Technology Toolkit

Independent professionals often struggle to develop landing pages that converts browsers to buyers. Their biggest mistake: They want to display their creative talents here.

Professional copywriters are more concerned with results than creativity. They follow formulas that have been tested over and over again. They use very specific copywriting and design techniques. And they are completely open about their purpose: getting visitors to take one specific action before leaving the page.

A landing page (also known as a “sales page” or “squeeze page” has one purpose: to sell a product or service. By comparison, if you have a traditional website, your home page is designed to motivate readers to click away to other pages. The home page introduces you to your readers, but you present your services after they get to know you.

So in a traditional site, a service professional will want visitors to go to the “about” page and the “services” pages. Your landing page works the opposite way. You “squeeze” visitors. They have 2 choices. They can buy your product or leave completely.

Begin by deciding exactly what ONE action your visitors should take. Do you want them to sign up for your ezine? Buy a product? Call for a free sample consultation? Develop the page to motivate readers to take that one action.

And while you’re at it, help them resist temptation to click away to another page. Remove everything that doesn’t help sell your product or service. No menus, links off the page quotes from famous people or beautiful photos of your favorite vacation spot. Keep the reader’s attention focused entirely on on your copy, supporting graphics and your offer.

Create an invisible design, i.e., a design that readers won’t notice because they’re so busy reading the message. Choose black type on a white background. Use images to direct readers to follow the message you create in your text: arrows, underlines, big exclamation points. Handwritten marginal notes will be effective (if you don’t over-use them).

Make the copy — the words that sell your product or service — easy to read. Use bullets, lots of white space, colors and headlines. On the web, most readers will scan your copy. Some readers will just skim through the bold and highlighted copy, all the way to the end. So apply bold type to the phrases you want your readers to notice. Then read through the copy to see if your bold text makes sense without reading anything else.

And believe it or not, good copywriting is invisible. That means readers get the message. They don’t stop to think, “Wow…what a clever headline!” or, “Brilliant metaphor!” They don’t notice the copy at all.

Starting an online business from your home can lead to many great opportunities, as well as the chance to replace your day job with your own full time business. Whether you are an Independent Professional seeking more clients or whether you create an entirely new business on the internet, you can be successful.

But when you are new, it is easy to lose money because you have so many choices. Most new Internet marketers don’t know how to recognize the red flags. Sometimes you’re not even being scammed: you just don’t ask the right questions.

Many newbies pay excessive web hosting fees. “Alan” signed up for a company that promised a free web design. He just had to sign up for 2 years of hosting at $40 a month. He thought it was a good deal till he learne he could pay $9 a month to host all his domains. So he’s paying $30 a month above the going rate for 24 months.

That’s a $720 web design. He could spend considerably less to get started with a simple site.

“Barbara” signed up for a package that promised to deliver all the training she need for her business for several thousand dollars. The company offered a dozen or so slide presentations — not Webinars or videos — online. They explained how to use pay per click, but didn’t discuss the fine points of choosing key word phrases and choosing a niche that wasn’t too crowded. And they didn’t warn Barbara to test her niche to see if she could be profitable at all with her product.

“Carl” paid $3000 for a simple web design for his site. He realize he needed some help with the copy but said, “I don’t feel I can spend more. I just invested $3000 and have nothing left.”

An experienced Internet marketer told Carl, “I could get a comparable site for about $500. This site is very simple — it’s really a template.”.

The people I call Alan, Barbara and Carl are not at all unusual. They’re very smart people. They achieved successful track records in corporate life and off-line businesses. But now they became Internet entrepreneurs trying to get start-up businesses off the ground. They were like explorers who got dropped off in a jungle without a guide.

One red flag all three missed: When they consulted with resources, they were encouraged to focus on design. Not copy. Not strategy. That’s the most common mistake newcomers make: getting lost in graphics, colors and typeface. A professional look is important, but first you need to develop strategy, choose a target market and write your content.

Are you squeamish? You wince when you get too close to a caterpillar?. And you cover your eyes when your favorite football player gets tackled by most of the opposing team?

That’s fine in your personal life. But many people who write ebooks lose money because they can’t face their audience’s pain. The truth is: readers wil buy your when they’re in pain — physically, psychologically, and/or economically.

Begin by asking yourself, “What motivates clients to buy your information products and your services?”

Many professionals answer, “Some of my clients wouldn’t mind having…” or, “They’ve been thinking about making some changes,…” or, “I want to raise their awareness…”

But readers rarely buy information products that are “nice to have.” They buy when they want to relieve their pain.

For example: Mindy decides to set up an Internet-based coaching service. She’s optimistic and energetic. She picks up a website marketing guide and creates her website.

Any copywriter will realize Mindy needs help. But Mindy won’t look for a copywriter until she realizes she’s in pain. She won’t invest in a course till she registers zero sales for several months.

Let’s face it: people buy when they feel pain. They want money, love, self-esteem, health, or weight loss. They may seek an answer to a very specific question, like, “How can I stop my divorce?” “How can I lose twenty pounds and still eat in restaurants?”

