When it comes to launching a new product or service, your sales page is one of the most vital elements of your success. If you’re not a natural copywriter, it’s also one of the hardest to get right.
It’s not just compelling language you need to master, but a deep understand of sales writing lingo and techniques, like features and benefits, ‘So What?’ and ‘What’s In It For Me?’. (More on these later.) You’ll also need to tap into your customer’s struggles and convince them that your product is an effective solution.
It’s a tall order, but the following tips will help you create content that gets right to the heart of what your potential buyer needs, turning reluctant shoppers into paying customers.
Make it all about your customer
The most important and easiest way for you to do this is to address your customer directly. That’s means using the word ‘YOU’. A lot. It makes every sentence feel relevant to the person reading it.
If you can only master one copywriting hack, make it this:
Before you hit publish, read through the entire sales page a final time. Have you used I, we, them, customers, clients, users, or any other word when you could have used ‘You’? If you have, well, you know what to do.
Address your customers’ pain points
A pain point is anything that causes your customer strife. They might struggle with confidence and want a course to help them overcome it or they could need automated software to help them run their business more efficiently.
If you’re struggling to identify your customer’s pain point, think about what might attract them to your page. What’s bugging them? What’s on their mind? Once you’ve that sussed, write about it. Tap into how they might be feeling. Are they frustrated, tired, depressed? Or even time-strapped, burned out, or feeling stressed? Maybe they’re unproductive, uncertain, or even insecure?
Something like this (taken from my own sales page) works well:
“Are you a time-strapped entrepreneur, or a busy business owner who’s completely lost when it comes to content marketing and simply doesn’t have the time to figure it out?”
Introduce the solution
This is where you paint a picture of what your potential customer’s life could look like once they’ve purchased your product or service. A simple way to think of it is this: we are all looking for ways to make our lives easier. You need to make it clear how your product does exactly that for the person who’s landed on your sales page.
Here’s how I introduce a solution on my main sales page:
“Combining the three most important elements of content marketing — blogs, newsletters, and social media content — these premium packages offer a 360 solution and give you back your free time.
“They’re certain to boost your online presence, improve your online engagement, and ultimately, make your brand much more discoverable.”
Sell the benefits, not the features
This is copywriting 101. Features and benefits are two different things. For example, if you’re selling an organisation journal, a ribbon marker might be one of its features. The benefit of this is that you never lose your page. You want to sell the latter.
In copy, benefits are often neglected. Many business owners will spend so long detailing the exact specifications of their product (the features) that they forget to tell readers how those things will make a difference in their lives (the benefits).
They explain the ‘what’ and forget the ‘why’.
When reading your sales pages, a customer will be asking ‘Okay, but what’s in it for me?’. You need to spell it out for them. Here’s a handy hack for you. When writing about the features of your new product or service, ask yourself, ‘so what’? This question helps you identify the benefits and how they specifically resolve your customers’ pain points.
Your course includes a weekly coaching call for every client? So what? Well, a weekly coaching call provides an opportunity for your clients to ask specific questions and get tailored advice, so instead of simply telling your prospective client this feature is included, you’d hammer home the benefits of it.
You might write something like this:
“Every week, you’ll get a private coaching call — an opportunity to ask me anything you want and get tailored advice that’ll speed up your transformation.”
Address your customer’s concerns up front
Listen: people will always find a reason not to buy. You could have the shiniest, most effective product in the world, but there will always be people that insist it’s too expensive or doesn’t meet the exact specifications of what they’re looking for.
When it comes to copywriting, you must predict your customer’s objections and convince them otherwise.
Finish with a compelling Call To Action
A good call to action should be succinct and — for a final time — tap into the customer’s pain points. You need to make it clear how you can solve their problems. It’s also a good idea to create urgency by urging your audience to take action ‘now’ or ‘today’.
For my services, I might use something along the lines of this:
“Tearing your hair out trying to create shareable content for your brand? Get in touch now and let me start crafting your perfect online presence today.”
Remember this: it’s not fancy imagery that compels people to buy your products. It’s words. When used in a particular way, words have the power to influence your audience’s buying decisions.
Want to see a really good example of all this in action? You can check out the sales pages for my Editorial & Social Bundles here.
Want to take the stress of copy and content creation off your already over-flowing plate and win back some of your free time and peace of mind?
