Why your “Buy Now” Button is Lame. Unless…
This alone is not a sales message.
Do you have a “buy now” or “register now” button on your website?
Many business owners believe that adding a “buy now” button to a web page will magically cause people to buy what they are selling.
To illustrate how well this strategy works, imagine going to your favorite store. As you walk up to the thing you are thinking about buying, a salesperson approaches. She stands beside you. Here’s what she barks:
“BUY NOW!”
(I don’t know about you, but when people use all CAPS and an exclamation point, it feels like they are yelling at me.)
Here’s the thing: in order to sell direct from your website, you need to change the words you use before you invite your audience to buy.
And like a good salesperson, you need to answer your customer’s questions, anticipate what problem they are trying to solve, and convince them—with evidence--that your program, product or service is just the thing that will help them solve it (a.k.a get results).
And, I suggest, do that with charm… and integrity.
If you want people to take action when they visit your website, you cross over a threshold. You’re in Sales Country. This doesn’t mean you’re all about making money, it just means that you now have one—and only one—goal: to get people to do what you’d like them to do. (This is your “call to action.”)
And in order to reach that goal, you have to “sell” people on the idea that their lives are better pushing that “buy now” button, then if they don’t.
Here’s a “call to action”: Look at your web page where you are asking people to call, click, hire, register with or buy from you.
- Do you connect with your reader in an uncommon or personal way?
- Does your page “feel” like an exciting conversation, or more like a boring brochure?
- If someone read your page at a cocktail party, would people eavesdrop… or ignore it?
If you answer “no” to any of these questions, you are losing customers, clients and sales. If you can’t afford to lose any more, I invite you to brush up on your writing and develop your powers of persuasion with me later in the month, as I crack the code on writing to move people to TAKE ACTION. Stay tuned for more info!
For the month of February, I’m offering complimentary Sales Page Checkups. If you’d love a free review your existing sales page, plus feedback on how to make it better, you can book a session with me here. From Stella, with love!
Online Marketing Is Your Friend
I recently had a spirited conversation with one of my clients about online marketing. She’s a coach and trainer, and her business model is high-touch and personal.
“I know my website isn’t selling,” she said. “But quite frankly, I don’t need it to.”
As a copywriter whose livelihood is helping coaches and service professionals write websites and emails that meet people where they are -- and move them to where they want to be – things like that get me curious.
Who wouldn’t want to enroll more people in their programs and events, without more legwork, more calls, and more appearances in person?
Part of it is a volume issue. Maybe you and your team aren’t quite ready to handle more business. Maybe there is no team. (Yet.)
But as I talk with business owners across the country, I can’t help but notice a more than a little resistance to online marketing.
I get it. No one wants to be “that guy.”
We’ve all seen those sales pages with the tacky headlines and bold words and yellow highlighter. We’ve all skimmed across the bombastic headlines of websites promising profit, health, and getting back into the jeans that make your butt look good.
Here's the thing: it doesn’t have to be like that.
But you CAN get a boost in enrollments to your programs, calls, telesummits, and product sales if you put more online strategies in your marketing mix.
And, in case you missed it, here are five ideas to get you started right now.
3. Why Isn’t My Website Making Money?
4. Making Your emails Less "Used Car Salesman" and More Truffle
5. Why is a Copywriter Talking About my Back-end?
This post is the last in a 6-part series on using the web to fill your programs and practice and sell out of your products. For a complimentary analysis of your website or sales page with Stella Orange, click here. Thanks to liveandrock's flickr photostream for sharing.
Why is a Copywriter Talking About my Back-end?
Is your back-end making your revenue fat?
Your marketing plan this year may include teleseminars, group programs by phone or webinar, finally sending out an enewsletter on a regular schedule – or setting one up for the first time.
You intend to get back to blogging. You want to register people for your programs directly on your website. Maybe you’ve even got a launch – or four – in the year ahead.
As your friendly copywriter, I hear these goals from business owners, coaches, and service professionals all the time. And here’s what I always ask:
What’s your back-end look like?
And by that, I mean, what back-end systems do you have in place? Because 9 times out of 10, if you are doing – or getting back to – any of the marketing activities mentioned above, you need two things before you can even GET to the messaging and wordsmithing:
A team and the right automated systems. Depending on what you’ve got up your sleeves, you’ll need:
1) A merchant account to run credit cards
2) An ecommerce system to send email broadcasts and/or autoresponders and/or newsletters (1shoppingcart does it all, and is worth the cost if you’re planning on selling products through your site in the next 1-2 years).
