Landing Page Tips | Finch Sells

Manipulating The Human Brain For Financial Gain

Jul 05 2010

One of my favourite books on marketing – and one that you’d be a fool not to own – is called Ca$hvertising. You’ve probably heard the title in passing mention. The book has an entire thread dedicated to it on WickedFire and I couldn’t possibly overstate how brilliant it is as a resource for affiliates.

Forget all the guru secret spilling bullshit that crosses your path. If you’re going to make one investment this week, snap up a copy of Ca$hvertising and learn some REAL marketing tricks that will actually serve you well in this industry.

In the book, you’ll find a section called “What People Really Want”, and it’s here that you’ll learn about the Life-Force 8.

The idea is simple. As human beings, we are all prisoners to our own instinctive desires. Those desires, Ca$hvertising’s so-called Life-Force 8, can be summed up as:

Survival, enjoyment of life, life extension.
Enjoyment of food and beverages.
Freedom from fear, pain and danger.
Sexual companionship.
Comfortable living conditions.
To be superior, winning, keeping up with the Joneses.
Care and protection of loved ones.
Social approval.

We cannot help ourselves from chasing these qualities in life. As marketers, our job becomes immeasurably easier when we realize that tapping in to those fundamental desires is the easiest and fastest way of selling a product.

So why do so many marketers get it wrong? For me, it traces back to the “Benefits vs. Features” argument. If you’ve educated yourself in the art of copywriting, you’ve already established that good writing sells the benefits of a product – not the features.

Nobody gives a shit that the acai berry diet is rich in antioxidants. People only care that the chemicals they’re chugging might possibly shave a couple of inches off their waistband, right? That’s your classic Benefits over Features argument. But I would argue that it doesn’t go far enough. And many affiliate marketers are guilty of this.

While we would all love to be ripped and chiseled like statues made from marble, you’re not selling hard enough if this is your only punchline. It’s a want rather than a need.

Being ripped must be great. But for stud muffins like yours truly – ahem – we are quite happy to look every bit of the nine pints we’ve drunk. Why? Because it doesn’t fuck with our deepest desires. Unless you’re spelling it out to me that I need to put the pint down right now or I’m not getting laid until 2018, getting ripped can wait til next week.

Forget the features of a product – and forget the benefits too. Focus on how you can ride the biological train of what human beings want most, and ride it all the way to the bank.

With the acai berry diet, it’s not a case that we want to be slim. These are secondary desires, symptoms of our greater needs. What might they be? It’s usually that we want to appear better looking to the opposite sex, or that we want to revel in the jealous glances when we bust out a washboard stomach on the beach. We want to be socially desirable and confident in our health.

How many times have you seen ads that preach “X can cause cancer”. I bet in that briefest moment, your brain judders and you think to yourself “Shit, I better think twice about X in the future…” It’s because we cannot help ourselves from reacting to ideas that compromise our integral desires. In this case, our biological desire to stay healthy and live a long life is enough to invoke a reaction. It might not last, but it still happens in our brains.

Which line is more effective to a red blooded male?

“Eating X is a proven method of losing weight, helping you stay in shape and get ripped in time for summer.”

“Only Eat X if you can handle the jealous stares at your ripped physique on the beach this summer. Girls just love guys who use our proven recipe. Shed the pounds and be the envy of your friends.”

90% of affiliates are happy with the first example. They assume that getting ripped is the real benefit of the product. It’s not. The second example tackles several biologically programmed desires in every male. We can’t escape them. The reader is living those words in his head. Did you see yourself on a beach surrounded by adoring female faces?

As marketers, there is no greater weapon than the ability to write copy that drives daggers through the reader’s innermost conscience. Ca$hvertising states the importance of using positive imagery with your writing. And I agree, it’s probably the single most effective copywriting technique you’re ever going to master.

Picture the most satisfied customer imaginable in your head. See how positively they’ve been affected by your product and then write copy that FORCES your reader to live those scenes for themselves.

