Episode Transcript
Tiff Carey 0:04
You want to not just emotionally sell and give us some facts, because you're gonna have different types of personalities out there buying your product. And you've got to try and appeal to those different personalities. So where I might be more of an emotional buyer, Monica might be more of a just the facts. I just want to know if it's going to get it done and has it worked and all of those things. So you want to make sure you can kind of appeal to all types of buyers. And by integrating data, facts and some of these really powerful quotes that you can bind into the sales page, you're going to make sure you hit every one
Monica Pitts 0:47
you're on mission and you just need more people to know about it. And whether you're brand new to marketing or seasoned pro. We are all looking for answers to make marketing decisions with purpose. I'm Monica Pitts, a techie crafty business owner, mom and aerial dancer who solves communication challenges through technology. This podcast is all about digging in and going digital. I'll share my marketing know how in business experience from almost 20 years of misadventures, I'll be your backup dancer. So you can stop doubting and get moving towards marketing with purpose. So hello, again, everybody and welcome back to marketing with purpose. I'm Monica, I'm your host every week, St. Monica, but I have a different friend with me this week. I have Tiff and Tiff is the founder and CEO of Change Maker Marketing. She's She's owner of an actual copywriting agency and as a student in copywriting, I am super duper excited to ask her like somewhere around a million questions, maybe a billion questions today. She is not just a writer, though, because there's a lot of people who can write what Tiff can do is she can sell. Oh, yeah, so she can sell and she can write. It's like the marriage trifecta of awesome sauce out online, right? Because everybody's trying to sell something online and communicate online. And so like if you can do both, I feel like you're kind of like a master of the universe. So Tiff said that she would give us advice on bullet points, to entice window shoppers into buyers, tips for pulling people through our sales page using social proof. And how many buy buttons is too many buy buttons. I really talk about that. Okay, so, yeah, okay, I'm going to stop talking about you Tiff and let you talk about yourself now. Tell us I
Tiff Carey 2:40
love that I'm the master of the universe, though. That's a great intro.
Monica Pitts 2:47
You're a mega deal closer.
Tiff Carey 2:49
Yeah, it's so funny because, you know, I was a writer by trade through school, I went to school for writing. My first job was as a copy editor in a computing magazine for computing publication, which is so crazy and off the wall, I used to write reviews for the first flip phones and things like that. So crazy stuff. And then through writing, I just I ended up doing working for dive travel publication, I worked for teen magazine and various editorial and writing roles, feature writer and then a Feature Editor. And then one thing led to another and I crossed over to the dark side, as we call it, and started selling ads in publications. So moved over to the sales side made a little bit a lot more money, I should say. And kind of hung up the writing for a little bit. And it is really is kind of like, you know, it suddenly started coming back in as I was selling for fast forward. Now, you know, this was probably maybe 10 years ago, so about five years into my career. I was writing so many proposals and, you know, writing the proposals to C level executives at, you know, fortune 500 companies and, you know, taking them in and not only going through the slides, but talking them through it and sales conversations over and over and over, I probably answered and written hundreds of RFPs, which are requests for proposals. And so, you know, the writing was coming back into it, and I loved selling and I was very good at it always ranked number one or number two and my global company that I worked for. And so, in 2019, I decided, You know what, I think I should just go out and kind of do this on my own and I started doing some freelancing on the side and then one thing led to another within the pandemic. There were a lot of people that were starting businesses, you know, trying to package up their goods, their services, programs or products, but Ever they were doing. And they were having trouble kind of building that offer stack, if you will, and they could talk to us about it, and you and I would understand it. But really to put those words on a page that live online to sell it, that's like a whole other beast. And so that's really where I ended up coming in as a sales page copywriter to just help people piece together not only an offer that sells, but then also be able to put that online to sell it while they're off doing their other entrepreneurial things, you know, you got to have a good sales page to sell your stuff while you're not there. So that's what I do. And that's how I've been. My I've been running my business now for four years. So it's great, fantastic. Yeah.
