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Sales Pages That Sell - The 10-Step Structure

The 10-Step Structure for Sales Pages That Sell

Sales pages take many different forms, but share the same basic structure:

1. Headline
2. Sub Headline
3. Presentation of the problem
4. Introduction of your product as the solution
5. Social Proof
6. Bonuses
7. Offer
8. Guarantee
9. Call to Action
10. P.S.

Creating Killer Headlines

Your headline is the first opportunity gaining your customer’s interest by making an emotional appeal to whatever problem they are trying to solve.

Headlines should be clear and easy to understand, should include your keywords, and need to attract the reader to keep reading further.

Presentation of the Problem

Right after the headline and sub headline, you want to present the problem that the customer is having, focusing especially on the customer’s pain.

For example, if your niche is dating and relationships, you could present the problem like this:

“Are you tired of striking out when it comes to the opposite sex? Do you get a tight feeling in your stomach whenever you see a happy couple because it makes you wonder if you will ever find the right mate?”

Introduction of Your Product as the Solution

On your sales page, your product should always be the best – or better yet, the only – solution to whatever problem you have just stated.

It’s critical that you portray your product as not just one of many possible solutions, but as the only solution that will give your customers the exact type of relief from whatever pain they are experiencing.

Social Proof

Social proof, also known as the “bandwagon approach,” is when you show your prospects how other people have benefitted from your product.

Social proof often takes the form of product reviews or testimonials. You also can include stories about people who have experienced profound improvements to their lives as a result of your product.

Bonuses

Bonuses aren’t always essential, but they can often help “sweeten the pot” and help customers make the decision to buy decision if they are on the fence. Usually, they are one or two additional products that are related to your primary product’s niche you throw in for free.

You can include anywhere from one to three bonuses. More than three can make it too confusing for the customer.

Make sure you assign a value to the bonus: “The WordPress dictionary ordinarily sells for $19 and the keyword software is worth $29, but they are yours for free if you purchase the main product now!” This lets you increase the perceived value of your offer.

Guarantee

You almost always want to offer a guarantee. For one, it’s just good business. If you aren’t backing up your products with a money-back guarantee, some people might wonder if there is something wrong with your products. Second, guarantees are so common that it will seem strange if you don’t offer one.

You want to limit your guarantee to 30- or 60-days from the day of sale so you don’t have customers coming back months or even years later looking for a refund. It’ a good idea to always provide refunds quickly if a customer requests it.

With digital products, you generally want to let them keep the product rather than send it back because it builds goodwill and makes them more likely to purchase more products from you in the future.

Offering a guarantee also removes risk for the customer: If they don’t like it, they can have their money back. Some people will buy your products and ask for refunds just so they can get the product for free, but not many, so it’s worth it to provide a guarantee every time.

Call to Action

Your Call to Action (CTA) is the most important part of your landing page. Your CTA is where you tell your customers exactly what it is you want them to do: Buy this product, subscribe to this website, and so on.

It is critical that your CTA is clear and to the point. There can be no ambiguity about what it is you want your customer to do. Even if you are a little forceful, that’s okay. Don’t suggest, tell.

By the time readers have made it all the way through your sales letter to the CTA, they probably are ready to buy anyway. Your job with the CTA is to push them into taking action.

P.S.

The P.S. can be an effective last-minute way to close the sale. The P.S. stands for “post-script” and it can be used either to restate the central points of the sales letter or introduce something new, like adding scarcity or another bonus.

More than one P.S. is okay if you want, but they probably should be capped at three otherwise there’s a higher chance your customer will stop reading. In your P.S., remind the reader of the deal or special offer and add urgency.

I hope you enjoy what you learned today! Check back weekly for updated article and lessons. Or better yet, subscribe by clicking on this link now to get more of these educational articles as they come out.

Hank

Free Marketing: Other Social Media Sites

Free Marketing: Other Social Media Sites

The easiest type of free marketing is social media marketing. This has taken on increased importance in the wake of the Panda and Penguin upgrades to the Google search engine algorithm. Google now gives more weight to websites that have the most social approval signals, ranking them higher.

Like Search Engine Optimization, social media marketing can take a while to gain traction because it takes time to build a following of social media contacts, interact with them, bring them to your pages, then get them to give you social approval signals.

The best approach is to focus on multiple social media outlets, not just one or two, partly because the popularity of social media sites changes and what is the most popular one today may not be as popular tomorrow. Also, your prospective customers are also using multiple sites, so if focusing only on a few could mean you are missing a large segment of potential customers.

What are the most Important Social Media Sites?

Excluding Facebook and Twitter – which will be addressed in a separate article — the most important social media platforms that you need to be involved in today are:

1. YouTube – Video is the format of choice for web users today. Thanks to 3G and 4G networks and WiFi, nearly everyone has access to streaming video on their smart phones and tablets. YouTube, which is owned by Google, is the biggest and most significant distributor of video.

