How To Avoid Hype When You Sell
There’s an interesting challenge I’ve come up against many times, which I think most professional bloggers know well.
The challenge is how to sell something without using all that horrible “hype” that Internet marketers use.
But wait a second. Hype actually works, or at least good “sales copy” works if you call convincing people to buy what you sell your desired outcome.
The challenge is figuring out what level of “sales talk” to use when trying to sell. You don’t want to be accused of over-hyping something, nor do you want to put in such a weak effort that no one buys.
The problem unfortunately cannot be solved 100% because what is hype to one person is not to another. We all have our own internal “bullshit meter” as it might be labeled, based on all kinds of things like our personality, experience with marketing, emotional state at the time of reference, etc etc.
You can’t account for everything, but you can work with what you should hopefully know quite well – you and your potential customers- and attempt to meet the needs of both.
Membership Site Mastermind Reopens Tuesday November 3rd For 24 Hours Only
Did you read that sub-heading? I hope you did.
It might seem a little out of place, but I put it there because one of the messages I want you to take away from reading this blog post is that I’m reopening Membership Site Mastermind for one last day for all the stragglers and latecomers who didn’t join during the opening last week.
I know there are stragglers because they keep emailing me asking if they can squeeze in, so I’m giving you one last chance to take the program with me during this final run for 2009.
This will definitely be the last time it’s open this year. No more one day openings, no exceptions, if you email and ask no matter how good your excuse, you won’t be allowed in. That wouldn’t be fair to the hundreds of people who took initiative and joined when the doors were open.
You can sign up here from 11 AM EST US time on Tuesday for 24 hours only -
So, back to my original thought train…
If You Can’t Write Words That Sell You Don’t Make Money
As you likely know, Gideon and I wrapped up the opening marketing campaign for Become A Blogger Premium a couple of weeks ago. During that period we both wrote lots of emails to our various subscribers, email being the primary communication method and also the distribution channel for delivering resources like the Roadmap report.
Most of you haven’t met Gideon or myself in person, but if you did, you would see we are both down to earth and soft spoken – not your typical extroverted, in-your-face marketers. Of course what you perceive as over-the-top might be different to another person so you may not agree, but I’m pretty comfortable saying that Gideon and I are way below average when it comes to the hype-o-meter.
One interesting observation I made during our launch that you probably weren’t aware of, was Gideon’s email marketing style (his writing style when promoting), compared to how he is in his videos.
Gideon has difficulty doing any kind of “sales pitch” in his videos, he much prefers to focus on content, and if you watch the few parts at the end of his videos where he was promoting our paid course, you could tell he wasn’t pushing very hard at all.
However, when Gideon wrote emails, he wasn’t afraid to use his marketing skills. He knows the triggers, is quite comfortable pushing all the right buttons and isn’t afraid of saying whatever it takes to convince you that you need to do what he suggests.
This is important because if Gideon couldn’t sell the premium course when it came time to sell it, then our results would have been negatively impacted. At some point in business you have to be prepared to sell.
The same goes for anything else we promote through email, whether it’s to convince people to watch a free video, or download a report or read a blog post. It’s not always about eliciting a purchase, it’s any time you want people to click a link or even just open an email in the first place – any action at all is impacted by your ability to “sell” the benefits of taking that action through the words that you use.
I asked Gideon if he had studied copywriting – and he has – which explains his ability to talk in marketing speak when communicating via email when necessary, yet it doesn’t show up in other forms of communication with him. Gideon has learned skills that are vital to his success as an Internet marketer, and you can too.
Be Your Self
You Have To Sell The Push Button Solution
Catherine left a comment to my last post – If Long Sales Pages Work, Why Do You Hate Them So Much? and there was a part of it I want to highlight -
You download a free ebook and invest some time reading it – then you get halfway through and realize that it’s nothing more than a sales pitch for an expensive product.
Now, I feel cheated when that happens, because the author is wasting my time. But, I guess some people don’t.
My initial thought-response to this was that obviously those marketers who provide a genuinely helpful resource for 90% of the content and sell their more expensive product for 10% of the content should do fine. You earn the right to pitch your product after delivering so much value before this.
Some books, blogs and email newsletters seem to have the ratio a bit screwed up and you feel the pitch way too early and way too often, yet this can work still – so what is with that?
The Push Button Solution
The average consumer when looking to solve a problem wants the following in a solution -
If Long Sales Pages Work, Why Do You Hate Them So Much?
Some of you are not going to agree with this, but it’s the truth.
Raise your hand if you are put off by those long form landing sales pages you see that are used to sell online?
Yep, it seems a lot of you stuck your hand up.
Let me ask you another question -
If you were selling something online would you use the best known tools available to promote or would you prefer to sell using what you considered acceptable?
It’s okay to deliberately choose not to use something to uphold your principles or because you don’t want to be seen as doing something in the past you have not approved of or disliked when others use.
However, you need to be clear about your goals. Are you willing to make fewer sales and less money, potentially even kill an entire project because of these principles?
Why Do You Hate It So Much?
Every single time I’ve sent out a link to a product that uses a long sales page or landing page inevitably a few people leave comments complaining about the use of such ‘annoying’ pages.
The last post to this blog prior to the one you are reading now reviewing the Desperate Buyers Only book linked to a long sales page.
A few people noted in comments to the review that they don’t like products that use such sales pages. I expect these people didn’t buy. According to my stats at least 19 people have purchased because of the review (so far). Whether that’s a good result or not is subjective, but I’m always happy when I sell over $1400 from one blog article.
Who Needs Sales Copy, Use A Comic Instead
I have to hand it to Edmund Loh and Vince Tan for coming up with a slightly different spin on the traditional namesqueeze page for their new Internet marketing newsletter launch – IMGuerilla.com.
If you are not familiar with the namesqueeze, it’s a very common technique in the Internet marketing world for capturing (squeezing) the contact details of people who show a predisposition for what you offer and/or in exchange for information about a topic. You can read my more in-depth explanation of a namesqueeze page here – What Is A Namesqueeze?.
David DeAngelo’s (or really Eben Pagan’s) namesqueeze page at DoubleYourDating.com is considered the de-facto benchmark for a successful namesqueeze. It’s been tested and tested and tested and performs amazingly well, so well that there are hundreds of copy-cats (me included) who replicate David’s techniques. You shouldn’t just copy it blindly, although I expect you will still do okay if you do – it’s that powerful (elegantly simple is more like it).
That being said, the namesqueeze is undoubtedly becoming boring and stale, especially in the Internet marketing niche – it’s everywhere. Which is why when I went and had a look at what Edmund and Vince had come up with that I actually stopped and read the page from start to finish.
These two Asian Internet marketers have used a comic strip instead of copy (well they used a little copy) to capture opt-ins to their squeeze page, and I think they have done a great job. It’s interesting, entertaining and best of all – stands out from the crowd as different and hopefully sets the tone for a unique newsletter launch too.
Here’s a quick sample…
You can read the whole comic at http://IMGuerilla.com/.