Monica Pitts 5:50
I, I love that you write words that sell things, because having a beautiful website is one thing, I think that having a beautiful website creates an instant rapport with people. But in order to keep the rapport, you have to have words that are going to connect with them, and help them see the solution to their problems, in your words, literally, you know, through your product. And I go to a lot of websites that are for online entrepreneurs. And I'm like, wow, this is a really ugly site. But clearly they're running a good business. And it's because they have words on it that sell things. And I know one of the things that my clients tend to do to save money is decide to write their own content on their website. And then, and then there are mornings like this morning, when I read through all that content as the art director and I. And I got to go back to my project managers and say, Do you think that they would give us money to edit this because a beautiful website is awesome. But we want a website that works. Right? And so that means it has to not just be beautiful, and it has to have great words on it. So I
Tiff Carey 7:11
absolutely, that's what I'm here for.
Monica Pitts 7:15
Okay, I want to kick us off with a question tell me sales page versus non sales page. So when I think of a sales page, for some people, it's really obvious. It's like, add it to cart. Yeah. But then for people who sell services and not products, I think of their services pages, as sales pages, I think of their contact page as like, like a closing section of the sales conversation. But I think of like maybe their about and history pages as not as much sales pages, but more just like storytelling pages. So tell me more about the difference that you feel between like, just, hey, this is the page, it's gonna tell a story and this this page, you need to hit hard. This is your selling stuff here. Does that make sense?
Tiff Carey 8:12
Yeah, that's a great question. The, the sales pages, obviously, you have one mission, your mission is to get that reader or prospect to click the button and buy the thing. Right. That is, that's it right there. That's your closer, if you were going to think about a team, that's your closer, everybody else in the office, our virtual office, which is your website, right, your landing page, your homepage, for example, your about page, your you know, maybe you have a client portfolio page that you put up, those are still selling, right to a certain extent. But they aren't using probably as direct language on there. It's kind of a tease, right? We call it make them thirsty. So it's kind of like, Oh, what is she did like, get build the curiosity throughout the, you know, this is Monica story, and this is how she started out. And then now she's doing this and it's like, oh, okay, well, I do want to read more about this, you know, and could this by the way potentially solve a problem for me? Yes. Great. So, you know, the sales page, like I said, very specific, I feel like the sales page is definitely a sales conversation, I think there's a great way to write a sales page. And there's definitely a million ways to write it incorrectly, you know, to write for more conversions and to write for, that's not going to happen for you. That doesn't mean that somebody's not going to be bop over to your bio page or your about page and not, you know, click on a button there that says, you know, join the newsletter or, you know, get on the webinar or whatnot. They're just probably not going to buy the thing on one of those pages. But those are all kind of like cookie crumbs leading you to good sales page.
Monica Pitts 10:06
So in a service based website, is the sales page more like the Services page and then your but the way that you're selling it is like the sale is actually contacting me? Does that make sense? So would you try to structure services pages with some of the same techniques that you use in a traditional sales page? Or do you feel like they're cookie crumbs? And you need to know? Okay, so
Tiff Carey 10:33
that's also a very good question, Monica. Um, thank you for all these good questions. That it's tricky, because if you're a business and you're a service based business, let's say you have three main services, because you don't really want to put more than three or five, right? Because that just confuses buyers. But if you have three services, and you you're trying to sell them those services, I do not think that you can sell three different services on one page, it's very hard to do. So I feel like you're saying, Okay, so for example, if you were going to create a brand new website, with Monica, you have nothing, you have no testimonials, you know, nothing going on, you just have this thing, you know, you have to get an online presence. Like that's where you are in your journey. Let's say that that buyer needs like a whole sales page. And it doesn't need to be a say whole, but a separate sales page that really kind of hones in on that buyer. I don't have any testimonials, I don't have any copy. So you're kind of easing their, their worries, do you know about not having what they need in order to start a website. And that's a sales conversation for that service, that's very specific, that's very different than if you were going to sell, I have a website, but it's working terribly. And I really need help figuring out how to do it, somebody else built it for me, it's a mess. You know, like I need someone to go in and kind of re design up the whole place. That's a different conversation than with the person who has zippo, right. So I think when you're selling services, business to business, you have a service page that says, hey, this is kind of like, this is what we do. And you kind of like, you know, do your blurbs, maybe a couple bullets, and then you move on to your next service data. And there should be something that would say, you know, learn more or whatever, some button to click to go over to a sales page. Think of that as like, that sales page, is your salesperson dedicated only to that service. And so that person has to have that narrative. Down Who is she talking to? What is she doing? You know, what is she trying to sell type of a thing? And that's why I think services pages really need to be separate from sales pages, especially in b2b.
