Why You May Not Need To Write a Sales Page

I was working with one of my private writing clients yesterday, who runs a consulting and training business in Europe to help people build successful careers in luxury yachting.

She’s got so many great ideas, but that’s also the trouble.

She’s got about a dozen ways for people to buy from her.

And she’s working on adding even more value, offering more flexibility and choice.

On the surface, this seems like a good thing, but it’s not.

Because a confused mind says no.

I see this all the time on people’s websites – and quite frankly, it looks amateurish and desperate. It screams “fast food.”

Here’s why. There’s this idea that, if you want people to buy from you online, all you need to do is slap up some sales copy on your website and put a buy button at the bottom.

As we overhaul her website, my client was considering this very move. She’s got a great leadership training membership program for Captains and Heads of Departments on boats. She wants to sell more memberships.

Her reasoning was, at $97 a month with the option to add on to private coaching, it was a great point of entry offer.

She asked me what I thought.

“I think it won’t work,” I told her.

I say this as someone who has spent the last 4 years running launches to fill programs for my own business.

I say this as someone who has been writing launch copy for other businesses for the past 6 years.

I say this as someone who pulled off a $100,000+ launch last fall.

I explained that a sales page alone isn’t enough to get people to buy.

There are two other factors that need to be in place.

The first is momentum – a series of events that gets people to see the possibility, and gets them frothy with desire for it.

And the second is relationship. You’ve got to pay into the relationship bank account early and often before you stand a fighting chance of asking for business – and getting it.

Now, the other thing to keep in mind is that you may also be trying to sell online too soon. You don’t need a huge list to get great results – even 300 people is plenty. But successfully selling via email requires momentum, relationship, critical mass and writing skill.

And while you probably do need to develop your skill, sometimes that’s not the real issue. Sometimes your list is too small for an email campaign. (Read this)

Here’s the thing. Sales pages can work really well when people know you, and they’ve got a relationship with you. At that point, they are called warm leads – you are talking to friends, not strangers.

But if you put sales copy and a buy button your website, you are effectively asking strangers for money.

Which is a hard sell, no matter how great your copy.

This is why I don’t teach writing sales pages to anyone who doesn’t have a Blog & Newsletter Habit, and regularly talk a lot of people out of putting up a sales page on their site at all.

Because unless you have your act together enough to send your subscribers content on a consistent basis, you haven’t earned the right to ask for their money yet.

And you probably haven’t worked out the gremlin voices, figured out how to write a lot consistently, or learned how to write to persuade people yet, either.

But that’s a rant for another day.

Back to my client. Instead of trying to sell (fruitlessly) a low price offer right off the bat, I suggested that she invite people to apply for an initial session with her. That way, she can listen to what people need, and if she can help, she can make an offer that’s right for them.

As for her website, I advised her to put her focus on getting people to opt in for her free quiz “Are you cut out for the yachting industry?” and offering great free resources for people who don’t want to share their email addresses just yet. From there, she can build the relationship with her newsletter, and make test offers and run campaigns via email that turn the subscribers and fans who want more into buyers.

Mighty thanks to Hernán Piñera’s flickr photostream for the empty seats.

Stella Orange is a copywriter who helps people put their work into words. For eight years, she wrote email campaigns that resulted in more than a million dollars in sales for her clients. In that time, Stella also taught popular marketing writing workshops to business owners on both sides of the Atlantic -- and a few in Australia and New Zealand. In 2017, Stella cofounded a creative and consulting shop offering a complete and slightly unorthodox line of business advising and marketing services. She continues to write copy and advise clients on customer delight, how to resonate with more sophisticated, discerning clientele in your marketing, and just who, exactly, your ideal clients are. Stella is the founder of Show Up And Write, a weekly writing group and writes a letter every two weeks or so (here’s the sign-up). She lives with the Philosopher and their two kiddos in Buffalo, New York, a fifteen-minute bike ride to the Canadian border.

3 Comments


  1. Lynne Stephens

    Can you define “sales page”? Are you talking about the page where someone may purchase the services that you provide or a specially discounted offer that is limited in time? Or something else?

  2. Stella

    Lynne,

    A sales page is a long form letter where you take people through an actual sales process (example: https://stellaorange.com/write-club/) . It’s different than a Programs or Services page (example: https://stellaorange.com/production-labs/) because you actually want people to click a buy button.

    Most people think slapping a buy button on a web page equals sales. It doesn’t. Hope this helps!

  3. Lynne Stephens

    Thanks so much! Yes, it helps! 🙂

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