I’m willing to bet that if you take the time to look over your recent landing pages, you will find numerous examples of weak selling. Instances where you’ve assumed that your job is already done when the prospect lands on your page. Great marketers understand that the human brain is fickle. And to sell a product, you sometimes have to stir the right emotions to ignite a response.

No matter whether you’re selling car insurance, dating websites or the latest “get ripped fast” recipe – you will always enjoy more success when you adapt the benefits of the product to appeal to our biological human desires.

Don’t just plant vague ideas and product benefits in the reader’s head. The reader will always analyze them negatively until he has a reason not to buy. Force vivid imagery that inspires them to answer their own questions positively. It sounds so simple and yet it works so well.

Interested in more language secrets?

You can grab a copy of Ca$hvertising for less than $10 on Amazon. I’m not usually one to recommend spending money on guru products, but this isn’t a guru product. It’s simply a fantastic read which will improve your fundamental marketing skills. If you don’t have it, slap yourself in the balls and go get it.

For other site updates and tips, follow me on Twitter.

Landing Pages And The Urgency Of Time

Nov 21 2009

Landing Pages and The Urgency of Time?

This sounds like some kind of fucked up marketing ebook slash Harry Potter novel hybrid. But rest assured it’s not. It’s just the first title that came to my head. And seeing how I’ve been writing a “Beginners Guide” ebook for most of the weekend, I thought I’d go all J.K Rowling on the world.

If you’re new to CPA marketing:

1. Why are you reading this blog?
2. Will you buy my ebook?

It’ll be out in early December and it’ll teach you absolutely everything you need to know to start turning a profit in CPA marketing. Well actually, it won’t. But I’m not gonna tell you that when I’m actually selling it. Expect a Warrior Forum sized circle jerk of paid testimonials, artificial coupon price reductions and quite possibly Finch on his hands and knees. PLEASE YOU MOTHERFUCKING RETARD JUST BUY MY GOD DAMN BOOK THERE’S ONLY 47 RETARDS LEFT TO SELL IT TO.

Anyway, I got some positive feedback from the last post. Seems like there’s a demand for more landing page tips, so I’m going to address a technique that will nearly always increase your conversion rates.

It’s all about how to fuck a customer’s mind in to believing that there’s no better time than now for busting out the plastic and adding a swish $35 to your stats.

And I’ve pretty much just given the game away right there. It’s all about creating a sense of urgency in time.

Have you ever read a bunch of offer descriptions claiming that Product X has been “optimized, tried, tested, passed around, fobbed off and maximized” for the best conversion rates? What this basically means is that some dude took a look at their design and added a few calls-to-action that practically scream out to the user to order now or forever hold your peace. If you’ve engaged in some serious split testing in the past, you’ll be aware that one of the ultimate factors between success and failure is a sense of urgency in the consumer’s mind.

If you’ve got your eyes open, you should be seeing examples like this all the time:

offer

How often do you see these rush-to-action techniques slapped on to merchant pages? It happens all the time with rebills. It works because the users are normally too dumb to think twice about challenging the deceitfulness of a JavaScript ticker. I’m not complaining, because that’s the way we like it.

So if we can accept that creating an urgency of time is key to increasing final conversion rates, why do so few marketers implement the same techniques to increase their clickthrough rates? This is a question that has always confused me.

Practically every variety of banner, text ad or Facebook flier I use is underlined by some kind of urgency to act now. Particularly when you step in to the realms of PPV and “interruption marketing”, it becomes even more important to stress the need to click and click now. Click now or you’ll miss out.

One of my favourite marketing techniques (but obviously not so precious to me that I’m going to keep it secret) is the 24 hour window sell. You might wonder what the hell that is, and rightly so, because I made the term up just then. But what I’m referring to is a landing page that was created “today” and will become redundant “tomorrow”.

Through the power of PHP, it’s really quite easy to add some dynamic controls to your page that edit the dates and create a realistic aura of “hot off the press”. I’m sure many affiliates are using this already to alter aspects of their landing pages. I’ve seen examples varying from the dates of comments, to the date of a post being published. But you’re really going to start to see the benefits if the date becomes an integral piece of your actual story.