3) Tracking system to measure opt-ins and conversion rates (so you know if your copy is working – and how well)
4) Virtual assistant to load content into #2, update your website, and handle the admin tasks that you don’t have time (or desire) to do
I’ll go ahead and add copywriter to that list, if you have a “Do It For Me” budget. If not, I’ll be teaching a handful of people the system I use to write emails and sales pages to fill your programs and sell your stuff in March. So you can get the “Do It For Me” inside info at the “Do It Myself” price. Stay tuned!
This post is the fifth in a 6-part series on using the web to fill your programs and practice and sell out of your products. Coming up next: Say it With Me – Online Marketing Is My Friend.
The Secret to Making Your Emails Less Used Car Salesman and More Truffle
Before I was a full-time copywriter, I used to live in the awesomely charming mountain town of Bozeman, Montana. And sometimes, on my walks home from work, I used to stop at the chocolate shop and buy one piece of exquisite handmade chocolate.
Ah, the “Nipple of Venus.” I remember it well!
Dark chocolate ganache inside with a kiss of amaretto, topped with a dip of white chocolate.
Sure, it was 2 bucks. But oh, how I savored it!
And this, my dears, is how I want you to approach every email you send.
Not like a 36-pack of Hershey Bars from Costco. But like a little, playful dark chocolate secret.
Here are some ways to get your emails and articles into Truffle Mode:
1) Give away your best ideas. Share freely. Tell your list what you are learning. Reveal a recent A-HA moment. Show your surefire solution to a problem that keeps coming up as you talk with clients and colleagues.
2) Let them see you having fun. This is something I learned when I was in grad school for teaching. One of my professors insisted that no one would listen – or learn – if I was all business, and no sass. Same goes for you: be playful, silly, outrageous. Let your light shine!
3) Plug into your mission. Yes, yes, you want to make a living. But really, why are you doing the work you do? Connect with that fire, and you WILL be writing from an inspired, attractive place.
4) Forget “business as usual”. So many emails and newsletter are so yawn-riffic because they are a chore, and not a transmission of your joy, love, and expertise. As Gandhi has famously said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” What message do you long to hear in your life? If you whispered the perfect thing to one of your favorite clients that would make a huge difference in their biz, what would it be? That, my dear, is your “Nipple of Venus.”
This post is the fourth in a 6-part series on using the web to fill your programs and practice and sell out of your products. Coming up next: Why is a copywriter talking about my back-end?
Get Your Website Selling Like IHOP on Sunday
Get the right ingredients
in your website mix
The Troubleshooter’s Guide to Websites that Sell Like Hotcakes
Your website gets compliments all the time. Your friends and clients keep telling you they like it. It’s a pretty website. Maybe you even paid a fair chunk of change to a designer and a copywriter to get the website you’ve got.
And still, it’s not really bringing you business.
What gives?
When you’ve got a pretty website that’s not bringing your business, here are the usual suspects:
1) You don’t have a sales page. Selling online isn’t just adding a “buy now” button and waiting for results. You know all the calls, lunches, free workshops and speaking you do offline to get your face in front of people who want to work with you? There are online strategies for doing the same thing—and a sales page for your program, event, or product is one. (No, Really. What’s a sales page?)
2) You aren’t clear on your “pathway.” Most people aren’t going to fork over their credit card on a $500 program first. They need to know, like, and trust you. Do you give away a free sample of your work, like a script, MP3, or white paper that helps them right away – without having to buy anything? On your website, is it clear which problem you help people solve? Do you offer a free first session and a chance to hear more from you over time?
3) You care about helping people, not “selling” them. Deep breath here. Many healers, coaches, and service professionals are concerned about being “too salesy”. If this is you, let me reassure you that sending emails and setting up your website so that it sells for you doesn’t have to be soulless, selfish, or tacky. So let that belief go… and chew on the fact that you can also reach and help more people if you set your website up in a more active – and interactive way. (So get out of your own way!)
This post is the third in a 6-part series on using the web to fill your programs and practice and sell out of your products. Coming up next: The Secret to Making Your Emails Less Used Car Salesman and More Mocha Truffle. Oh, and thanks to rcstanley's flickr photostream for the pancakes.
