9 Things To Include In Your Sales Page Copy

In last week’s email, I gave a few examples of part 1-3 of the 9 things you need in your sales page:

Emotional pain
Common myth
Vulnerable story
A-ha moment
Problem
Solution
Why me?
Call t o courage
Call to action

If you missed it, you can read it on my website now.Today, I’ll be covering each of the steps in detail.

If you want to see an example of these 9 parts, here’s a working draft of the sales copy I’m working on for Night Owl Nation.

To see how sales copy translate to the actual sales page, take a look at the old sales page for Night Owl Nation.

1: Emotional pain

Vice sells, virtues don’t

We like to believe that positivity and hope sells, but the truth is, humans are more driven by filling our desires or avoiding pain. For example, most people don’t care about “becoming better content creators” or “living a healthy lifestyle”. They rather “get more followers” or “lose 30 pounds”.

Be specific

The more specific you are, the more you’re gonna sell. For example, when you say “do you feel like you’re not in touch with your feminine energy?” most people will say “sure, maybe”. But when you say “do you want to get your ex to fall in love with you again?” they’ll say “yes, take my money”.

Put yourself in their shoes

Try to imagine yourself in your past customers shoes before they became your customer. What were the “real” emotional pain they were going through? This isn’t something they will tell you, but if you REALLY know your customers, you should be able to read between the lines.

2: Common myth

People love to come up with a million excuses on why something will not work for them. These excuses come in a form of common myths they believe. Some might call these objections.

Addressing objections

Most objections happen because of a story they’re telling themselves. For example, if your customer has tried going on a diet many times before, they’ll probably say “I’ve tried everything. It just doesn’t work for me”. Or if they have been rejected on a date many times, they might say “Nobody wants to date me, I give up”. If that’s the case, they’re not even gonna listen to you because they already decided this isn’t for them. This is why you have to address this up front so they know that you’re specifically talking to them.

Mainstream vs niche audience

Before you sell anything, you have to be clear on who you want to target: mainstream audience or niche audience. For example, someone who’s never read a self-help book before will probably say “life coaches are stupid and useless”. That means your job isn’t to sell yourself, but life coaching itself, not you. On the other hand, if someone has worked with life coaches before, they might say something like “I’ve worked with many life coaches, but I always go back to my old habits” Then you have to sell how you’re different than life coaches.

3: Vulnerable story

Assurance

The goal of this story is to assure the customer that they’re not the only one struggling with this pain or believe in the common myth. That we’ve all been there. The best way to do this is to tell a vulnerable story. When you give them an example with the juicy details, they’ll be able to relate and make them say “That sounds like me. Maybe this can work for me too”

Your story or client story

If you’re a service provider, like a web designer or fitness trainer, you might not necessarily have gone through the same emotional pain your customers are going through. In this case, tell a story of your customers to show that you’ve helped other people who went through the same struggles. This is also why before and after pictures are so powerful in making a sale.

4: A-ha moment

This is the turning point of the story. How did you (or your customer) learn the lesson and get out of the bad situation?

Exposed or debunked

This moment is not usually a total surprise. There’s a fear that you’ve been suppressing until this moment then your worst nightmare either comes true, or it gets debunked. For example, when I ignored checking my bank balance because I was afraid, my rent check ended up bouncing because of insufficient funds (exposed). Or when I decided to be honest with my client and come clean, I thought I was getting fired, but he ended up trusting more (debunked).

Realization or reminder

Sometimes we don’t learn our lesson the first time around. It’s okay if your story wasn’t an “a-ha” moment, but a reminder of a lesson that you already learned.

5 & 6: Problem & Solution

Now that we covered the emotional part of the sale, here’s where we explain the logic behind WHY the problem happens and what the solution is. It’s important that you do not include yourself as the solution, otherwise, they’ll just think you’re making shit up to sell your product. They need to understand that they can solve this on their own and your product or service is just there to support the solution.

Explain the why

Most people don’t believe WHAT works until they know WHY it works. For example, our parents have been telling us to make our bed every morning, but we never listened. Then this guy told us WHY you should make your bed:

“To change the world, start by making your bed in the morning.

