Street Guide to Copywriting » Call To Action

The Ultimate Way to Get People to Buy Things They Don’t Even Know They Want

David Husnian — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:00:54 +0000

What is the one thing that Gary Halbert, Dan Kennedy, and all the great copywriters agree is the single most important thing in a sales letter to make sure your prospects do what you want them to do?

What is the one thing you must split test if you can one split test one thing?

The answer is easy when you think about it, but only a fraction of people I ask this get it right.

What is your guess?

An eye-catching, curiosity building headline that pulls your prospects right in
A compelling, interesting story that gets your prospects to say, “that’s me!”
Making your prospects ABSOLUTELY SURE your product works quickly and easily with truckloads of glowing testimonials
Having so many benefit bullets that they’d feel foolish if they didn’t do what you asked
Including a rock-solid, almost unbelievable guarantee
Having an offer they “can’t refuse”
Nailing the P.S. so they must go back and look at see what you say
None of the Above

Got your answer?

If you’re not sure look at each one and say to yourself “if everything else was bad but this was spectacular then I’d want to do what they ask (buy the product, etc.)

This is so powerful that it makes people buy things they don’t even know they want!

While obvious after thought it may not be what you think.

Got your answer ready?

Theone thing, the most important thing in a sales letter to get people to take action is:

F. The Offer

Yes, the offer.

While all of the choices (except H!) are very important, the offer is most important.

Interestingly, the most popular answer from people is the headline.

They justify this by saying “if you have a bad headline people might not read your sales copy and see your “killer” offer.”

While that may be true, nobody takes action because of the headline.

That isn’t even the purpose of the headline and if you try to “sell” in the headline you’re going to fail.

Why is the Offer So Important?

This answer is simple also.

It is what the prospect actually gets, what provides the benefits, and that is the bottom line.

Wouldn’t you rather have a stinky old salesmen, in a bad, slept in suit, who rambles on forever but can’t hardly even explain what he’s got but who hands you the keys to a $250,000 Porsche over a fine looking, fine smelling, Armani suit wearing, Harvard Ph.D. who has a golden tongue who hands you a toy car worth $1.29.

Sure you would, because, while the second guy might be more pleasant to deal with, what you end up with in the end is worth the stinky old guy.

And that, my friends, is the essence of the offer and why the great copywriters known that if there is one thing you can’t afford to get wrong it is the offer.

If you’re having trouble turning prospects into customers the first place to look is at your offer.

Now, you might say, “the offer is great” and it might be, but it isn’t great to your prospects; so either fix the offer or get new prospects.

An exaggerated example is, if you open a Tiffany’s with the absolute finest in jewelry and you are selling it for half what anyone else in the world is selling it for but you are located in the poorest region of Bangladesh then you aren’t going to get a lot of buyers (a lot of thieves, yes, but not a lot of buyers!)

How to Make a “To Die For” Offer?

Easy answer, exceed expectations.

No, that’s not even right, extravagantly exceed expectations.

To do that you need to understand the general expectations of your prospects otherwise how can your exceed them.

To do that you need to, as Dan Kennedy says, “Get ‘Into’ the Offer”.

Whatever cliché you want to use: “walk a mile in his shoes” or “climb into his head” or whatever, you need to understand the motivations and expectations from the prospects point of view.

That probably means using the product or service yourself, and it certainly means talking to true prospects.

It may even mean going to the places they go to, eating the things they eat, entertaining yourself at the places and in the ways they do, depending upon the situation and the action desired.

Then you take those expectations and give at least 10 times more although 100 times is better.

A quick way I like to do this it to make a little chart like this one:

Meet Expectations	Exceed Expectations	Blow Them Away

In the first column, I write what the general expectations are of the prospects. That is, what they usually will receive (maybe from competitors) in the situation.

In the second column, I then add what would be considered to be things that people wouldn’t normally expect.

In the third column, I write what would be so unexpected that people look at the offer in a completely different way.

This works for everyone in every industry and niche and helps you to craft a truly extraordinary offer.

An Example of a Great Offer

To show you what I mean, let me use an offer I created in the last couple of weeks as part of a promotion for Mike Filsaime’s The 7 Figure Code; he is giving away his $1,297 premier home study course and some bonuses for just a shipping and handling fee.

Given the nature of what Mike is providing particularly to affiliates, general expectations are that people will promote with an affiliate link and, in fact, that is what most people did.