I’m not going to out my own methods of doing that because it’s quite custom. But it’s all about creating relevance and urgency in one hit. If you can pair this up with a geographical scripting element, you should be golden for some mean looking conversion rates.

While basic PHP hacks are effective, you really need to be looking a little deeper in to your marketing efforts to see how time can be leveraged in other positive ways.

Taking a dieting product as an example, how could we build an urgency of time? How can we make Product X scream in the consumer’s face that it needs to be snapped up now? For dieting, it depends on the season.

Given how it’s nearly fucking Christmas already, you could try something like this:

“The acai berry is the world’s most in-demand superfood. But as we approach the new year, thousands of Americans will be looking to lose weight as part of their new years resolutions. Unfortunately we have to raise our prices during the peak season time. That means, you only have until [PHP SCRIPT INSERT] to start our revolutionary diet for a bargain $X.XX”

“You’ll still be able to buy Product X after that time. But unfortunately we can only sell it at the peak season price of [How cruel are you?]. This is still a fantastic deal for the body you’ve always dreamed of having, right? If you want to take advantage of our limited free supply, you must act now.”

“Save $XX.XX By Ordering Today! ACT NOW”

This is just another example, following on from the last post, of how you can turn a negative (the cost) in to a positive (what the customer is saving).

It’s also completely unverified considering 1) I don’t promote acai, and 2) I write this shit in about 20 minutes. But what I do know for sure is that time has, and continues to be, one of the biggest defining factors in whether I make a sale or not.

It’s worth taking a look at how your pages could be given the dynamic spark that brings them to life. Get creative in how you build an urgency to the consumer. There are so many innovative ways of doing so, and they don’t only have to be restricted to a landing page. Your banners, Facebook ads, sponsored search listings…they’re all fair game for a little mindfuck time-to-act-now makeover.

PS. If you’re new and don’t understand what just happened, buy my ebook in December. It’ll stimulate your mind AND offend you in one cool hit. A bit like a donkey punch, but with marketing attached.

Does Your Landing Page Need A Language Makeover?

Nov 17 2009

This is a break away from the techniques that I normally write about. But in my mind, it’s probably one of the most important skills you can master in affiliate marketing. For all of the praise that top marketers get for their understanding of various demographics, not much attention is paid to the language that’s used to communicate with those demographics.

Every other day I get guys hitting me up with examples of landing pages they’ve put together. They normally ask me “do you think it will convert?”, “do you think I’m promoting to the right audience?”. More often than not the answer is a resounding and unfortunate no. It seems that a lot of affiliates – talented or otherwise – have trouble relaying to the user exactly why they should be persuaded to part with their credit cards.

You’ll find that the best converting landing pages generally excel when it comes to communicating on the correct level with their targeted demographics. And much of that communication boils down to good old fashioned persuasive writing. Writing with your market in mind.

Too many affiliates sell the features of a product instead of the benefits. It’s a classic mistake. I guarantee if you go back now and look at every landing page you’ve ever published, you’ll see glaring examples of the feature-sell that you missed at the time. We all fall victim to this, particularly those who churn out an obscene number of campaigns in the hope that something will stick. Understanding your market is key. You have to get aggressive and really attack the reader’s channel of thought.

As an example, here’s a snippet from an Acai flog I stumbled across the other day. This was supposed to be the “hard sell”. The slap in the face that gets Average Joe American to whip out his credit card in the hope of a looser waistband.

– No other fruit packs as many healthy vitamins, nutrients and antioxidants!
– The Acai Berry is only grown in the Amazons, which means our supplies are limited
– 1500mg per serving of 100% pure Acai Berry (it’s not filled with other useless chemicals)
– Eliminates harmful toxins in days!
– Free trial, only pay $2.95 for shipping

My problem with copy like this is simple. Why should I give a shit? Here is what your target market is thinking as he/she reads the key points.

– No other fruit packs as many healthy vitamins, nutrients and antioxidants!
Really? What’s an antioxidant? I don’t want a science lesson.

– The Acai Berry is only grown in the Amazons, which means our supplies are limited
I don’t give a shit about your supplies and I don’t give a shit about the Amazon rainforest. I care about my stretch marks.

