Write the first draft for a sales page

[lsmous (Laura L Smous)]

Business benefits

Convert more visitors by shaping raw customer comments into compelling, data driven headlines and body copy.

Create your messaging flow, including your unique value proposition, motivation, value, and anxiety messaging, and call to action.

• Your unique value proposition is the combination of the outcome your customer wants and your product’s unique quality to achieve that outcome.
• Your motivation messaging addresses your audience pain point, desirable outcomes, and purchase prompts.
• Your value messaging includes your unique benefits, how your product works, aha moments, and deal breaker needs and requirements.
• Your anxiety messaging addresses uncertainties, objections, and perceived risks.
• Your call to action (CTA) pays off your messaging to prompt your visitors to buy or take action.

Use a template like CXL’s sales page template, which breaks down the various sections to address.

Mine audience comments about your products. Add the most compelling messages for each category in the template.

Use the pivot table created as part of your message flow creation to identify each element to include on your sales page draft. Swipe messages from your customers that represent common phrases verbatim.

Turn exact words from customers tracked in your template into second person, you-focused narratives.

For example, turn a customer review that says, I wanted my dogs to have the freedom to come and go as they please, into a second person narrative that states, You want your dogs to have the freedom to come and go as they please.

Identify areas that can be strengthened with social proof and third party proof points.

Insert social proof and objective proof points anywhere in the message story that contains claims for which your customers will need validation.

Place your value proposition and call to action in the first section of your sales page template to ensure they will be above the fold on the published page, as early as possible.

In many cases, your value proposition is your page headline, while your call to action is a button near the top.

Address common concerns and objections near the bottom of the page, and repeat your call to action as needed, based on your voice-of-customer data.

Use your document editor to create basic hierarchies, like headlines and subheads or sidebar blocks.

Share your first draft with other stakeholders, like your sales or product marketing team. Ask them to review it.

[naomi_kramer]

@lsmous

Create a data-driven first draft of your sales page that shapes raw customer comments into compelling headlines and body copy.

Don’t restate the title in the business benefits.

@lsmous

1. Review your messaging flow, including your unique value proposition; motivation, value, and anxiety messaging; and call to action.

Review implies that the messaging flow is already created? But we’ve only just started?

@lsmous

2. Download CXL’s Sales Page Template, which breaks down the various sales page sections to address.

Handy trick: instead of sharing the document itself, replace the edit?usp=sharing on the end of the URL with copy, turning it from this: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12nkyBrLTOw5ExYOueSszYCfOMynzYauic7_eepRyx8o/edit?usp=sharing into this: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12nkyBrLTOw5ExYOueSszYCfOMynzYauic7_eepRyx8o/copy – if you use this as the link instead, people are automatically prompted to make their own copy of the document for their own use. This saves the owner of the document being spammed with edit permission requests, and it saves frustration for less-savvy Google Docs users.

Super-fussy point: this isn’t a download, though. It’s a cloud document.

@lsmous

3. Add the most dominant messages in your message mining spreadsheet from each conversion element category into the template.

Use the pivot table created as part of your message flow creation to identify each element to include on your sales page draft. Swipe messages from your customers that represent common phrases verbatim.

Link to the Mine audience messages for sales copy playbook instead.

@lsmous

4. Tweak the verbatim swipes in your template into a second-person, “you”-focused narrative.

The explanation for this is really good! The step text just needs to be worded more clearly and plainly.

@lsmous

5. Identify any areas that can or should be strengthened with social proof and/or third-party proof points.

Social proof and objective proof points can live at any point in the message story, depending on the points that your customers believe most need bolstered or backed up.

Simplify the step text – no need for can or should or and/or – and fix up the grammar in the step explanation.

@lsmous

6. Add your value proposition and call to action above the fold, as early on the website as possible.

Shouldn’t the reader be adding this content to the relevant place in the template?

@lsmous

7. Build the rest of your sales page first draft according to the message flow and hierarchy you’ve crafted, adding social proof and/or third-party proof points where needed.

I found this confusing – should the reader follow the template, or follow their own hierarchy created earlier?

Link is unnecessary.

@lsmous

9. Transfer your first draft to a document editor that allows you to create basic hierarchies, like headlines and subheads or sidebar blocks.

Aren’t they already using Google Docs?

[lsmous (Laura L Smous)]

Edits made to address all feedback. Thanks for the copy doc link trick!