Now you have to reach your client’s pain and show that your book will help. Let’s say you’re a professional dog trainer. Clients call with questions like, “How do I stop my dog from chewing up the chair — starting right now!?”

You can use contrast to emphasize the difference between “have” and “want.” Ask readers to imagine what life would be like if your dog never showed the slightest interest in sitting on your chair, let alone chewing the arms off.

You can deepen the pain. Remind your readers, “Your dog just chewed up one arm of one chair. Are you ready to live in an empty house after she’s chewed up all the furniture?”

You can remind readers that this problem has costs that go well beyond simple annoyance. They have to pay to replace the chairs. They will be embarrassed when guests come to dinner and all the chairs have tooth marks.

Yon need to create urgency — a warning of future pain. “Each time your dog chews up a chair, he learns, ‘This is fun!’ So if you wait even one more day, you’ll spend even more on training (and on new chairs).”

Finally, you can warn your readers, “The solution to your problem may not be available anywhere else.” You might have a unique system. Or all the specialists might be booked up for months.

Copywriting for your website begins at the very top of your virtual page. Copywriters like to say, “The most valuable real estate on the Internet is the top of your page — what you see before you scroll down.”

Your top-of-page copy is what visitors — and search engines — read first. So these few pixels will influence your conversion rates, traffic, search engine visits and ultimately sales success.

But so many websites have a meaningless graphic on the top of their pages. Sometimes we see a row of color or pattern without a word. Sometimes we see a picture of a sunset or a beautiful landscape. Sometimes we see a logo that’s doesn’t give us a clue about the business.

It’s like taking a piece of waterfront property and building a windowless shack. You’ve actually decreased your real estate values.

What goes up there? Ideally, use your most powerful headline.

For example, you might offer a promise. “Give me 3 weeks and you will feel more energized than you’ve been since you were a teenager.”

Some markets respond to a stronger pitch. “Are you losing $500 a year because you chose the wrong insurance company?”

For many markets, the news format works best. “New dog training technique ends jumping and pulling in 5 days — and your dog thinks it’s a game!”

These examples aren’t great (although I rather like the last one). But they’re better than a meaningless image or a beautiful sunset.

Sometimes you need images or before-and-after pictures to illustrate your services. A real estate agent sells houses so why not show photos of houses? A weight loss expert shows a person morphing from fat to thin – why not?

These images will help you promote your services but I wouldn’t put them right on top. Give readers a context first. When visitors land on your page, they need to know what you do. A photo of nice houses might mean you are a real estate agent, home stager, house painter, residential mortgage broker, or some category of service I’ve never heard of.

Use meaningful images that communicate messages immediately. Your logo or company name can go in the upper left corner — if it communicates your message. A business name like “Jane Smith Associates” won’t be helpful. A logo showing a collection of arrows pointing in multiple directions could be anything from a consulting firm promising a new vision to an archery store.

Include before-and-after photos in the text. But don’t use graphics that overpower the copy. Make sure your readers get the message you want to send them as they view the sequence.

Effective website marketing begins with your content. But when most of us begin to write copy for our websites, we tend to focus on our own skills, message and ideas. It’s not our fault. Hundreds of books and workshops encourage us to, “Create what you love!”

In reality, every professional writer learns to distrust what we love most about our ideas and our first few drafts. We’ve all done it. As a copywriter, I often develop a metaphor or come up with a clever phrase. “Wow!” I tell myself. “You’ve done it this time.”

But as I write, I realize the metaphor really doesn’t work. I’m twisting everything around and losing sight of the real message my readers need to hear. And I remember the old adage: If you feel reluctant to toss it out, you probably should.

Sigh. Out it goes. Two minutes later I’ve forgotten the whole thing and my copy is much more effective.

The truth is, readers don’t care what we’re passionate about. They buy based on emotion. They buy faster when they’re responding to the emotion of fear.

When Tim’s biography page begins, “Tim is passionate about…” readers give him credit for enthusiasm, but they want to get to the nitty-gritty: “How does his passion translate into giving me what I want? Why is he the best person to help me solve my problem?”

Readers also turn away when you ask them to read your mind. One client I’ll call “Jeanne” created a program I’ll call “Maximize Your Motivation.” Her website domain name and headlines were all about motivation.

But Jeanne’s programs and coaching were not about motivation. She really focused on organization and time management. The benefits she offered were not consistent with the promise of motivation.

“But I am the Motivation Coach,” Jeanne insisted. “I use the word in a special way. I will teach my clients how to think about motivation the way I do.”

But your website visitors don’t have time to learn special definitions and special words. They bring their own meanings and their own contexts to a page.

To take another example, the phrase “safe relationship” can be interpreted half a dozen ways. So I wouldn’t use that term. I would use words that readers would grab immediately.

Finally, people buy what they want, not what they need (or what we marketers think they need). As a fitness expert, you might realize that children need programs to develop healthy eating and exercise routines, beginning in first grade.

But if your audience consists of time-starved executives, they may be asking you for ways to lose weight and gain energy when they have little control over their schedule.

When readers ask for something, you are lucky: you have what marketers like to call “low-hanging fruit.” It’s ripe, juicy and easy to pick. Why avoid temptation?