Hi guys, I have been an affiliate marketer for about 2 years now and have started making some cash but not enough for my liking. As such I have jumped into making a product and being a vendor. I am currently making my sales page and have searched high and low for advice, looked at popular sales pages of products I promote and have cobbled together a rough draft. Now I feel like I am following all the "rules" all the experts say you should do but in the end it just feels a bit ... cheesy. I know I am a cynical person by nature though and i think most sales pages look cheesy to a degree so maybe I am just not putting myself into the visitors shoes enough. However all this conventional wisdom I feel might also just be regurgitated garbage and perhaps a shorter, less cheesy and more honest or salesy type of page might convert better. I plan to do some split testing going on this theory but thought i would ask some of you successful vendors what your take on this is and what works for you. So ... to cheese or not to cheese?
The site is still a work in progress. Cheesy means perhaps a bit over the top. Hyper, too exciting, infomercial style. Trying to convince by being overly enthusiastic which might come off as insincere ... I am sure everyone has met that sort of a sales guy and rarely buys from him. This comes about from following the advice of many people and copying others styles so I did not aim to be like this it just feels this way.
If all the top dogs are doing it then it must work... not all the time, but mostly, copy the style and the principles of the best and make them fit your niche / product Perhaps so if it is something youre not really into, or just partially interested in, but if you are ready to buy and someone is excited, enthusiastic about their product then sometimes it's not like a sales pitch at all, its like a bond, or two people with common interests, backgrounds, needs, and goals discussing something and recommending a product to each other - if you can really identify your buyer and sell enthusiastically to him in a way he can relate to then this is gold. You say you don't buy off the overly enthusiastic sales guy, but I'll bet youll buy off him rather than someone who is bored with their job, doesn't believe in their product and shows no real interest..
Unfortunately, cheese sells -- especially on a massive scale. Intelligence sells to a much smaller market.
Over the top = traditional direct response... it works. Check out some low-profile selling stuff if you don't want to be over the top... Frank Kern is one of the masters of this fine art. Tom Hopkins has a course about it and even though it's geared towards one-on-one sales, it's still worth checking out. If you develop a relationship with your prospects (aka build a list and be cool to them) before you try to sell them a product, over the top marketing usually isn't needed.
It does not matter how cheesy it is. What matters is if you appeal to the emotions of a buyer. You have to take into account all of the "insecurities" that someone has about buying a product, and answer all of those questions for them in the sales page. And you have to create an excitement about the product. Buying something is completely emotional and therapeutic. The reason why the cheasier pages that have a lot of hype sell better is because they create an emotional experience by reading the page. Your page can do that whether or not it has "cheese" in it. But unfortunately from my own experience the cheese sells better. Much to my chagrin, because I don't like cheese either. : ( Hope that helps.
Another thing I would like to mention that I forgot about. People like to purchase a product from an actual person. At least that is from my research. That is why I have myself with a personal video selling the product. And from experience promoting products from non clickbank sites, an actual person selling the product as themselves will sell better than any shop website. Because people like to buy from a person more than just some shop. Doing that technique has helped me increase my conversions and that is what I do now. Even though I feel like I am exposing myself on the internet on multiple different websites.
I know you're asking vendors, and I'm not a vendor; I'm offering my opinion as a bit of a copywriter some of whose clients have done some split-testing based on more-or-less similar thought-processes. Split testing, of course, is everything; but my guess, from what you say, is that you might well find that something more honest and less "cheesy" might convert better. Many people just copy what they think "must" work ("because everybody's doing it"). Sometimes the reality is that everybody's using it because everybody else is using it, and other approaches may well be better. One classic example of that is the way that some misleading, deceptive and rather gullible vendors have a line near the heading saying "As seen on Yahoo, Google, Clickbank ..." and so on. People see through this nonsense, of course, and know that the vendor's misleading them a bit. When you're trying to sell something to someone, obviously, the very last thing you want them to imagine is that you're trying to mislead them! But, amazingly, large numbers of not-too-perceptive vendors copy this idea, having no idea - because they don't actually test it for themselves - how many sales it's actually costing them. Accordingly, it's no surprise to me that all the split-testing results I've ever seen (though I don't claim this is an enormous amount) show that copy converts better if you "take that bit away". The ones who do actually test it fairly quickly change their minds about it. Good luck!
hi. i'd assume the 'take that bit away' means removing the "as seen on yahoo, etc"? I'm interested to know your take on the cheesy lines used (in salesletters of course ) because i dont recall seeing your opinion on that. Thanks!
Yes - sorry for any ambiguity. Well, they vary a lot, don't they? One person's Roquefort is another person's Rocamadour, you know? I suspect that a lot of people end up copying concepts that can work in ways that don't work. Some of the "cheese" that do-it-yourself copywriters end up with is appalling, though, and costs them a lot of sales. What you want to avoid at all cost, when writing sales copy, in my opinion, is saying anything that's going to make people suspicious that you're trying mislead them. Anything that can come across as "deceptive" or "intended-to-be-deceptive" is a potential disaster.
Here's the deal. Sales copy has one goal...Generate Sales. most people make buying decisions based on emotions. the sales copy should trigger those emotions often to maximize conversions. Those cheesy lines are typically directed at either triggering one of those emotions or setting up the trigger. Some customers will see these as cheesy and it may cause them not to buy. These buyers tend to use a higher rate of logic (features) vs. emotion (benefits) when making a buying decision. Good copywriters have elements that speak to each kind of buyer. (ex. in the money making niche emotional (benefits): be financially free, drive nice cars, live in a big house, etc. Logical (features): stepbystep, blueprint, process, etc.) Typically the less "have to have" a product is, the more cheesy it will be. So IM products usually are very cheesy, health niche a little less cheesy and good software products almost cheese free. Most of the products that are on clickbank require a focus to the emotional side of the buyer since there is not a huge logical reason people would really want them. Once you get them thinking too logical they are going to ask themselves, "can i really make $200,000/year....can I really cure myself naturally better than a dr. can....can I really build a magnetic generator....you get the idea". The cheese is intended to make their brain think of the possibilities not the likelihood. I am not saying that as marketers we deceive or mislead but we do focus on best case scenarios knowing full well that most customers will never reach that outcome. I say if your cheese is ethical then cheese is the way to go.