Archive for sales pages

Landing Pages: Get Readers to Take Action

How do you get readers to take action? Short answer: a landing page. (Also known as a sales page, squeeze page)

You can’t get results from all the content you’re creating and publishing on your blog, e-newsletter, social media sites, unless eventually you send people to a landing page and ask them to take action.

Otherwise, you may be creating a great brand, great thought leadership, great content… and so what? Sooner or later, you need to ask your readers to actually do something. You need a landing page to do that.

Landing page definition: An attractive, compelling page:

  • Published on the Internet that is
  • Optimized for search engines and
  • Designed to persuade a defined group of readers
  • To take one specific action

Here’s what I created (yes, again with the Smart Draw) to illustrate:

Read More→

Video: How to Create Great Sales Pages in WP

Here’s a quick video I’m  using to promote Suzanne Bird-Harris’ fabulous WordPress Sales Page Template.I love the image of the “web designer thief” that sneaks across the screen about half way through… 😉

Take a look, and if you haven’t downloaded the free audio interview and transcript we did together, go to PatsiPicksWPSalesPage.com and do so now.

What do you think about the video? I think the folks at iFlashVideo.com did a super job!

I want to share with you this nice email I got from Kathy Porter, who was on the actual teleseminar call:

“Hi Patsi – your webinar training on how to incorporate a sales page into a WordPress platform is one of the BEST things I’ve participated in this year.  (I’ll be creating my own WordPress blog shortly, now that I’ve gotten my feet wet using Typepad.)

Think I can help you expand your reach with this product by tweeting and “face-booking” your affiliate link as my heartfelt thank you for making this info available.”

Kathy Porter
Creator and Owner, MrsBizWhiz
Web site/blog: www.MrsBizWhizConnects.com

How to Make Social Proof Work Online

Do some client recommendations work better than others? Social proof is such a strong trigger for online action, it’s good to know what works best for your Web content marketing strategies.

In a previous post, What Clients Say, I reported on research that showed people selected travel destinations 20 percent more with a client recommendation and a photo of the reviewer.

Research studies show that some ratings and reviews will influence more than others: This report is taken from Dr. Susan Weinschenk’s book Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click:

  • We are most influenced when we know the person and the person is telling a story. But quite often, it’s unlikely we will actually know a person doing an online review, unless they are a well-known author or respected expert in the field.
  • We are somewhat less influenced when we don’t know them, but we can imagine them because their is a name, a company name, a link to their site, and maybe a persona description of them (like, for example, a stay-at-home mom, a runner, a CEO, a Ph.D.) Read More→

Phony Testimonials and Dumb Social Proof

How do you get good client testimonials for your sales copy, for example, content for a landing page, when you don’t have a lot of previous clients?

There’s no doubt that social proof is one of the key ways people decide to buy or try your products or services.

I get asked about this by some of my consulting clients who are starting a new business or product launch. Nothing can back fire and destroy trust and credibility more quickly than phony testimonials, as well as vague or anonymous comments.

I’ve been working with an old client who’s been working hard to master blogging so he can have a strong online presence. He’s just about ready to start offering products and services for sale.

He’s got a solid reputation as an expert in his field, but up until now, he’s been working for someone else. He doesn’t feel comfortable using testimonials or positive comments acquired when he was a part of a team effort.

I don’t blame him. Not only will he not feel authentic and sincere, but depending on what the old clients say, it might not ring true for his new company, products or services. Readers can smell a phony testimonial a mile away from the computer screen.

There are a couple key persuasion triggers to remember when composing sales content: Read More→

Why Use a WP Sales Page Template?

Have you tried to create a landing page using WordPress? I have. And I know others have too. You can waste a lot of time and still not get a professional looking page that works to get people to buy or sign up.

Last Thursday, I interviewed Suzanne Bird-Harris, a programmer who developed the WP Sales Page template.

Now Suzanne is pretty tech-savvy and she’s also an expert in WordPress. So when she says this is next to impossible to create a good-looking sales page in WordPress without using a sales page template, I believe her. In fact, I tried to do this once myself, so I know.

I ended up paying someone to create a web page for me, in html. But since WP is so easy to use, I knew there must be a better way.

There is. If you’d like to know how to use a landing page template within your WP blogging platform, I suggest you read this page here, describing how the WP Sales Page template works: WP Sales Page… and yes, it’s an affiliate link because I love this product. It saves me time and energy.

Here are a few notes we discussed during the interview webcast… Read More→

8 Ways to Use a WordPress Sales Page

Do you know how many ways a sales page can be used? I woke up thinking about this… because maybe you don’t think a “sales page” is something you need except once in a while for a product launch, when you’re trying to sell something.

Some people call them landing pages, or squeeze pages. I think the term was meant to squeeze your email address out of you, how weird is that? So let’s be clear about what kind of circus animal we’re going to be training to sit up and do tricks on our free teleseminar this Thursday.

Thursday, June 24, 2010 at 4 p.m. ET I’m interviewing Suzanne Bird-Harris on how to use a WordPress platform to create great sales pages. We’ll talk about format styles, different ways to use a page, and key elements that work to build trust. If you can’t attend, you will be sent the audio file and access to our power point presentation, if you register. You can register here:

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Here’s my definition of the sales page beast: an attractive, compelling page published on the Internet that is optimized for search engines and designed to persuade a defined group of readers to take one specific action. Read More→