Monica Pitts 13:11
Yeah, well, the services landing page, which is what you're describing, where it like, kind of gives a small overview of each one of the services. They Yeah, so that's separate. And then those individual services pages, which you have to have anyway, if you're going to rank for all those terms in Google unless Google like unless what you do is so overlapping that it thinks it's all the same thing, you would need to have separate pages anyway. And then your individual services pages, you would format them more like sales pages, or as sales pages. And I really like what you said too, which is that sometimes people are not all the same. And you might have to have more than one conversation. So it might be like, like, in your example of the web design company. We design websites. We design websites for new business owners who don't have websites, click here, all right, take them to that sales page, or we rebuild websites for people who already have websites that suck and then take them to the other sales page is a really different conversation. Smart. Okay, so on my sales page, I promise I will not try to stump you anymore. I was just really curious, right? Because people use all these words. And we're marketers and we kind of make them up there's we need like a marketing theory right? But like defines all this crap. Okay, so now that we got all that out of the way, yeah, that took a lot longer than I thought it would. Oh, okay. So now we are completely clear and we understand the difference between the cookie crumbs and the closer pages of our website started at the top what is like your your first tip about like we said, we were gonna start with bullet points so how sexy bullet points entice window shoppers to become long time buyers like how does that?
Tiff Carey 15:04
Okay, so I think that a lot of people, many people that I've worked with have missed the power behind the bullet and a bullet list is you might think, Oh, that's so simple, like, of course, you know, why wouldn't I do that, but many people don't do that they, they, sometimes they err in the way of, you know, providing these super long descriptions, and you're just looking at a block of text, right. And that's not really sexy, that doesn't sell really, you want to be able to use like punchy, you know, efficient copy that just, you know, gets the message really brings the message home for them. So, I feel like, um, you know, bullets are a great way to condense the features and the benefits of your product or service into a way that skimmers which PS, we're all kind of websites, gamers, right, can really jump out bullets give it kind of a stickiness, if you will, to the page. So I like to feature, I like to use at least two sets of bullet points on a standard sales page. Sometimes if it's a long form sales page, depending on what the product or services, I'll use maybe three or four sets of bullets, it really just depends. And I never go above three to five bullet points. I mean, if you're going to seven bullet points, now you're now you're in a list, then you lost me, right. So the idea is really the highlight specific things. It's like I said, it's a great way to condense the features and the benefits together, there's a fine difference between features and benefits. And so I just want to touch on that real quick. So everybody knows what we're talking about. When you're talking about a feature, it is a tangible, good that comes with your product or service. So if you have a product, it's you're building a desk, it comes with a screwdriver, that's a feature. If you're selling a program or a membership, and you're offering for weekly calls, that's a feature. So you want to use that as your feature. But then you also want to highlight the benefit. What is the benefit to the buyer? If they purchase this? Yes, I'm gonna get the screwdriver. How does that benefit me? Well, you don't have to go off and buy a screwdriver. This is coming with everything you need to put this product together. Okay, so same thing with like a membership, if I'm buying a membership, and you're giving away, you know, your including for weekly calls with that membership, or monthly calls, whatever they are, then I am this, that feature is going to benefit me in the way that I'm going to have direct access to you. I'm going to be in your proximity at least once a week that feels good. That's sells the whole thing, right? So you definitely want to use that with like a feature and benefit type of marry those two together when you're putting bullets together. I also like the idea of if and it doesn't have to be complicated. If you're like how am I going to put this together, you there very simple formula for putting together bullets. And again, go three to five for each set of bullet points that you're going to use, I would say the sentence would be as easy as we have, whatever the feature is, so you can, whatever the benefit is. So you would say we have, we have top of the line gym equipment at our gym if we're selling that. So you can get in a great workout without a long learning curve. Right? So again, if I'm selling a gym membership, it might be that our trainers are certified. So you can learn how to do things correctly easily. So remember, you're doing the feature, and then what's the benefit? And that's how you would put together some bullets on your sales page.
