Creating a Message Flow for your Sales Page (Part 1)
You know how you visit a landing page, and the headlines and sales copy get you moving towards completing the call to action, because of how persuasive it is? There’s a science to it. There’s a science to creating such fascinating copy that’s persuasive. So, I’m going to show you how to construct a killer value proposition for your product with some strategically collected voice-of-customer data. Then show you how you can use Google Spreadsheets to instantly transform really dry, sort of messy, survey response data into a complete messaging hierarchy for almost any sales page.
In the famous words of Todd Lebo, “human thoughts tend to arrange themselves in a story. So synchronizing your copy, to the visitor’s thought sequence, often requires a story-based framework.” That said, one of the chief reasons why the best landing/sales pages experience such a level of conversion is their ability to construct their copies as stories. Like your favorite movies, what make them interesting are the story arch — setting/context → rising action/intensity → falling action → conclusion. This is the natural story framework that humans think in.
Now, in applying the same framework to your sales page, we need to set the context first — what are you selling, who are you selling to, why are you selling to them (unique value proposition); you want to crack that early, as that’s the guarantee that people will stick to your story longer. Next, you want to introduce the features and benefits of your solution, and how it relates to the “setting.” You have to build excitement around these features/benefits; customers don’t want to use something they’re not excited about. People become expectant when a promise is made, and your features/benefits are nothing but that. The climax is when you pitch the sale when you finally get them to overcome their own inertia and say “yes, I’m going to do/buy/subscribe to this;” that moment when they (customers) get to that cliff in their mind and decides to engage the call to action. That’s the moment, they become convinced that this offering is good for them. I’ll liken this to the most famous scene in Avengers — End Story, when Earth’s mightiest heroes have been beaten to a pulp, and defeat was imminent at the hands of great Thanos; the last standing avenger is Captain America; with few fights left in him, he’s struggling to stand erect and face Thanos for the last time; and boom, Falcon is in his ears saying “On your left.” Remember your reaction the first time you watched that scene? If you did in a cinema, I’m guessing a loud cheer went up (‘cos min did). In that moment and the acts that followed — where several portals began to open to reveal the “lost ones,” we dared (for everyone watching in the cinema that day) believe that something good was going to come out of this, and we weren’t going to lose out. This’ what the “offer” or call to action should do to your clients. You’ve built the anticipation towards the acquisition of an awesome thing, now, the call to action is where you make that gateway where they can say, “Oh, this is where I go, to achieve all the end result of what you’ve been telling me about.”
In a simpler term, you’re telling them they “why.” You’re setting the contest to WHY you’re talking to them, why they should be listening to you, what it’s about; else, you lose them. Now, when someone is interested in what you have to offer, the natural thing they do is either they listen or ask for more information. After the “why,” you want them to “try.” “Try” is a breakdown of what you’re offering. Here, you’re explaining in detail, what your product offering is, using all the content available to you to make them understand how your solution is going to help them achieve their goals. When you have done so, give them the opportunity to buy, to act on what you’ve been trying to convince them on.
If you’ve read my previous articles on collecting message data, there are some checklists to look out for while collecting data from online reviews — Motivation, Value, and Anxiety messages. That is the order you should stack your messaging on the framework (as illustrated below).
Before you jump into curating a sales copy, you want to know where your customer mindset is at, what’s their product level awareness. If your product is low awareness either because you’re new to the market or you have a product that is a relatively unknown product in the market, you’d have a longer-form copy to dive into, flesh out the pain point, and get them to feel that driving motivation to actually want to solve that problem. Make a longer persuasive and logical argument to make them understand how your product is going to solve their pain.
On the other hand, if your brand is well known to your audience, you don’t need to spend a long-form copy to engage your customers emotionally. They’re already motivated.
But how exactly do we get a structure for our sales page?
Step one: Identify your visitor’s level of awareness (I’ve written about how to do it here)
Step two: Pinpoint your UVP (ideally using voice-of-customer research [written about it here)
Step three: Mine your surveys, transcripts, polls, user tests for top Motivation/
Value/Anxiety messages
In the next article, I’ll do a further breakdown of how to structure a sales page using a framework spreadsheet.
As part of my course requirement, I’ll keep sharing more thoughts on Growth Marketing going forward, and hopefully much after that. But in the meantime, these lessons have been made possible by the good people at CXL Institute. If you like what you’ve read so far and think you want to have more of such knowledge, do wait for my next post (which is a continuation of this article).