2. LinkedIn – This site focuses more on business networking rather than social networking. But LinkedIn continues to be an important platform for reaching corporate and commercial customers.

3. Pinterest – Currently, Pinterest is one of the most popular social preference platforms. It allows members post links to things they like. If that includes one of your links, you can expect a ton of traffic to your landing pages.

4. Google+ – Google+ tries to combine all the best features of the other social media sites – such as email, social sharing, social preference – with killer apps like free video conferencing to make it the premier social media site on the web.

Social Comment Sites

Thanks to the spread of mobile media, social comment sites are growing in popularity. These include such apps as foursquare, Urban Spoon, Yelp and many others. Social comment sites let users post comments, reviews, images, ratings and other opinions on businesses they visit or any topic they like directly from their mobile devices.

This can have serious consequences, especially for the brick and mortar business owner, because if customers post negative comments it can not only hurt your reputation but also can continue to linger on the web for a long time. On the other hand, positive comments can help drive more foot traffic to your business.

For the web-based marketer, social comment sites’ benefits lie primarily with social approval signals they can provide. Positive reviews of your web pages can help boost your web page ranking on Google. You also should quote positive reviews on your own web pages, social media accounts, or even in advertising and marketing materials.

Value of Social Approval

Social approval signals can help your marketing efforts go “viral”, which refers to techniques that use social networks and other web tools to produce explosive awareness in brand or product awareness.

Like viral infections or computer viruses — which spread from computer to computer exponentially – social approval signals such as Facebook “Likes”, Tweets, Google Plus “+1’s” and others can spread the word your brand or products quickly.

Internet users now have the ability to share and spread viral messages they enjoy faster and with more people than ever before with literally the push of a button. One person can promote your posting to hundreds or even thousands of social media contacts, who can then pass the it on to tens of thousands or even millions more.

Google+

Google+ takes the best features of the internet’s most successful sites – including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and even YouTube – and puts them all in one place. That makes them easier to coordinate on your Google+ brand page.

Google+ allows you to create individual Circles for friends, family, acquaintances, employees, vendors, or any category you want. You also can create sub-categories within these Circles to make it easier to communicate effectively with specific groups.

Hangouts is Google+’s free web-based chat program that lets you interact with other users in real time using text, video, or audio feeds that are connected directly to your Google+ home page.

Hangouts can be used for many purposes, such as providing live video one-on-one video customer service, answering customers’ questions, or showcasing your products’ best uses. You also can use it to host webinars, record them and then make them available online as squeeze page giveaways.
Hangouts also offers a feature called On Air, which allows you to link your Hangout to your YouTube channel, where it can be broadcast and recorded, providing access to your videos to an unlimited number of viewers via YouTube. Viewers can even submit live questions and comments via text.

To learn more techniques like these for improving the profitability of your business, check out our lead generation system by clicking on this link now.

Hank

www.knowledgeEmpire.com

Facebook as a Pathogen: Predicting the Next Big Thing

According to one Princeton professor, social media sites such as Facebook are akin to the pathogens that have plagued humankind, save for one important difference.

Facebook, according to Dr. John Cannarella, is a pathogen of the mind. Cannarella isn’t judging the site or its content, but is instead referring to the idea that websites are memes.

A meme—not to be confused with a viral Internet photo—is a concept form the social sciences. Fundamentally, a meme is an idea. Like a pathogen, it is passed from person to person. As with any virus, the population can gain immunity.

The Princeton Study

In his paper, Dr. Cannarella predicted that Facebook will lose over 80% of its user base by 2017. The professor and his team analyzed the growth curves of Facebook and MySpace, and then they compared the curves to those of common pathogens.

Surprisingly, the curves matched. In the case of MySpace, the social network’s curve matched the average rate at which a population recovers from an illness.

Dr. Cannarella notes that Facebook is just beginning to enter the “abandonment phase,” the point at which its popularity is beginning to taper off. To gather their data, the team analyzed Google searches relevant to the networks over several years.

Facebook began as a tool for Harvard students, but it was soon opened to the general population. Users took to the site’s clean interface and useful features. Today, the site enjoys over 1.23-billion members, and over 900-million mobile users. Yet now, according to Dr. Cannarella’s thesis, Facebook users are beginning to chafe.

Immunity

In this model, users of social networks gain immunity as the networks mutate from their original state. Any good pathogen seeks to infect as much of the population as possible before becoming harmful. Put another way, as networks seek to monetize, they make changes that irritate users. Users then begin to develop immunity to them.
Facebook, which recently went public, is particularly susceptible because the changes they now make are driven by a desire to turn a profit for their investors. Networks Twitter and Pinterest, on the other hand, have high survivability according to this model because they change little and have high utility.