Monica Pitts 18:56
I love that idea. Because it makes it like no duh, you know, like people read it. And they're like, oh, yeah, it does that. I do get some pushback from clients on that type of writing, because they're like, well, I should just be able to list the features. And people know, like, they know why the screwdriver is great. And it's like, they they know why the screwdriver could potentially be great to them. They may not have even thought of it from the level of convenience that you have. And that's why you're including it if that makes sense. So I like that you explain it like you have a feature, you have a benefit. And I agree like this is how we tell our stories so that way people can really see. And I think it should be no duh. Like don't make them think about it. Tell them why it's great.
Tiff Carey 19:43
Yeah, right. And you might even that person who's putting the screwdriver in the box with their product might even think well yeah, of course I'm gonna do that but that might be obvious to you but to the to the buyer, you want to assume that all of the obvious stuff for you is not obvious to them. So you definitely want to highlight it.
Monica Pitts 20:03
Well, and even like the other day, I was signing up for online utilities, and like there's a new bill pay for one of our offices. And they didn't say if they were going to charge a credit card fee for paying by credit card, and I almost didn't sign up by credit card. I was like, oh, maybe I'll just pay it every month and have a debit ID. I'll just click it. Yeah, write the check. And then I was like, what? Anyway, I just don't think that they thought about the fact that I was going to have a question about that, because so many people would charge your credit card fee. Right. So I think that people don't know. If they would have said, sign up for auto pay with your credit card, no additional fees, I would have been Yeah. And instead, I was like, searching all through their FAQ section trying to figure it out. And eventually I was like, I guess I'll see next month,
Tiff Carey 20:54
it can't be that much. And I can decide whether I'm going to continue doing it or not. Yes. Totally. Looking
Monica Pitts 21:01
in the head. Oh, Monica Pitts? Yeah. So so you have like these at least two sets of bullet points that you put on a sales page. And there's going to be other content too. So you know, people have a really short attention span, how do we keep them moving through the sales page, what's a good trick that you use?
Tiff Carey 21:22
So I would say probably, you know, in combination with the bullet points that are highlighting, obviously, design, obviously, right, that is to highlight those bullets in some way, shape, or form that is maybe different from the rest of the copy on the page is always a good thing, I lean into the designer, to kind of highlight that section as they will with colors, fonts, however they want to do it. But since the you know, with the sales page, since it is a conversation that's happening, you know, you have your bullet points. So if I'm skimming through, and I'm seeing these bullets, like, oh, it comes with this, oh, I got that. And then this is how it benefits me. Another logical question. And the sales conversation is going to be like, Yeah, but does this work? Or they have that I call it my I'm a special snowflake. So this is not going to work for me, you know. And so I like to one way to to kind of rebuttal, that argument that comes very naturally in a sales conversation, is by telling them, giving them examples of where it has worked for other people, which brings us to the social proof, and the testimonial part of the sales page, right? So, you know, using testimonials on your sales page is going to give you like instant credibility authority. It is other people saying what she's telling you, you're going to get works, works, right. So you're going to hear from other people that it actually is your you're going to fulfill on your promise on whatever that product or service is going to deliver. Right. So I use, I use testimonials throughout a sales page. Obviously, I use testimonials on every page of my website. It not only builds authority with you, but it also builds authority with you know, the SEO Gods Google, right. They like to see testimonials on your website, right? So I sprinkle them throughout the sales page, probably three to five per sales page, depending again, on what the product is how in depth it is. And then I layer them into the sales narrative of the page. So again, we've said the sales page is a sales conversation, a live conversation that's happening with a human being. So you're thinking to yourself if you're using like a general copywriting formula is the problem agitation solution formula, right? So if you're listing if you're saying, Okay, this is your main problem, it's great. If you have a testimonial that says I had this problem, I don't have this problem anymore. Same thing with like agitation. So So for example, let's say I'm a gym owner, you know, and I'm selling memberships. And the number