I’ll be honest with you (as always), there’s a lot I know and there is a lot I don’t know… ok, what I don’t know is not that much LOL, yet I spend about two to three hours a day reading to always be on top of things.
I only read a handful of blogs and just stumbled onto copyhackers.com the other day… I immediately loved it (update: they started accepting waaaay to many guest authors and now the blog is just a regular nothing saying platform, the old articles are still solid though), I mean their style is a bit boring, but they write articles that make a difference…
…and there are not a lot of blogs you can read something worth it at, and even fewer that can tell me something I don’t know.
That sounded cocky, a?
Well, I’ve made and lost millions before 30, built one of the most badass internet marketing blogs online without going to events, guest blogging, cross promoting with fellow bloggers and any of what bloggers usually do to get traffic… I know this and that about marketing and business.
Anyway, I was really impressed that I learned something new on that blog (or maybe they just made me think about it) and decided to list it as the first technique to boost your sales… you’ll be amazed how simple it is and how we think about anything else but this:
1 Reduce subscription cancellations by using one word – ‘quit’
It’s a pretty powerful word, though why it reduces subscription cancellations is a bit philosophical and philosophy is not much fun, so I’ll try to make it simple and tell it my way.
Back in 2007 I had fast food restaurants all over the country… a few other companies too. I was doing pretty well and then all the sudden the crisis struck and things started going downhill very, very fast… I started losing thousands a day, yet I held the restaurants and the company open until I lost everything in 2011 and had to borrow rent money from mom (read my whole story here, because it will blow you away… and make you rich).
Why?
Because I do NOT quit.
We are hard wired as human beings to never quit something we’ve started… even if it means to lose millions.
If I can lose a bunch of money simply because I hate quitting, what would happen if you put the simple question: “are you sure you want to quit?” on your cancellation page?
That’s right – believe it or not, a lot less people would cancel.
Now that I think about it, I stay on quite a few email lists because of their top notch cancellation pages… but you have to separate difficult from smart, If you try to make it difficult to quit, people would just get angry and then quit.
2 Optimize your “plans and pricing” page by leading with the most expensive offering
Take a look at Crazy Egg’s page:
Most companies lead with the least expensive option… Crazy Egg do the opposite.
Why?
People scan left to right, which means placing your most expensive plan first sets expectations your products are expensive.
Is that good or bad?
I can rant for hours why this is good, but I’ll ask you a question instead
Do you want 20 10 dollar sales, or 5 100 dollar sales + 3 10 dollar sales?
These numbers came off the top of my head, but are quite close to what happens when you use this approach.
You might say:
“Aren’t you left with fewer people to upsell?”
…and I hear you, but let’s not forget the purpose of upseling – to sell your more expensive plans.
Crazy Egg targets companies with huge budgets though, if your target market are the poor, you can run tests to see what would work best for you… however, if you target the poor your plans and pricing page would not make such a huge difference… it’s only your price that would matter.
Wall Mart don’t care about their pages that much, they target the poor with the lowest price.
3 Lead with benefits, not with features
I talked about that when I told you how to write emails that sell… a lot of other times too, as it is the first thing you should learn if you want to sell.
I know you want to show the world how much you know, or how awesome your company is, but the harsh reality for you is no one actually cares, your potential customers want to know what is in for them…
…instead of bragging, for example, how much money you make like this:
“I’ve made 50k using this product, you have to buy it”
try to tell people how they would benefit if they bought it like this:
“you can make 50k with this product just like I have”
Instead of telling people:
“our company has offices all around the world”
tell them:
“you can now reach us anywhere around the world”
Instead of:
“10,000 already use my software”
make it:
“you can join our 10,000 happy customers and enjoy the software like them”
I think you get the idea, I’ll move on with the next one
4 Don’t talk about the price
…not until people really need to see it, or you actually offer the cheapest (or cheap) price and it is your marketing like Wall Mart do.
When you write copy you tell people what to do, but you also tell them what to think. If you mention the price too soon, you run the risk of making it a price game, which means people would think less about the satisfaction they’d get after buying and more about the value of your product in terms of money spent.
You can go to Copy Hackers, get their free book and read more about this if you want, they have mad copywriting skills, you know I rarely link to other sites, that’s how much I like this one.
5 One offer on your home page
let’s say you have 5 ebooks and want to build a cool page with a cool design to show them off and sell them… you probably think this is the way to go, right?
But it’s not.
Instead of doing that, create bundles at discounted prices, or sell one of them and then upsell the rest.
Or let’s say you have 10 different plans.
Instead of giving people the option to choose any of them, just try to show people how your software can help them like: “enter your url here to see it in action”, or “enter your email and let me show you how I can help you”, or “enter your email to create your free account”, then once they finish this step, give them the option to choose.
I’m kinda excited about the last one, it is the one that I think is the most important to get, it was for me… and it was also the hardest.
6 Understand your potential buyers are not entrepreneurs like you
I had the hardest time understanding that.
When I started selling online, I thought everybody wanted the same things I did, I thought everybody had to be treated as if it was me.
That was one of the biggest mistakes I made… and of course my results were average.
Everybody wants to make 10k a month, but they don’t want to go the extra mile, they want everything fast and easy. It doesn’t happen that way but when you tell them, they go away, when you make everything look fast and easy, they stay.
I actually have asked a large number of people how much they wanted to make, and they all said 10k or close to that… this is how I know. I have also tried both approaches – the ‘real talk’ and the ‘fast and easy talk’, the first one works with people who like to think, but they are not a lot, the second one sells.
Now, don’t take this the wrong way, I’m only sharing what entrepreneurship has taught me, I’m not saying people are stupid, they just don’t like to think that much, neither do they like to know the truth… they want to be told what they want to hear.
Now you might be like:
“but you always tell the truth”
yeah I do, but I’m rich and don’t give a fuck, I don’t play by the rules, and I also like to be surrounded by people who have brains like you… as few as we are.
It’s become one of those articles I really like, yet I have to finish it, you know to get your email LOL (you know you want to use the form down below to get more cool stuff in your inbox, go ahead, it’s free and you will love yourself for doing yourself that favor).
Let me know if you liked this article and stay awesome… and keep using your brain, life is more fun this way 🙂
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