It might even be within current expectations that affiliates would provide a little something extra, maybe one or two of their products, something like that (although very few are doing that in this situation).

To exceed expectations, you might add some things like paying the $15.99 shipping cost for the prospects and/or adding those products, maybe throwing in a tele-seminar about how to best get value from Mike product.

I wanted to do more so I decided to pay the $15.99 shipping so the product was really free.

I decided to add some products that were specifically chosen to provide more depth in the areas critical for being successful using The 7 Figure Code.

I decided to provide more than just 1or 2 products because there are more than 1 or 2 critical areas.

I then decided to provide various rights to the products so people could actually earn more money by selling them (this would be particularly important to people who are newer and don’t have a lot of products and services they sell).

I then said to myself, “times are tough and people might need some extra money, if only to pay for some of the cost of having an online business and many people did not get the invite to be part of the promotion and maybe they’d have liked the opportunity.”

Yeah, I talk a lot to myself

So I thought about what I could do and I came up with a way to provide people with just those things.

I let people sign up with me (like a sort of affiliate) and promote the products themselves.

I provide them with a special, personalized link which they can use and for everyone they send through there link and who get Mike’s course and bonuses will get $5.

So the offer wildly exceeding anything anyone would expect; you can check it out here.

They get:

Mike Filsaime’s $1,297 home study course, The 7 Figure Code
Mike’s 2 bonuses
A refund of $15.99 to cover the shipping and handling fee
A number of additional product that strongly complement and support The 7 Figure Code giving them additional value by helping them succeed more quickly and easily
Rights to the product so they can sell them and get more money (hopefully using the things they learning in The 7 Figure Code!)
A way to earn additional money by promoting for product for themselves

A lot more than your expectations, right? Certainly a lot more than anyone else is doing!

Conclusion

The most important thing about getting more sales is the offer.

Everything else is important but the one thing that makes people actually act is they offer.

Have everything else wrong but have a fantastic offer and you will make sales, maybe a lot of sales.

Having a bad offer but great sales copy will get you few sales.

To craft a powerful, compelling offer you need to do more than exceed expectations, you need to create an offer that so far exceeds expectations that even people who aren’t that interested perk up.

Provide value 10 or 100 times what is expected and you’ll land the hook and you’ll sleep very well at night because you are doing the opposite of taking advantage of people you are giving them so much their lives are enhanced in the process.

Check out my offer for The 7 Figure Code for a good example of this.

Want to how to create great offer and make more sales, just sign up here

* I Will Never, Ever, Sell, Rent or Give Out Your Info

What’s the best offer you’ve seen?

What’s the best offer you’ve done?

How could you change your offers to be extraordinary?

Skyrocket Conversions with a Belcher Button

David Husnian — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:25:44 +0000

Conversions are one of the 3 Pillars of Guaranteed Success and the stronger each pillar is the greater the success.

There is this “buy button” that you see everywhere and I finally got intrigued enough to learn more about it.

It is called a Belcher Button, after its creator Perry Belcher, and it claims to be the “world’s highest converting buy button”. Here is an example of one:

I’m sure you’ve seen some variations of it lots of places even if it wasn’t consciously.

The more I learned about it the more I just had to try it; after all Perry says “split tests show close rates increased by 35 to 320% over ANY other buy button… been tested individually in over 10,000 closed transactions.” And that doesn’t count all the other people who’ve used and tested it.

As “ugly” as it is, I’ve been trying it and have gotten some initial good results; although I have a lot more testing to do.

I’ve been pleased enough though to tell you about it and to give you the HTML source code so you can easily use it yourself.

Parts of the Belcher Button

Perry has a nice video explanation on his blog but I’ll give a written description of what he says here because some people prefer to read and text is easier to search and refer back to than a video.

The Buy Area

Perry calls the entire thing a “buy area” not a “buy button” because it is meant to all work together with each part proven to add to the value of the entire area.

The first thing you notice is how it looks. Yes, as his says, it is big and ugly.

Of course, that’s the point, you do NOT want your call to action to be subtle or hard to find, you want it to attract attention.

Let’s look at the individual parts…

The Call to Action

The call to action is the text outside and above the dashed line box; in the example it says “The Belcher Button”, of course, though you would change it and put in your own call to action.

