Imagine you want to sell a product, service or training online.
What’s the first thing you think of when you’re getting ready to promote the product? Why it’s the sales page, right? So you scrub the page; you polish it; and you hope to hell that the customer is going to buy bucket-loads of your products or services.
And zilch. Nothing happens.
There's a reason.
You believe that customers buy because of the sales page. But the efficacy of the sales page is the biggest myth perpetuated by copywriters. The sales page is just one step. One tiny step I must add, in the whole process of sales.
But how do we know I'm not just ranting?
How do we know that the sales page is not as important as we believe it to be? Let's look at your own behaviour. How do you buy a product from a site? No, don't tell me. I'll tell you. I’ll tell you how most of our customers buy the Brain Audit. Most of them land up on the website, and boof, ten minutes later they’ve bought the Brain Audit.
Yeah right!
That’s not how you and I behave. No one behaves like that.
Our buying behaviour isn't detached from our human behaviour. And our human behaviour is—as far as possible—to avoid jumping in without testing the water. Some of us test the water by subscribing for a while. Reading for a while. Some test the water longer. Some shorter. But almost no one goes directly to the sales page..
And no one gets a date without some work either.
Remember when you dated someone how you had to go through some steps? You had to meet the person, speak to him/her. Then you needed to set a time/place. Then you needed to get the phone number. Then you needed to get all spruced up for the date. Then you had to show up. And then, and only then did your date commence.
Yet when we go online we forget all these steps that need to come before the sales page. We are so seduced by this concept of someone clicking on a link and buying our product that we forget there’s a lot more involved in the process.
But surely tens of thousands of products or services are sold just by single clicks!
Yes they are. But a lot of these products are either items that are casual purchases, or they’re branded products. This means the buyer can do their research long before they head over to a site to buy the product or service.
You don’t have the luxury of being an Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt.
You don’t have the reputation of Google or Starbucks. You can’t just show up with your fancy sales page and get people to buy (Brad or Angie can).
So you’ve got to go through the dating process.
You’ve got to go through the steps. You’ve got to attract your customers and keep them attracted. And constantly build the trust, credibility, personality and consistency. And even when you do all of the above, your customer will shy away. They’ll go over to your sales page. They’ll read the copy; look at the pretty pictures. And leave. So yeah, the best sales page in the world is just a well-dressed up page.
Nothing less. Nothing more. Putting up the sales page is one step. One tiny step in the whole process of attraction, conversion, and consumption. And it’s only when the customer goes through the entire process that they even consider the next product or service in your sequence.
And then you’ve got to woo them all over again.
And again. And again.
So next time someone tells you that their sales page isn’t working ask them this question: “Have you been on a date recently?”
Sean!! What an excellent article, yet again! Very inspiring…
One question… if this was posted @ 2:10 am, then did you still get up @ 4am?? Or is it GMT You are very dedicated! Well done!!
Yes, that’s probably the clock on the system that I haven’t bothered to change. I’m still up at 4am (or a bit earlier) though it does get tougher in the colder months (it’s almost winter here in NZ).
Thanks, what a great perspective, to think of wooing a consumer as going on a date. I found your post because I’m wanting to improve my website, having just realized that I don’t really have what is known as a “sales page!” So only the most dilligent and persistent visitors end up benefiting from what I offer.
I’ll be checking out your other posts, to see what other helpful info you provide!
Diana: I’d start off by checking out the other posts. And when you’re done, I’d also invite you to have a look at the Brain Audit at http://www.psychotactics.com/brainaudit as it will definitely show you how customers think, and why we take the buying decisions we do.
This is the third presentation in a matter of a couple of weeks that I have seen or read, that refers to successful selling now as dating a customer. All from entirely different sources. I was always taught, a sale is not a sale until it is your customer’s customer’s hands. Don’t sell in if you know it won’t sell out. Look after that section of your customer’s business as if it were your own money invested. How can you sell your customer anything until you know what makes him tick. Surely these are the only principals needed to secure long term business relationships.
Wellllllll…we’ve been going about this dating thing for about seven years now. Actually a sale is not a sale until your customer consumes it, and comes back for more. The conversion is actually the easy part. The consumption is the hard part.
It’s funny that I’ve never seen this written anywhere before! It’s completely true…I just recently started blogging after having a successful career in direct sales. The transition has been fun and challenging, but what I’ve found to be true is all right here in this post…the basics of sales are the same. We’re led to believe things work differently online, and there are definitely things to learn, but essentially we have to remember that there are PEOPLE behind those traffic numbers and avatars. PEOPLE buy from you, not traffic. And if you want to actually make sales, you need to actually connect with people. It’s basically impossible to do that through just putting up a sales page!
Christian’s last blog post..Why Are You Skipping Your Workouts, Fatty?
That’s exactly right, Christian 🙂
And I guess you can only woo them if you can tempt them onto your optin list?
So this answers the old question – do I link to my squeeze page or my sales page?
I’ve got lots more questions Sean, I’ll get round to buying Brain Audit soon!
Alex
@ Alexa: squeeze page works, but it smacks of force and intimidation. I’ve written an article about it somewhere, and I’ll get back to you on the link. If I don’t, please remind me 😉
Sean, thanks for your insights and information. I followed your twitter link off of FB (a sure recipe for wondering where the last hour went) and I’m so glad I did.
Great content! Sense of humor! Easy actionable tips to make incremental improvements.
As an insurance agent, we learn to be “risk managers”. But to be hired, we have to sell products, and so I’ve also become a student of sales. Love the dating metaphor… I use it myself. Before I was in sales, I thought that job seeking was like dating, especially the kind of dating people do when looking for a spouse. As a sales person, I realize that every person who agrees to become my customer is hiring me, so the job seeking (or dating) process never stops.
I’ll be back for more great content, but my hour here is up and I need to get back to work.
@ruth: Yes, good to hear you’ve been reading for an hour. On our website at http://www.psychotactics.com we post a warning. We tell people to get food and coffee, because they’ll be on the site for a while. 🙂
Point taken Sean but I’m on your list – and I opted in – you tempted me of course with no force or intimidation. So we don’t call that page a Squeeze page we call it a…
🙂
Alex ( again)!
Sean,
Your characters above seem to be married, not dating… I hope ; )
No one understands better the courting process than I.
The products that I have introduced dectate the very idea of “gotta get to know ya first”.
I have a terrible feeling that this is going to be a LONG engagement.