I was talking with someone who mentioned that using a pre-sell strategy (testimonial pages or authority sites) was much more effective than linking people to the sales letter. Does anyone have experience with this? I have a bunch of other tasks that are taking up my time for my website launch, but if there is a great difference I may need to re-focus on this.
It varies. Split test and see what converts best for you. Just because a landing page works best for one niche doesn't mean it'll work better than forwarding straight to the sales page for another niche.
As mentioned you are best to split test. Some people will only buy with testimonials or if you are like me I hate them and never read them. I find them to be a great turn off.
It depends on your niche, for example, the people who want to buy a health product would love to read some testimonials first.
A pre-sell page will convert better then sending them directly to the offer most of the time. Testimonials are not pre-selling they are featured on the sales page. A pre-sell page is typically an honest review of the product.
Pre-selling isn't just about testimonial pages or authority sites... it's about creating hype and anticipation... and sharing information how some stuff works. Telling stories... ...and then saying, by the way - there's this cool thing I use, and you should buy it. Works much better than only saying "there's this cool thing I use and you should buy it".
Having a landing page or pre-sell page gives you a lot more control over conversions and tracking then going straight to the merchant's sales page. Plus it gives you the opportunity if you like, to try to capture the names for your list so you can market to them later.
I sell my own product so I am not n affiliate. I sell supplements (No its not Acai, I can't go into what it is)
Well if you sell your own product you are not pre-selling at all. That's the job of the affiliate. You need to create a sales page for the product.
If you want to have testimonials, don’t use your friends’ pictures. Testimonials work only when you have certain known personality confirming that your product is really good. Nobody believes that unknown people are real customers… and their presence sometimes is an offense to the intelligence of the reader. You’ll be helped only if you’ll manage to convince a known internet personality to give their testimonial, because the people who trust them will automatically trust you too.
I don't have affiliates, so if running my paid traffic to a pre-sell page is more effective than running it directly to my sales page, then I'll gladly use that. Thinking from the customer's perspective, I'm much more likely to buy if I read a positive review from a 3rd party source before landing on a sales page.