Let’s be honest.
Your sales page is one of the most important puzzle pieces of your launch.
Whether you’re launching a new course or selling a product, your sales page is THE place where your audience makes the decision to buy…or not!
Copywriters everywhere want you to know that it’s a great idea to start working on your sales page at least a couple of months before your launch.
Yup, months. Not days.
Why?
Because there’s a LOT that goes into writing a high-converting sales page. From research to editing, every stage of the process takes time and brain power.
What Is a Sales Page?
A sales page is a dedicated webpage designed to convince visitors to purchase a product or service by explaining how awesome the said product or service is.
It’s where you lay out all the juicy details about your product or service in a way that’s irresistible to your potential customers.
From attention-grabbing headlines to persuasive customer testimonials and compelling calls to action, a great sales page has only one objective: to turn your leads into satisfied customers.
It’s your chance to show off what makes your offering unique and convince people why they absolutely need to hit that “Buy Now” button.
Sales Page vs. Landing Page
A sales page and a landing page serve different purposes in the online marketing world.
While both aim to convert visitors into customers…
…a sales page is like a full-blown sales pitch, packed with detailed information and persuasive content to drive a direct purchase.
Creating sales pages takes a lot of time and copywriting know-how.
On the other hand, a typical landing page is shorter and focuses on capturing leads or directing visitors to take a specific action, like signing up for a newsletter or downloading a freebie.
So, while a sales page dives deep into selling a product or service, a landing page acts as a gateway to initiate further engagement or conversion actions.
Elements of a Sales Page
Sales page elements are the key components that make up a persuasive sales page that converts customers to clients.
Here are five essential elements:
- Headline: The headline is the first thing your visitors see, and it should grab their attention while clearly stating the main benefit or solution offered by your product or service.
- Product Description: This section provides detailed information about the product or service, highlighting its features, benefits, and unique selling points to convince your visitors to buy it.
- Testimonials: Testimonials from satisfied customers add credibility and social proof, helping you build trust and alleviate any doubts or concerns your potential customers may have.
- Call-to-Action (CTA): The CTA is a clear and compelling instruction that prompts your sales page visitors to take the desired action, such as making a purchase or enrolling in your program.
- Killer Design: The words on your sales page matter, but it’s also important to make sure that your design is captivating and the formatting of your sales page is easy to read. This is why when we write your sales copy, we also recommend the best designers in the business to bring it to life!
If you’re using sales page templates, make sure that your template always includes the elements above. Not every sales page template does!
Short Sales Page vs. Long Sales Page
The main difference between a long-form sales page and a short-form sales page version boils down to the length and depth of your content.
A long-form sales page does a deep dive into all the details, providing extensive information about your product or service, including features, benefits, testimonials, and FAQs.
A short-form sales page is more like the CliffNotes version, focusing on delivering the essential information in a concise and impactful way.
It’s about getting straight to the point, highlighting the most compelling aspects to capture your target audience’s attention, and making them take quick action.
Long-form sales pages are typically used for high-ticket offers, such as group programs, courses, coaching, or products with a higher pricing strategy.
Short-form sales pages (or landing pages) are used for more low-ticket offers that don’t need as much persuasion.
How To Write a Sales Page That Converts
1. Do Your Market Research
You may have heard that you need to do your market research before…
…but had no idea what it was that you actually needed to do.
Market research is essential to writing sales page copy that speaks to your target audience, their needs, anxieties, and wants.
You may think that you already know everything there is to know about your potential customers, but don’t skip this step!
As an expert, it’s easy to get caught up in your extensive knowledge of your offer and its benefits instead of explaining it to your audience in a way that THEY can understand, too.
Market research essentially helps you marry what you want to say with what your target audience wants to hear.
It’s key to writing a sales page that converts.
So, what are some good ways of doing market research?
Email Surveys
If you have an email list, it’s a great idea to send an email survey to your audience.
If you want to get fancy, you can use a premium tool like Typeform. If that’s not in your budget, a simple Google Form will do!
Here are some of my favorite questions to ask on an email survey:
- What was going on in your life before finding [SOLUTION]?
- If you were to invest in [SOLUTION] in the future, what benefits would you want to get out of it?
- What’s holding you back from investing in [SOLUTION]?
- What were the hesitations you had before investing in [SOLUTION]?
- How did [SOLUTION] make you feel?
Notice how all these questions are open-ended? They’re not simple yes/no questions, and they don’t ask about stats like your audience’s gender, age, and income.