– 1500mg per serving of 100% pure Acai Berry (it’s not filled with other useless chemicals)
What will 1500mg per serving do for me? Will it get me high? Will it clean my balls? Will it give me cancer?

– Eliminates harmful toxins in days!
Okay, cool I guess. I’ll remember not to take the damn thing in a gas chamber.

– Free trial, only pay $2.95 for shipping
Great. Sounds good value. Shame I won’t be buying it because I want something simple that miraculously cures my fat ass.

I’m not suggesting you start fabricating product benefits. But if you write your landing pages without the specific benefits of the product highlighted, you’re going to lose interest. It’s a classic case of an affiliate letting the product sell itself. You can get away with that for super high demand offers – but with a credit card submit on a skeptical consumer, you need to seal the deal. Here’s a simple modification to the copy above that makes it relevant.

– Full of healthy vitamins and nutrients that spur on healthy weight loss. Live a healthier life.
– Only in the Amazon. The Acai Berry is in extreme demand as the world’s number one weight loss superfood. Get it before it’s gone.
– 100% pure Acai. Don’t buy a weaker blend. Achieve maximum weight loss and boost your energy levels with the real deal.
– Start feeling the effects of a healthier body as our supplement flushes harmful toxins in DAYS.
– Want to feel better about yourself? Start shedding pounds today with the Acai Berry Diet for just $2.95 shipping

Each feature of the product is used to promote a benefit for the consumer. Now I’ve literally just translated this on the fly so don’t go jacking it in to your landing pages and then come running to me if it doesn’t convert. It’s the principle that you should be remembering. A good landing page will resonate a solution to a problem that the user has. If they don’t feel the explicit need to go out and purchase, they won’t. It’s up to you to sell that need.

I write my own content for most landing pages that I publish. I know a lot of guys choose to outsource – which I’ve done before – but I like to keep a close hold over the style of writing. Persuasive writing is something that I’ve always been strong at, even if I spent most of my English lessons through school sleeping or reading the paper. It’s a skill in itself. I don’t honestly expect all affiliate marketers to be good enough to handle the writing aspect of a good landing page. But what you definitely can do is narrow down the features and benefits of a given product. And you should be doing this before you even hit the Go button on your WordPress auto-install.

Draw up a checklist of the key product features. You should be able to jack the key points straight of the merchant page. Write them down and start brainstorming what sort of benefits each feature is going to provide. I like to do this before I choose my demographics to target. Primarily because it’s so easy to be ruled by the tide. Remember when 95% of Acai offers were targeted to females? Yeah, I wonder which bright spark decided that the key features of the acai offer could be just as easily translated to benefits for the male demographic…

Once I have my list of benefits, I like to turn in to a cynical piece of shit (some would say that’s what I always am), and begin to question them with possible consumer doubts.

The best landing pages don’t settle for simply describing the benefits of a product. They mercilessly stamp out the doubts and stumbling blocks that would prevent you from signing up.

My favourite way to do this in language form is to ask questions, and lots of them.

I can’t remember who said it, but it’s definitely true. The more times you can get a user to answer “YES!” to a question, the more likely it is that they’re going to say yes when it really matters.

Price is a regular doubt in the consumer’s mind. So I like to combat their doubts with questions that they can only really answer yes to.

For example:

“Wouldn’t you love to lose XXX pounds if you only had to pay $2.95 shipping? And with the option to cancel your free trial at any time?”

“Are you willing to pay just $2.95 shipping to try the weight loss superfood that could change your body and your life for the better? Can you afford $2.95 for the body you’ve always dreamed of having?”

It works because you’re tactically dealing with the consumer’s subconscious negative desire to shoot holes in your product, and forcing them to answer with a positive response. You can use positive language and positive questioning to very quickly break down the barriers that would have your target otherwise finding a reason not to buy. Price is very easy to address in the CPA world. Other issues are more challenging.

Writing to persuade is one of the great and rarely mentioned talents of top CPA marketers. If you’ve got it, you can sell in any environment. If you don’t have it, you should be looking to outsource to somebody who does.