If you’re like most marketers, you’re always looking for simple ways to squeeze more sales out your sales letters and ads. After all, there’s nothing better than making more money without increasing your ad budget.
So let me share with you a surprisingly simple way to get your conversion rates humming on your sales pages…
You need to clearly identify the problem right off the bat. You want your prospects to step forward, raise their hands and say, “Yeah, that’s ME. You’re talking about ME.”
Tell you what, most marketers think they’re already doing this. But most sales letter start with a benefit. I’m betting your sales letter does too. Am I right?
Now I know some people are reading this and thinking, “Now hang on just a second here… aren’t we supposed to have a benefit-driven headline?”
The short answer is yes. That’s what we’ve all been taught, so that’s what we all do.
But think about this for a moment…
When you create a benefit-driven headline, you’re offering a solution to a problem that hasn’t been specifically identified or named.
For example: “Now You Too Can Housetrain Your Puppy the Quick and Easy Way…”
That’s the solution. But what, specifically, is the problem?
Now you may think that stating the problem is just redundant. However, research has shown that when we list the “signs” or “symptoms” of a problem upfront in a sales letter, we can get a higher conversion rate.
Here’s why:
- It grabs your most targeted prospect’s attention and gets him to self-identify as a prospect.
- It agitates the problem and reminds the prospect of the pain of the problem. (That’s a good thing, because you can then offer the solution to lessen his pain.)
- In some cases it reveals a big problem to those who didn’t even know they had the problem.
So how do you implement this?
Simple – you might create a sub-headline at the top of your sales page that lists a handful of the “signs” and “symptoms” of the problem.
For the housetraining example, you might have something like this:
Do you ever come home to find puddles from your puppy on the floor? Does your puppy run behind the couch to leave messes? Do you have urine stains on your carpet?
If so, you have a housetraining problem. But here’s the good news…
“Now You Too Can Housetrain Your Puppy the Quick and Easy Way…”
See how that works? You first identify the signs of the problem and remind people of their pain, and THEN you present your benefit-driven headline.
BOOM – you’ve got an eager audience who’s now hanging on your every word, because they just realised you’re talking about them, their problems, and the solution to fix those problems.
Now that you know how to implement this surprisingly simple conversion-boosting strategy, it’s time to put it to work for you. Just be sure to track and test all changes so that you can get as high of a conversion rate as possible. Good luck!