Effects of Mutation

In 2014, Facebook spent time in the limelight for supposedly cooperating with the NSA’s PRISM project and for conducting experiments on its users. Both of these stories had Facebook users up in arms, and the latter spurred one creative agency to launch a non-profit experiment of their own.

The agency, Just B.V, is calling for Facebook users to give up the network for 99 days and to take happiness questionnaires periodically throughout that time. As of July 2014, over 6,000 Facebook users have signed on. Just as illuminating, a Cornell University study revealed that 25% of Facebook users periodically deactivate their accounts.

Extrapolations

It’s unlikely that Google+ will be “the next big thing.” The network is associated with Facebook in user’s minds, and not in a good way. Naturally, the next Facebook will utilize cutting-edge algorithms that make it easy for users to connect in meaningful ways, and it will be heavily focused on mobile. Tying into a user’s geographic location has several advantages.

Such a network could alert the user to resources in their immediate environment, as well as to people of interest. The Geo-fence will likely come into play here, and the network may help shoppers find valuable discounts in brick and mortar stores.

The age of social media for fun is likely drawing to a close, so expect the next Facebook to focus on saving users time.

Networks that continue to cater to teens—who have infinite time—are in danger of becoming the next MySpace. The next big thing can crop up at any time, so be vigilant. You’ll want to get in before it’s saturated with marketers.
Keeping tabs on the social media marketing landscape is vital to your success. If you’d like to have access to even more powerful marketing tips, as well as a way to generate conversion-ready Internet marketing prospects each month, click here to learn about my done-for-you system.

Hank ...

Use Instagram to Connect with Your Audience

Instagram began as an iPhone and Android app that allowed users to share photos on Facebook directly from their phones. It has since become a social media channel in its own right. Marketers are learning that Instagram is a powerful marketing tool.

An interactive audience

One of the main reasons that Instagram is so powerful for marketing is that it delivers marketing messages in the exact way its audience wants them delivered. According to social media experts, the Instagram community is more interactive that other channels such as Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

To be successful on Instagram it is very important to interact with your Instagram followers. Here are some tips for engaging with the Instagram community.

Have conversations

Communicate with your followers by replying to comments and post questions. If you respond to comments, be sure to use the @mention feature. This way, the original commenter will be notified about your response.

Use images to tell stories

Instagram is all about connection and authenticity. You can humanize yourself and your company by posting behind-the-scenes photos. You can also use photos submitted by your followers. Instagram offers several photo-editing tools to allow you to quickly and easily edit your photos and give them a professional polish.

Promote events

If you are planning an event such as a contest, give away, or sale, Instagram is a great place to promote your event. Use visuals and hashtags to key your followers in to your event. Interested members can use the hashtag to find out more about your event.

Offer Incentives

You can use Instagram to offer various incentives such as discounts, coupon and custom codes. These incentives can be used to encourage participation. For example, you can use incentives to reward your followers for looking at your images and reading your descriptions.

Photo contests

You can use Instagram to run photo contests to increase engagement among your followers. Just like events, give your photo contest a unique hashtag. Ask your submitters to use the hash tag. This way, the photo entries are easy to search. Visitors can find the photos and cast their votes. You can also use the hashtag to find all user-submitted photos and decide on a winner.

Let customers sell your brand

Passionate customers are your best advocates. They will tell your story from an outsider’s perspective. This can be a powerful selling tool. Feature your customers’ pictures on Instagram. In addition to rewarding your customers with recognition, customer photos offer powerful social proof for your products. Your customers will love the recognition as well. Lastly, customer-submitted photos give you a unique view into how your customers experience your brand. You can take that information to strengthen your brand.
Instagram is a powerful marketing tool, if used correctly. The Instagram community is built around engagement. Use comments and photos to interact with your followers on Instagram.

Monitoring the social media marketing landscape is vital to your success. If you’d like to have access to even more powerful marketing tips, as well as a way to generate conversion-ready Internet marketing prospects each month, click here to learn about my done-for-you system.

See How Google has set the Content Bar Ever Higher

In Google’s quest to improve the overall quality of content on the Web, the company makes continuous updates to its algorithm. These updates may receive colorful names, but they are serious business. You should familiarize yourself with these changes so that you can remove or change content that Google no longer wants to rank.

Hummingbird Recap

Google released an overhaul to its engine on Sept 16, 2013. The update, dubbed “Hummingbird,” affected a startling 90% of searches. Hummingbird represents the most extensive overhaul to the search engine of all time.

Hummingbird shifts the focus away from individual keywords and places it on longtails. These search phrases are specific to a particular person, place, product or location.