The Dashed Border

A dashed border originated in print ads and has been proven over and over to improve conversions online; which is why you see it so frequently

Perry says just that alone increases his conversions by 5-10%.

The Price Drop

The price drop is the first thing inside the dashed border; in the example it says Regular Price $297 Today $97.

Perry found that leaves the price drop out caused 15-20% fewer sales than putting it in.

As an aside, he points out that the best price drop down he’s found is about 1/3 the original (so he goes from $300 to $100).

Basically say “Regular Price” and put the “regular price” or the “actual value” and make sure you have a line go through it. Then put the word “Today” and put in the cost of the product or service.

The Add to Cart Button

The important points, the points that have proven to convert the best, are:

The red border around the button
The two-toned orange-yellowish background is, as he says, paramount because orange buttons work best. This is because while it is the “second most noticeable color” (after red) but doesn’t have that danger, fear or warning associations that the color red has. I can attest to the power of orange buttons which is why you see me use orange buttons a lot!
The navy colored text on the orange background because the navy color establishes trust
The use of the words “Add To Cart” has tested out to give up to 100% improvement in conversions. That means that he has seen his sales DOUBLE by just changing the test to say “Add To Cart”, no other changes; Pointing out again the importance of doesn’t split testing!

The Add to Cart Text Link

Perry’s testing has clearly shown that adding a text link below the button improves conversions above having just the button or just the text link.

The Credit Card Symbols

Meant to improve trust and credibility, the various credit card and PayPal symbols have the least amount of conversion improvement but why not get the extra 3-5% if you can.

He also points out they reinforce the entire buy area call to action, the “get it here, now!”

Getting Your Own Belcher Button

On his blog, Perry generously gives away his Belcher button, he doesn’t even ask for an email address, but the “problem” with the button is that he just give it as an flatten image format making it difficult to edit at best.

So, I have made an HTML version of it for myself and am giving it to you for you to freely use as you wish.

It allows you to easily change every part of the Belcher Button although you may not want to mess with success at least to start, although then doing your own split testing should be done.

You can get the HTML source here:
http://www.StreetGuideToCopywriting.com/FreeStuff/BelcherButtonHTMLCode.zip

I’ve included both the template for you to use (a file named BelcherButtonTemplate.htm) and an actual example of its use (a file name BelcherButonExample.htm).

Using Your Own Belcher Button

To use it just copy and paste the template source code into your sales page and change everything that begins with “[*” and ends with “Goes Here*]” with what you want them to say.

For example to set the actual button link destination and text the template code looks like:

[*Add To Cart Button Text Goes Here*]

Change: “[*Buy Button Link Goes Here*]” to be whatever your link destination, like the PayPal link or a 1ShoppingCart link.

And change: “[*Add To Cart Button Text Goes Here*]” to get the text you want to see on the button, like “Add To Cart”

I’ve made it so you can change the text, styling and images of just about everything rather easily and, of course, with the source code you can change anything else you want also.

If you have questions about it let me know by leaving a comment below and I’ll answer them and, if there are lots of questions, I may create a video showing you how to do it.

Conclusion

Conversions are critically important to achieving success in business, online or not, and you should do everything you can to continuously be converting better.

The Belcher Button is a proven way to convert better and make you more money so you should STRONGLY consider using it in your business.

Take the free HTML source code and start using it and then start doing split testing to optimize it for your specific situation.

If you want to learn more about converting better and split testing just sign up for my free copywriting course:

* I Will Never, Ever, Sell, Rent or Give Out Your Info

Do you use a Belcher Button? Post a comment and let me know how it has helped you and please, if you have questions about how to use the HTML source code don’t hesitate to ask; I answer every question I receive.

Talk soon,

The Shameless (Ethical) Marketer
http://www.8-8-8Sale.com
http://www.MusicForInternetMarketers.com
http://www.SecretsOfGoogleAdwords.com
http://www.MadMondaySale.com
http://www.2ForTuesdaySale.com

O.Y. If you missed it, get the Belcher Button HTML source code here:
http://www.StreetGuideToCopywriting.com/FreeStuff/BelcherButtonHTMLCode.zip

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Skyrocket Conversions with a Belcher Button

Protected: Profit Pulling Sale Copy: Lesson 17 – Sales Letter Elements, Part 5

David Husnian — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 05:43:23 +0000

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Protected: Profit Pulling Sale Copy: Lesson 17 – Sales Letter Elements, Part 5