These types of questions are called psychographic questions, and they’re the best way to understand the WHY behind your target audience’s thoughts and motivations.
My biggest tip?
Make your survey FUN. Add some jokes, GIFs, and praise. Nothing beats humor.
If you really want to motivate your audience to participate in your survey, offer a small reward like a gift card. Works like a charm!
Interviews
Interviews with past customers or clients are pure copywriting GOLD.
Prepare a few questions about your clients’ motivations to invest in your solution, what they got out of it, and what kinds of anxieties and internal blocks they had to work through before they decided to buy.
Then, jump on a 20-30 minute call with them to chat!
Let the conversation flow and go on tangents. This is where the most interesting stuff comes up.
Always record your calls, and it’s a good idea to transcribe them afterward, too, so it’s easier to see the best parts.
Social Media
If you don’t have an email list or clients to interview, social media is your best friend!
Reddit threads, Facebook groups, forums, and basically anywhere on the internet where your target audience hangs out are awesome places to dig up market research that you can use to write an effective sales page.
Market Research
Direct voice of customer research > assumptions.
Market research is actually one of the reasons why you can’t write a good long-form sales page overnight.
You need to spend time mining the research data and analyzing it before you even get to writing! Finding the right copywriting tools makes research easier 🤓
2. Start Your Sales Page With a Statement Your Reader Knows To Be True
Now it’s time to get to writing using what you learned about your target audience from your market research.
First thing you’re gonna do?
Open up your sales page with a statement that your audience believes to be true.
This is also known as speaking to your target audience’s pain points.
Before you talk about all the great things that your online course or product has to offer and how it can change your target audience’s lives, you need to make them trust you.
How?
By making them feel seen and understood. By relating to where they are now.
Start with a statement that feels too good to be true…
…and you’re dead.
Instead, ask yourself, “What is the starting point that my reader instantly knows to be true?” and build up from there.
This is how to write a sales page that converts.
3. Don’t Jump Straight Into Features
Speaking of going too fast into things…
You are probably itching to start talking about all the amazing stuff your audience will find inside your online course or product.
One of my biggest sales page tips is to paint the transformation first and THEN explain the features of your offer, such as all the different modules of your course, tech details of your product, etc.
First, you need to explain WHY your target audience should care about the features of what you’re selling.
If you don’t, they won’t be interested enough in all the details…and your conversion rate will suffer!
4. Show Your Audience That They Can Trust You
People don’t buy from people or companies that they don’t trust.
The best way to build trust with your target audience? Social proof. Lots of it.
Your sales page needs to show that there are people or businesses that have gotten real results after investing in your offer.
Here are my favorite things to use as social proof:
- Testimonials
- Case studies
- Video testimonials
Strategically sprinkle your social proof throughout your sales landing page and make it SUPER easy to read with your sales page design.
5. Be Specific
If I gotta pick one tip on how to write a good sales page, this would be it.
Whether you’re writing a short-form sales page or a long-form sales page, your target audience needs to know that your solution solves their SPECIFIC problem. So, when writing your sales copy, focus on a very particular group of people that you are speaking to.
It can feel scary to narrow your focus down. You may think that you’re setting yourself up for lost prospects because you’re not addressing everyone, but the truth is…
…when you’re trying to sell to everyone, you’re going to end up selling to no one!
So, be specific in your sales copy.
Speak your target audience’s language, address their unique objections and anxieties, and paint the transformation that they ACTUALLY want to see in their lives!
6. Have Clear CTAs
Typically, I’m all for fun, quirky copy…
…but your CTA buttons are one of the places where it has to be CRYSTAL CLEAR what you want your target audience to do.
If your prospects are not sure what will happen when they click on a call to action, they won’t click on it.
They shouldn’t be asking themselves, “What will happen if I click this button?”. They should know, AND it needs to be clear what the value of clicking on your CTA is.
On a similar note, avoid chunky language on your CTA buttons that may be clear…but just not engaging.
For example, which CTA button would you rather click on:
“Click here to speak to one of our representatives and get access to your free trial”
OR
“Get your free trial”
I bet it was “get your free trial” because it just sounds infinitely easier, and your perceived value is much higher.
(No one ever wants to speak with a representative, duh.)
Your CTAs are literally how your prospects convert, so you want to make sure that they’re enjoyable to click on!
7. Make Your Audience Understand That the Cost of Doing Nothing > Cost of Your Solution
Not taking action is always an option.
Maybe it’s not your competitors that you lose your prospects to…
…but simply your target audience thinking that investing in your solution is just not urgent enough.