For instance, if someone is looking for widgets in Houston, they might type into Google, “where can I find widgets in Houston?” Naturally sprinkling these longtail phrases into your content can help you outrank people who are cramming individual keywords into their pages.

Additionally, Google has now integrated its Knowledge Graph into search, meaning that Google will attempt to answer questions directly.

The search engine still links to the site that it is lifting the answer from; however, and this can drive a ton of traffic. More than ever, it pays to be an authority in your niche. Google’s overall goal is to make their search engine better understand a searcher’s intent.

Panda

The original Panda updates were designed to prevent sites with low-quality content from ranking higher. These sites typically use SEO tactics to rank, since their content is not very sharable. To combat this, Google programmed the Panda filter to identify poorly written content and penalize it. While the filter isn’t perfect yet, it is already highly effective.

Panda 4.0 is an update to this filter that gives more weight to social signals like +1s, likes, and retweets. It penalizes for duplicate content, as well. This was a major update that affected over 7% of English keywords.

Penguin

Penguin, released in 2012, was designed to penalize webmasters who were trying to game the system. Penguin analyzes the link profile of a site and makes an educated guess about whether the links were purchased.

Sometimes, this is quite easy for Penguin to detect. Sites with mostly do-follow links are prime suspects. Google has also taken steps to de-index networks that sell backlinks. You definitely don’t want your site associated with these services.

Tips

Always produce unique, high-quality content, and don’t scrape content off of other sites. Avoid thin content whenever possible, and aim for at least 250 words in each post.

When you write an article, have a purpose for doing so that goes beyond, “I want to rank for this keyword.” Encourage social shares by breaking your content down into small paragraphs and sections, and use lots of images.

Seek backlinks from authority sites in your niche, but never purchase them. The best way to do this is to forge relationships with the site owners and then point them to your high-quality content.

Ranking well in Google is a powerful means of generating high-quality traffic. If you found this article useful, and want to learn about even more powerful marketing methods, click the link below to find out about my done-for-you system.

Hank van den Berghe

What Is a Sales Funnel?

The biggest mistake many online marketers make is selling a customer a single product one time and then moving on to the next customer.

This approach ignores the important concept of Lifetime Value (LTV) of a customer, and increasing the average LTV of your customers should be your primary objective, because it’s the best way to increase your long-term profits and grow your online business.

For example, let’s say you are working in the health and fitness niche and you use a squeeze page to attract new prospective customers.

A squeeze page is a web page on which you offer something with a high perceived value for free in exchange for the contact information of the people who land there, such as their email address or phone number.

Point of Entry: Squeeze Page
In this example, on your squeeze page your giveaway could be something like an exercise video or an eBook on healthy eating – both of which are something people interested in getting fit would likely be willing to trade in exchange for their email address.

An exchange is made, the prospect gets your giveaway, and you get their contact information. This is the beginning of the sales funnel.

You have successfully attracted a prospect into your sales funnel. Your next goal needs to be converting this person from a prospect into a paying customer. You do this by immediately offering them your Lead Product or your first offer.

Offer Irresistible Lead Products
Your Lead Product needs to be something irresistible to your prospect. It should have higher perceived value than your giveaway and be offered at a price point that your customer can’t refuse.
In our example, this could be a series of DVDs or downloadable videos that show how to do 200 fat-burning exercises that you are offering for $9.99. In the fitness niche, and at that price point, the conversion rate for this type of product likely will be very high.

Now here’s the tricky part. You’ve successfully converted a prospect into a customer and have earned $9.99, which is the current LTV of that customer.

Rather than being satisfied with that and allowing them to walk away, your next goal should be to start pushing them further and further along your sales funnel by offering them a series of increasingly more costly products within the same niche.

Exploiting a ‘Buying Mood’
After your customer buys your $9.99 workout videos, you can immediately offer them an upsell opportunity, such as a monthly subscription service that delivers 200 additional videos from a professional personal trainer for $19.99/month.

Frequently, when a customer already has made a purchase, they are in a “buying mood” and are more open to buying additional products. If they buy your upsell, their LTV has risen to $30.

Conversely, if your prospect declines your Lead Offer, you can try to recapture them with a downsell, which is usually a modified version of your Lead Offer at a discounted price. In our example, this might be the Top 10 Exercises for Fat Loss for only $4.99.

Recapturing Lost Customers
Downsells are designed to convert your prospect so that they stay in your sales funnel, even if you don’t earn as much from them on the initial sale.

Now that you have converted the prospects who landed on your squeeze page into customers and have gotten them to buy either your Lead Offer, your Lead Offer plus your upsell (or at the very least your downsell) you can continue to use their contact information to promote a series of increasingly more costly products over the next several days, weeks, or months.

To learn more about how an effective sales funnel can maximize your average LTV, check out our lead generation system by clicking here now.