By: The Trio at Las Peregrinas
[Editor’s note: Starting this month, we’ll write about a business trend. The intention is to offer fresh observations about where the marketplace is headed, and tell stories about how people in our community have responded to these changes in grounded, clear-eyed, and wildly creative ways.]
Rebecca:
Gone are the days of following The Formula for Creating a Six-Figure Sales Page. They’re over, friends. Gone. Buh-bye. Your audience is tired of them. They don’t want to scroll for 5 years through 92 testimonials and past 16 BUY NOW buttons before they FINALLY get to the price that’s buried somewhere at the bottom behind at least 3 “get this too when you buy” or “buy now or else” tactics.
Nope.
Those days are done.
(And I am not sorry to see them go, to be honest with you).
What’s the new trend with selling, then?
Be straight. Be upfront.
This is what I am selling. This is how awesome it is. This is what you’ll love about it. And put a price on it. And do it all in a way that flows, makes sense, is clear, and succinct. No need to confuse or overwhelm people to encourage them to buy anymore! And hooray for that!
Sarah:
We all have great offers and we need a way to share the information, help our clients identify if this offer is right for them, and create a system for them to purchase from a web page. That is what a sales page does. FULL STOP.
What Rebecca mentioned above is 100% correct. So let’s make a list of what a sales page is NOT:
1) A way to trick people into purchasing a product that probably isn’t right for them.
2) Using paragraph after paragraph to convince someone that they MUST purchase this item or 1) they will miss out on the low, low price, or the 15 additional “bonus items” 2) If they decide not to purchase they will end up destitute and a complete failure or 3) That because you accomplished xyz that, they too will have the same outcome.
So, figure out what you are offering, keep it clear and simple and let them know how much it costs. Include information to help THEM decide if it is right for them, educate and inform using stories and simple lists. No more convincing.
Stella:
We recently revamped a sales page for an executive coach’s fourth annual live event. It followed the traditional flow of an event registration page. What’s interesting is that while the existing page ticked all the boxes of the different sections a sales page was supposed to have, it felt hollow to me. I didn’t feel anything, looking at it.
Gone are the days where you can follow a formula to get the results you want. This goes quadruple on sales pages. In the case of this woman, Rebecca pointed out that the attendees who will show up in her room would be there because they wanted to be around her. She was the draw. She was what was magnetic. She was the reason they’d all be there.
Rebecca also noted that these event attendees are entrepreneurs and executives in analytical and STEM fields (think: finance, tech, engineering) – which makes sense, given this woman’s career – and they want order, structure, and precision about what this event is about and what, exactly, will be happening on each of the three days.
So we wrote the sales page around what the (future) event attendees wanted and needed. That’s a very different starting point from most sales pages. But it’s what needed to happen for this particular group of people to show up in this woman’s room. These two insights not only affected the structure and flow of the sales page; they also moved us to revisit the event themes for each day and go back to all the speakers and event sponsors to ask them to speak on different topics so they’d do a better job of meeting the event attendees where their heads are actually at. We also changed the copy and layout of other online and print marketing pieces, to warm up and personalize the invitation to be in this room – and even bring other people with them (an event theme).
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