The post Deadly Conversion Busters: How to Fix a Horrible Headline appeared first on Copyblogger.