one problem for people that come to the website or looking to memberships might say, I don't have the time to work out, you know, like there's just no way. So could you follow up that section that says you don't have time to work out and then the testimonial would say something that would say this gym is I never thought I'd be able to squeeze this into my life. You know, it's so easy. Or I went to the 20 minutes abs and booty class and it was so easy to work into my schedule, you know, so Can there be testimonials that answer every objection along the sales conversation? So it's like they whatever they're thinking in their head at the time like Oh, this isn't gonna work for me. Now I don't have the time I don't have the money i i don't have the space whatever that is. Find testimonials that you've gotten from your audience and buyers that answer that specific objection right there. So they might not realize what's happening, but you're presenting the problem. And then you're presenting someone who had that problem, and then got the solution from your product or service right underneath it. Does that make sense? I
Monica Pitts 25:25
guess, and I love it. Because I see websites all the time. Like, we'll do website reviews for people. And I'll see like a page of testimonials. And I'm like, Oh, dear, because like if you went to Amazon, and you're looking at a sheet set, and you it's like, see, see how this sheet set performs? And then you have to click on a button for testimonials. And it takes you to a page where they're talking about pots and pans. And yeah. Got to find the sheets in there. You're never it's like, oh, well, clearly this company sells good stuff. But are the sheets good? I don't know. So I feel like some of this is like modeling on websites that we see all the time. And they've set themselves up this way on purpose, because it works. Like if Amazon is doing it, maybe we could take a page out of their book, they're clearly selling a lot of crap out there. Right. And I understand it's individual sellers out there. And I did have one tip for you guys out there listening. So when we worked with Tiff to do our better than DIY website, program sales page, she was like, and I need the testimonials. And so I keep a repository of all nice things that people have said about me in my Milla note. So I have a board and I called the praise board. And I use it for two things. One, when tip asks me for specific testimonials, and two, whenever I'm having a really crappy day, and I have no idea why I'm doing this anymore, I
Tiff Carey 27:00
go to the praise. Yes, I read it.
Monica Pitts 27:03
So just even if it's just a Google doc have a repository where you can put nice things that people say via email or text or in a comment in there. So that way, when you you get to writing your sales page, you're not like, oh, who can I call? You get to say this? You know, because that is really tricky. Yeah. Yeah. So when you're building proof, one trend that I've seen a lot of is like scrolling numbers and factoids. But earlier, you were telling me that this isn't working as well anymore, which I find, like interesting, I like a little bit of factoid, but too much makes me feel like they're just trying to oversell me on something that's probably not true. So tell me about why you don't think it's working and what we should. Okay,
Tiff Carey 27:54
so actually, I think the best formula for using data and facts to kind of sell your product or service on your sales page, is you want to versus like emotional selling. So emo selling, I don't know if you notice this, but during the pandemic, all of us were on pretty much pins and needles the entire time, we had no idea what the world was coming to. And there was a lot of emo selling, there was a lot of Are you overwhelmed? Do you feel there was a lot of feeling stuff, like if you're stuck, or if you're, you know, alone, or you know, those kinds of things. And the emo selling, that's the thing, like, you want to lean into that a little bit. Because that does work. Emotional selling does work, right? It's, it's part of that features and benefits, you're saving me time, so I can spend more time with my kids that that works, right. But then there's also a place for and I don't see this a lot is people using data and facts to sell their product or service, right. So give me some hardcore data, give me some percentage of people that, you know, don't go to the gym, because it's, you know, they don't have the time or people that have gone to the gym, because they do have and their life has turned around or, you know, find that facts or data that's going to really kind of stick whatever it is you're saying because all that, you know, mumbo jumbo emo selling, that all feels good. But is it really does it really do that? Can you provide hard data to do that? That means, of course, you know, if you're selling something, you're gonna have to keep track of why people are buying it. You know, testimonials is a great way when you put out your questionnaire to get your testimonials or your social