So the idea here is that you have a sales letter set up. Maybe you wrote it; maybe somebody else wrote it. But you want to make a little few adjustments to make it convert better. You want to get more opt-ins, more sales, more blog comments, whatever.
So I’ve got a handful of ideas that you can just go through this list and figure out if your sales letter is missing any of these things. Now I don’t want you to try to implement every single thing I’m going to give you, but if you see one thing that kind of pops out at you, just try to implement it.
So the first thing you should try is when you look at a sales letter see if there’s a hook. If you have a headline that just says, “Who else wants to learn about organic gardening?” That’s not a hook. A hook needs a reason why people should read the story. So what does it have that jumps out at you? Does it defy conventional logic? Does it give people a promise or a benefit?
If you are reading someone else’s sales letter that had the same headline and the same story as you, would they read it? If someone else reads it, do they get lost? And can you read it aloud?
Print It Out!
So if I have a sales letter and I’m totally stuck – I don’t know what to change – I’ll print it out and I’ll read it aloud. And just by reading it aloud you take the time to digest all the words, and you take the time to read it slowly enough that you can figure out if you have any spelling mistakes, if you have any weird sentences, or stuff that doesn’t make sense.
So the easy way to figure out if you have a hook by looking at your sales letter is figure out is it interesting somehow? Does it shock and awe people? Does it surprise people? Does it go against what people normally think? And if it doesn’t, then you should revise your opener and your headline to do some of those things.
Another idea: The squeeze page. So you have your regular sales letter set up. You have your headline, your story, your reasons to buy, benefits, testimonials, whatever. You have all these things convincing somebody to click on an order button.
What would happen if you set up a second page that asked people for an e-mail address before they could even read the sales letter? So maybe you’d give them the first half a page, or maybe you’d give them a few benefits in bullet points, or you bribe them with a totally different report, or you take out one of the chapters to your product and make that its own separate freebie, or whatever. But you just get people on a mailing list somehow. And after they type in their name and e-mail address, then you will show them the sales letter. So you have all these people who were about to buy but for whatever reason didn’t and now you can follow up with them via e-mail.
Add New Domain
You don’t even have to give up your existing traffic. You could take a totally new domain name and set up your headline and your five best bullet points from the entire sales letter, ask for a name and e-mail address and just put that on a page just with that info and opt-in box, and then send them to your real domain.
So say I had simplecopywriting.com as a site with a sales letter that had a quick description and a buy button. Maybe I could have a new domain name like copywritingoncrack or copywritingquickhints. I don’t know; I’m just thinking of something off the top of my head, but you can register a totally new domain name and even for content if you have one of your articles, you can slap that up on there and use it as content so that the search engines will like it and so that you can give people something to read to prove that you have good information.
And if you really wanted to go all out on this, you could record a quick talking head autoplay video convincing people to opt-in. So you point the camera at yourself ; you take your flip camera, your digital camera, put it on a tripod, whatever. Point it at yourself and then speak for 30 to 60 seconds telling people why they should give up their e-mail address and what you have to give them in return.
And set it depending on your video settings – I use Camtasia – but depending on your video settings, you can have it automatically start playing when the page loads. When you have traffic coming from forums or from Pay Per Click traffic, from people who don’t know you, the autoplay video is a good way to establish instant rapport because suddenly they see your face; they hear your voice, and they get your sales message without having to do any kind of reading.
Tackle Your Sub Headline
Get more conversions by adding or improving the sub-headline. I’m the kind of guy who I like to have a sub-headline, the main headline, and then two or three extra sub-headlines. If you have a really, really long headline, you might want to try to split it up into a sub-headline and a headline. If you have too many ideas, like you have three or four ideas, then pull out one of the ideas and put it into the sub-headline and then keep the rest of the headline as it is.
Remove large and distracting graphics. So I know you like to have your branding. You like to have the name of your product in huge letters, and it takes up half the screen. Or you have this artsy design, this web 2.0 design that takes up freakin’ half the screen.
Then people go to your website and the graphics take forever to load, and then they have to scroll down just to read what you have to say, and by then you’ve probably lost their interest. So I’ve noticed a huge boost in conversion rates anytime I bring down the size of my graphics.
So I like to bring my graphics down to like 100/150 pixels high. And I just cram it all the way at the top and then have my headline and sub-headlines and so on. And lately I’ve even done away with graphics. I don’t like having logos anymore. I hate having to wait around for the graphic designers to make them. It takes a little tiny bit out of my profit margin, and it hurts my conversion rates. So why would I want all that? Instead, have good headlines.
Next time we will look at more ways to improve conversions.