If you're a regular reader of this blog, chances are good you'll want to sell something on your blog one day.
Even if you don't have anything to sell and think selling is evil, you can still learn a lot by studying the techniques of writing to sell. For example, you can look at your About page as a sales page (see No Meat Athlete's), where the "sale" you're trying to make is a subscription. In that case, you should present the benefits of reading your blog and, at the end, ask for the sale with a subscription button. (How to make nice buttons is the topic of a future post.)
It goes beyond just this though. You can use the techniques of writing ad copy to make every single post you publish more effective — that's the whole premise of the blog Copyblogger, which I hope you read. If I had to point to a single moment when blogging got really easy, I'd say it's when I started studying copywriting. As soon as I started incorporating it into my everyday writing, traffic took off.
So in this post I'm going to explain my thought process in writing the sales page for the e-book I just released. If you find it helpful to use the actual page as a template for your own, feel free. Keep in mind that, although I'm talking explicitly about a sales page, these ideas can be extremely powerful when used even in your daily posts.
Rule #1: Don't Be Sleazy
Nobody likes a fast-talking used car salesman, and people can sniff that out online a hundred miles away. The kind of online selling that's cool is about connecting with your readers, building up trust by giving them tons of valuable content, and then, every so often, selling them something they actually want.
If you do all of that, and then all the sudden start talking car-salesmanese on your sales page, you're going to turn people off. It's just weird.
Don't be weird.
Start With a Strong Headline
Writing an effective headline is crucial. The purpose of the headline is to attract attention, to get the reader to read the first sentence of the post (and it's the job of the first sentence to get the reader to read the second sentence, and so on).
You don't want to try to be witty here. You're trying to sell something, not make people laugh. If your headline can be both funny and effective, great. But funny comes second.
To get some ideas for good headlines to use either on your sales page or your everyday posts, try the Cosmopolitan headline exercise.
Keep Your Sentences and Paragraphs Short
Internet readers are not known for their attention spans, and nothing scares off a reader faster than big blocks of text. Write your sales pages (and even your blog posts) in short, simple sentences and paragraphs to draw readers down the page and keep them wanting more.
Connect Emotionally
If you want the reader to pay attention to you, you need to engage them on an emotional level. It's best if you can imagine a single reader as your target, and write directly to that specific person. Suggest that he or she "imagine" how it would feel to use your product, and then paint that scenario with your copy.
And remember: It's not about you. Make it about them.
It's common practice in copywriting to first present a problem, so the reader feels some small amount of pain and recognizes the need for a solution. Then — BAM — you're there with your product to fix the problem. But some people prefer to take an all-pleasure approach and leave the pain out. You're free to choose.
List Benefits, Not Features
Bulleted lists show up in a lot of ads because they're effective — readers in a hurry are drawn to them. But many people make a big mistake in their bullet list that costs them a lot of money: They list the features of their product rather than the benefits the reader can expect to gain by using the product.
"Personalized nutrition plan" is a feature; "Learn exactly what to eat for your specific needs" is a benefit. "Five killer ab exercises" is a feature; "Strengthen your core and look great by summertime" is a benefit.
You get the point.
Scarcity Sells (If It's Genuine)
People procrastinate. There will be plenty who love your offer but don't buy, for the simple reason that they don't sense a need to buy now.
So put a deadline on your offer. Maybe it's a special price they can get by buying before a certain date. Maybe it's a bonus that goes away at some point. Whatever it is, make sure it's genuine. If you say the price is going to go up, it had better go up. Otherwise, nobody will believe you when you say it next time.
Make a Strong Call to Action
For some reason, lots of people do all the above but neglect to seal the deal. You have to ask for the sale.
How? Tell the reader to buy. Use buttons or links with the words "Buy Now." In the case that it's not an actual sale you're trying to make, but rather to get the reader to visit a new page on your blog, the magical words "click here" are extremely effective.
Include a PS
Why do you put a PS on your sales page? Simple: Everyone reads the PS. So put something here that you want everyone to read. Maybe it's a guarantee, maybe it's a bonus, maybe it's a reminder that the offer expires soon.
If You Have It, Use Social Proof
People like to know that other people like themselves have bought your product. Chances are, you won't have testimonials right away, but as soon as you can get them, include them.
The best testimonials are from people viewed as authorities or from people who will be seen as similar to the reader, and they explain how your product solved a problem they were having.
Eliminate Distractions
It's very important that there are not a lot of links on your sales page that readers might use to leave.
It's not that you're trying to trap them — they can always press the back button or close their browser. But just like a kid who is easily distracted by shiny bells and whistles, so is the average Internet reader who likes to do 14 things at the same time.
You want to remove all the links from your sidebar or the top of your page. Some online copywriters will even tell you to remove your site's banner, but I prefer to leave that so that people who show up from Google have some confidence they're at a real site, not some automated scam that will send a robot to clean out their savings account.
If you're using a free WordPress theme (or heaven forbid, Blogger), you might have trouble doing this. Being able to edit the layout of individual pages is one of the reasons I use Headway for my blogs (that's my affiliate link). I know Thesis can do the same thing, and I'm sure there other premium themes that can do this as well. There might even be some free ones that do it, but those are the exception.
I hope these tips can help you write your sales page, or as I said, pretty much anything else you write online. Even better, I find that studying copywriting makes me want badly to produce a product to sell. It's exciting! So even if you don't have any ideas yet, hopefully that increased desire will help you come up with some good ones.