proof. You add something in there so you could figure out a percentage of, you know, 75% of the buyers who purchased X have accomplished y. You know, that's always very good data for you to have. You want to use stuff that All, you know, reflect your success rates, like I said, customer satisfaction. And you know, just think about using even using third party data is a good idea. So if you can find a factoid, in general, and Monica, I know we kind of use this on your sales, but on your sales page about creating websites, and how much time people spend on an actual website, before they make the decision to continue scrolling or to get off, right. So those kinds of facts means well, that's directly selling the fact that you need a good website, because we don't want people to pop onto your website, and then immediately jump off, right. So um, so that's where the data comes in. I also want to throw in quotes here, and this is why I want to do this is, you know, in, I feel like I throw in a quote, every year, and they're in a sales page when it's appropriate. Okay. So for example, I was recently working on a sales page for a public relations company. And so they do PR consulting, and I ran across a quote from Bill Gates that said, something along the lines, like if I had, if I was down to the last dollar in my marketing budget, I would spend it on public relations. Well, bam, so that hits almost as hard as a fact, because it's Bill Gates, okay. So he knows what he's talking about. So you also want to kind of weed those in there, but you want to not just emotionally sell and do all of those things. But then you also want to like, give us some facts, because you're going to have different types of personalities out there buying your product, and you've got to try and appeal to those different personalities. So where I might be more of an emotional buyer, Monica might be more of a just the facts, ma'am. I don't care about this mumbo jumbo idea, this that the other thing going on, I just want to know if it's going to get it done and has it worked and all of those things. So you want to make sure you can kind of appeal to all types of buyers. And by integrating data facts and some of these really powerful quotes that you could bind into the sales page, you're going to make sure you hit everyone.
Monica Pitts 32:21
I would want 100% agree with that. So my earlier statement that the the data and factoids, they're not working as well anymore, what you were trying to say is just like emotional selling alone probably isn't going to cut it, you need to mix it in with more concrete information. So that way you can give people like a bigger picture of what's happening. And I'm really glad that you touched on the person that you're trying to sell it to, and how different people are going to make buying decisions differently. Because I like for example, I buy a lot of my clothes secondhand, it's just what I do. And that like so I'm buying based on price, right? And because I feel like there's enough of this stuff out in the universe. And I can find these fun little things and like happily wear them, right. But my best friend, she's going out to these like obscure websites, and she is going to buy stuff that's like, environmentally friendly, built by a mom, daughter team that's helping out women in like a third world country, and she doesn't care how much that sweatshirt costs. That's why she's buying it. And I go out there and I'm like, that's really cool. I am so glad that you guys are doing this to help other people. And I'm still gonna go to the thrift store
that's me. So guys, they're just super different people. But I also feel like we don't have to talk to everyone. Like that is such a like, don't be afraid, like talk to the person that you need to talk to. Not everybody because you're gonna think you're awesome and nice, but I'm probably not gonna buy your sweatshirt.
Tiff Carey 34:05
Yes. Yeah.
Monica Pitts 34:07
So talk talk to Carrie man. Not, don't try to convince me not to go to the thrift store.
Tiff Carey 34:15
Exactly. Exactly. I do think too, you know, when you're talking about testimonials and stuff. I have also seen I know you've seen this too Monica where you have a testimonial on a page and it's like 10 lines and it's just like, oh my gosh, who's going to read through that testimonial right. So design wise know where Monica would obviously you know, you come in and and you're making like a certain part of the testimonial like stick out. This is the headline. This is the real like, you want to look at those testimonials that you get from clients. If they are 10 lines or more longer. You really want to look and say, what is the key message to that that I want? If anybody could read this whole thing? What's the thing I want them to take? away from, and then highlight that, again, font color treatment on the website, whatever the case may be. Because I feel like if you have a bunch of testimonials on your website and they're just like long diatribes Oh, what a snooze. That's not helping you. It's not helping anyone. Right?