Accomplishing the first task of the day will encourage you to do another task, and another…”

Once people heard WHY we should make our bed, everyone started doing it.

Give examples

One way to make people really understand the problem and solution is to give an example that they’re already familiar with.

For example, if I’m trying to show the problem with trying to learn something from a book, I would say something like this:

Think about the last time you bought a book. You probably went on Amazon, ordered it and said to yourself “I did it!” Then by the time the book arrived, life got in the way, and you said to yourself “I’ll start reading it tomorrow” then tomorrow turns into next week, then next month, so on and so on.

Use data & evidence

If you have evidence to back up your problem and solution, include them. For example, if I want to show the problem with learning from online courses, I would use something like this:

Various research has the percentage rate for completion of online courses between 5 and 15 percent, with research from Research Gate putting Massive Open Online Courses at 3 to 6 percent. This isn’t much better with high-ticket courses either. From my own client data, I’ve seen 80% of students don’t complete the course.

7: Why me?

Features & benefits

This is the usual “features & benefits” you see in most product pages. If it’s a software product, it might be all the functionalities it has, for a course it can be information about modules and lessons, if it’s a service, it’s describing everything that’s included. Sometimes I also like to include what’s not included so there are no confusions.

Brand story

I usually include a “about me” or “about us” section in a sales page with a short blurb about the brand story with a link to the about page. This story is usually what I call a “weakness becomes strength” story, but it can be also a hero’s journey, inventor’s journey (you see this a lot in Shark Tank). I’ll be covering this more in detail in next week’s email.

Credibility

This is your chance to brag. When you share your weakness, but have a track record, people will call you “humble”, not arrogant. Show off those press logos, awards you’ve won, or any certifications you have in your area of expertise.

Social validation

Number one reason why people buy is because other people buy it. This is why Amazon ratings make such a big difference when we choose a product. Make sure to include case studies, testimonials, reviews, or even how many people bought your product.

8: Call to courage

What to expectations

Most people have a fear of uncertainty. You can take some of the uncertainty away by showing them step-by-step what they can expect once they sign up. If you’re selling information product, tell them what type of result they can expect and how long it’ll take. You can also give them an opportunity to demo the product or give them a preview. The goal is to make them feel like they’re not in the dark.

Payment, cancellation & refund policy

Make it easy for them to be courageous. If you’re selling a high-ticket item, give them a payment plan option. You can also give them a generous cancellation and refund policy to lesson the risk which will give them more confidence that the product works.

Reminder of success & failure

This is where your customer can decide to take action and be a hero instead of staying a victim (who eventually turns into a villain). Remind them of the emotional pains they’ll continue to face if they don’t take action. Also show them a glimpse of what being a hero can look like using success stories from past customers.

Sense of urgency

When people have all the time in the world to make a decision, they’ll just push it off. You should give people a deadline so they have to make a decision. This is one of the reasons why you see some brands do limited launches with waitlist to create scarcity.

Another option is doing limited time offers like a discount or fast action bonus, where they get a gift for signing up in the next X hours/days.

9: Call to action

Keep it simple

If possible, don’t give them a ton of options to choose from. If someone’s ready to buy your product, the last thing you want is to make them say “I’m not sure which one is right for me, I’ll just do it later”.

Alternate CTA

If they’re not ready to buy today and they leave, there’s a good chance they won’t come back. Make sure you have a second call to action to collect their email address for waitlist or get more information. If you’re selling a high ticket product, you can also have them book a discovery call so you can sell them over the phone.

FAQ

Some people may jump straight to the FAQ section to find their answer, so include all of the most common questions even if it was mentioned elsewhere. This could be related to logistics, technology, schedule, billing, refunds, etc.

Quick announcement about Night Owl Nation

Next week, we will start registration for the “new and improved” Night Owl Nation. We will be doing quarterly billing (rather than monthly) and the prices will go up significantly starting next week!

Existing members will be grandfathered in and will continue to pay $5 per month, so if you want this pricing, I highly suggest joining before end of the week.

That’s it for this week!

Next week, I’ll go more into how to write your “brand story”. Until then, take care! 👋

-Sun