The 3 top sales page mistakes

Sales pages aren’t the be-all-and-end-all of sales. However, unless you do a bunch of one-to-one sales work in advance, they still play an essential role in your business. Here’s how to avoid making three of the most common mistakes that will make your sales page less effective…

There’s more to sales than sales pages, but…

The online business world puts a lot of emphasis on the almighty sales page. Pretty much every copywriting guru ever wants to tell you that your overall business success hangs on whether you can get them right.

The truth is that the importance of a sales page depends on your business model. If you pre-sell your readers on your offer one-to-one long before they ever get anywhere near your Buy button, a sales page is less important. If, on the other hand, most of your clients don’t already know you personally? A sales page plays a much more important role.

Whatever your business model, however, an effective sales page helps your ideal clients to immediately see whether your offer is right for them. It also makes it REALLY easy for those clients to hand over their cash if the answer is “yes”.

But how do you make sure your page is effective? Here are the three most common mistakes that keep your sales pages from resonating with your ideal client, and ultimately keep them from buying from you.

Mistake 1: Assuming a sales page needs to convince your reader to buy

If you have to work hard to persuade someone that your offer can help them, they’re probably not the right person for it. In fact, chances are high that you’ll end up with an unhappy customer and/or a refund request. Even in the best case scenario, they probably won’t complete your course or actually use your product.

So really? It’s not actually helping them. (And isn’t “helping people” what you went into business to do?)

It can be a tough concept to get your head around, but your sales page should actually repel non-ideal clients. After all, if your copy isn’t putting some people off, it probably isn’t clear enough to appeal to the right people either.

Instead, your sales page’s job is simply to help people make a clear decision on whether your offer’s right for them. If so, the page also needs to make it easy for them to take action. Try to see your page as a tool to explain who your offer can help and how, rather than a way to convince as many people as possible to buy from you.

Plus, coming from this perspective makes it much easier to decide what info should and shouldn’t appear on the page. If something doesn’t help your reader to make a good decision, leave it out. It’s as simple as that.

If you can follow this principle, you’ll feel less sales-y, and your page will be WAY more effective.

Mistake 2: Not meeting your reader where they are now

Many heart-centred folk want to avoid talking about anything negative. Sometimes they’re scared of sounding sleazy, pushy and even unethical if they mention pain points or problems. Or they may worry that they’re ‘promoting negativity’ or attracting negative energy into their own lives.

Either way, they go straight for the positive stuff: highlighting the benefits of their offer, and talking about how wonderful life will be after people buy it.

The problem is that your readers are considering buying your offer because they have a problem they want it to solve. If you can’t show them that you understand their problem, why should they believe that you can solve it for them?

Instead, you need to meet your readers where they are right now. Compassionately show them that you understand what they’re dealing with, and they’ll feel heard, seen and understood.

Then, when you tell them how your offer will help move them past this to that positive outcome you know they want, they’ll really believe you can get them there.

Mistake 3: Not speaking your reader’s language

How do you feel when you’re talking to someone who keeps using industry terms and three-letter-acronyms you’ve never heard of before? Or worse, they use words you know, but they clearly mean something totally different by those words than you do?

I’m going to bet you don’t feel any sense of rapport or connection with that person. And it’s the same for your ideal clients when they’re reading your page.

That’s why it’s so essential to use the same terms your readers do to describe what they’re struggling with now, and what they want instead. Using terms your readers don’t understand is THE quickest way possible to lose them. It tells them that you don’t really “get” them… which means they won’t believe you can help them.

Instead, you need to listen to how your readers describe their situation (and possible solutions) and use their words in your sales page copy. If you’re not sure how to do this, check out the three tips I offer in this post on speaking your ideal client’s language.

So how does YOUR sales page stack up?

Take a look at your sales page, and see whether it’s making these three common mistakes.

You don’t have to get caught up in sales page hype, but remember that – in many cases – an effective sales page can make or break your launch. And the top three characteristics of an effective sales page are that it:

Gives your reader all the information they need to make a clear decision on whether your offer is right for them.
Resonates with your ideal client by meeting them where they are now – including the problems they’re having and the pain they’re experiencing.
Is written in the language your ideal clients actually use when they’re talking about their current situation and what they want instead.

If it does all three of those things, you’re well on your way to a successful sales page – which in turn means helping more people and making more sales.

If you’re not sure how well your page stacks up, however, a quick, affordable 30-min “Get My Sales Page Working” review consult can help.

In it, I’ll:

Go through your sales page with you section by section, paragraph by paragraph
Highlight the top 3-4 key issues that will stop your ideal clients from seeing how your offer can help them (and stop them from buying!)
Tell you what to DO about those issues, so you can go away and fix them yourself.