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Landing Page Tip #150

Several years ago, I boarded a bus early one Saturday morning with thirty teenagers. We were headed to help the poor in El Salvador. The bus trip was a mere 3 hours to Chicago O’Hare and then we’d be in flight to Central America. As we left home that Saturday morning, I gave each high school student seven old El Salvadorian coins. 

As they were examining the foreign money, I told them that anytime that anyone used a first-person pronoun; it could cost them a coin. The person that caught them would get the coin.I had meant for the game to last a few days. But what we learned in the next three hours stuck with us even beyond the memories of the trip. 

In less than three hours, every leader on the bus was out of coins. I lost all seven of mine in the first 30 minutes. By the time we pulled into Continental Airline departures, there were just two very silent kids on the bus and their pockets were bulging with coins.

What did we conclude?  We are all pretty self-focused. And if we are talking, we are talking about ourselves.Our landing pages can have the very same problem. Take a moment and look at your landing pages. How much is focused on you? How much on your prospect? 

If all you do is talk about your qualifications, your expertise, your awards, your service, etc. ... you will miss connecting with the majority of your prospects. They will hit the dreaded back button and your conversion rate will drop. How do you fix this? 

You pay attention to your copy.  You rewrite it with the client in mind - focusing on the benefits of your product and service - not the just the features. Features are about your stuff and writing copy about your stuff is the easiest part of copywriting a site.

Benefits are how your stuff helps your client. Writing about the benefits of your product forces you to consider how your product or service solves a problem for the customer, how it helps them.  Take the time to put yourself in your prospect’s shoes, in his or her point of view, and then write about what your service or product will do for them.

Forget that your grammar teacher told you never to use “you” in formal writing. Your grammar teacher wasn’t trying to sell online. You are.

You need to grab the attention of your prospect and turn him or her into your client. You can do this. But you cannot do it when you are thinking about your product, your service. You can only do it when you are thinking from the framework of your client. Selling online is not about you. It’s not a “me, myself, or I game.”

It’s about your prospect. Write your copy with that in mind and your landing page will make you money.