They’re okay; they’re just not doing anything about their problem right now.
“This sounds great,” they think. “But I can probably figure it out on my own or get this later…”
…and they’re off your sales page.
So, make your audience realize that the cost of doing nothing is more expensive than investing in your solution.
How?
Paint a future transformation that they can’t resist.
Show them what they’re missing out on right now and how your solution gets them to that next place.
Focus on the benefits. NOT the features.
8. Convince Your Audience That Your Product/Service Is the Most Logical Solution to Their Problem
Show them that investing in your solution is the smartest thing they can do in their current state.
Once they reach the end of your sales page, they should come to the realization that your sales page is THE solution for them.
This way, they won’t be able to resist clicking that final CTA button.
How?
By focusing both on the features and the benefits.
It’s the combination of painting a transformation they really want AND showing that your offer has all the things that’ll make that transformation become their new reality.
Way too often, people focus too much on the features and don’t actually explain WHY these features are important.
Or they spend their entire sales page on big claims that are not supported by any concrete steps or social proof.
Benefits + features + social proof = high-converting sales page.
A splash of storytelling copywriting in there? Well, now your sales page is a conversion machine.
9. Add Visuals
Visual elements such as images, videos, infographics, and graphics complement your written content and make it more engaging and memorable.
The best sales pages always have some kind of visual elements that strengthen the overall impact of your sales pitch.
If you don’t know what visuals to include…
…try showcasing your product in action, highlighting its key benefits with graphics, or featuring testimonials in video format.
10. Use Trigger Words
Did you know that trigger words or power words can help you increase your conversions by up to 12.7%?
These words instantly captivate your audience’s attention and drive them to take action.
Strategically sprinkling trigger words like “crazy,” “new,” “limited-time offer,” and “amazing” throughout your copy to create effective sales pages.
Get more trigger and power words!
11. Handle Objections
Successful sales pages always address their audience’s objections.
When you proactively tackle customer objections, you demonstrate understanding and build trust with them.
To do that, you can address their concerns about the price, reassure them about your product’s benefits or quality, and simply alleviate their fears about making a wrong choice.
Objections are natural.
When you create a sales page, make sure to address them!
12. Make Your Copy Scannable
Your target audience is not going to read your sales page. They’re going to scan it.
So, it’s essential to make the entire page easy to scan.
You need to make sure that your reader gets all of your key page elements and messages, even if…
…they don’t read every single sentence.
Make sure that your headings communicate the most important points, and you’ll boost sales!
13. Set Your Pricing
When it comes to pricing, it’s essential to be both strategic and transparent about the pricing.
The perfect sales page will have a smart pricing strategy that your target audience can actually afford.
It’ll also be crystal clear how much your product or service costs, so your target audience doesn’t have to spend valuable time trying to figure it out.
Remember to share testimonials and reviews from previous customers to justify your pricing!
14. Make It Urgent
Injecting a sense of urgency into your sales page compels your visitors to act fast rather than procrastinate.
Whether it’s highlighting limited-time offers or exclusive deals, use the power of FOMO (fear of missing out) to drive your audience to make a purchase decision sooner rather than later.
Urgency is important.
You can have a great sales page, but if it’s not urgent enough, your target audience will close the tab, promising that they’ll come back to it later.
Then life happens, and they never do!
15. Test Your Sales Page
Testing your sales page helps you see what’s working and what needs fine-tuning.
Test different headlines, call-to-action buttons, and layout variations to see what’s resonating with your audience and what needs to be changed.
Sales Page Examples
Here’s an example of a sales page that I recently wrote for SJ Digital Solutions.
SJ Digital Solutions is an SEO and Digital Marketing Agency, and this particular page is focused on selling their DFY On-Page SEO Optimization Service.
The opening section establishes the benefits of this service, telling you that you’ll go from “Google invisible” to “Google growth.”
It then dives deeper into the target audience’s desires and needs and provides a clear CTA. Check out the live page!
Here’s what the client said:
“Bookings have been INSANE for this offer,” giving her a total revenue of $15,279 so far and a recent inquiry of an additional $1250.
And the real kicker? She made back her investment with just one booking on this sales page!
Want results like these? Learn about our copywriting services!
Ready To Write a Fantastic Sales Page?!
Heck ya!
There’s no shame in DIY-ing your sales page copy.
(As long as you don’t get started on it the night before your launch…)
Plan in advance, go deep on market research, and focus on what your audience wants to hear a little more than on what you want to say.
You got this!!
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