Monica Pitts 35:19
Yeah, 100% and I, I always try to look through them. And I don't, I think that this is ethical. You can tell me if it's not, people will send me like this super long testimonial. And then I'll go through and I'm like, Okay, I want to be really like authentic to the way that they said it. And I also am going to make it more concise. And then I send it over to them. And I'm like, so if we say it this way, that's good. And they're like, yes. But I love the way that you said, you know, you don't necessarily have to have a short testimonial, you can have a longer testimonial, you just have to call out the information that's most important. So people know what you got in it. So if you're not comfortable with shortening it all up and doing Monica style, but sometimes I want to leave part of the story in there, too. You know, like, that's important. If you don't have the whole story. Sometimes it's not as effective of a testimonial. And so I love that, you know, your suggestion, let's just make the middle part or the end part way bigger, or the beginning part way bigger. I can literally see the font. Oh, yeah, totally. And because
Tiff Carey 36:23
like I said, we're we're trying to catch we're trying, we're looking for one buyer, right? Your point about Carrie who buys sweatshirts and you that go to the second hand, we're selling to one buyer, but that one buyer has multiple personalities. So you might have someone who's going to read the full testimonial, especially if it's a high ticket item, like I'm going to read that entire story. I want to hear about this person's transformation, right? But some people will be like, Ah, it's good. It's good. It's good. It's good. Let's just give it to me. So this is how you would appeal to those multiple personalities at that one buyer, right.
Monica Pitts 37:03
Yeah. Okay, so moving on to number four. Yes, we've already covered three Tips from Tiff. Maybe that's what I was. I love it. Oh, great. Okay, so your fourth tip that you wanted to talk about? Your USP dang it tip. You love acronyms. You love them. I feel like sometimes it's like alphabet soup. And so you're gonna have to define USP for me, and for our listeners, and tell us how to tie your story. So
Tiff Carey 37:40
your USP is your unique selling proposition? What makes this so much better coming from you versus someone else? Right? So we did a little bit of that in the beginning of this podcast where you talk to me and asked me like, how did you end up being a sales page copywriter, right. And so just by building that, you know, the giving you the history and the story of how I came into this, all of a sudden, you're like, Whoa, she's been, not only did she write for a certain number of years in her career, but she was also selling and another and now that she's married those two talents together. So it builds authority and credibility, just by having that kind of that story. That's what makes me unique, you can go out and find a copywriter who maybe is an excellent copywriter, but has never physically pitched a deal. Never closed a contract. Right? So that that would be the unique selling proposition of Tiff Carey, you know, so you got to work those kinds of things into your sales page, because not only does it give you validity and all the things that we want, but then it also feels like human, especially because we're talking about an online sales page, you're having a sales conversation, there's a human on the other end of it. So although you're trying to sell a specific thing, you want to appeal to that human right. So they want to know that. Where did this person come from? Why is she deciding to do this? You know, some, like I said, those different buying personalities, some people won't care at all. They'll be like, I don't care where she came from, just doesn't work. Get me out of here, buy button, goodbye, right. So that's great. But you do have those personalities that are more like, where's I mean, why is Monica doing this now? Like, where did she come from? And, you know, what gives her the right to kind of do this, like, why is she any better than someone else down the lane, you know, and when we're in such a crowded marketplace right now, having your unique service, your unique selling proposition, your USP, ready to go on your sales page. That in and of itself is a differentiator than every other Joe Blow out there, you know, so So that's what I mean. Like, as the sales narrative, the sales conversation is happening. You also want to plug in things about your life and about how you got there to to give that person Oh, yeah, I'm not just buying this thing from online, whatever, it's an actual person Carrie your friend who buys the sweatshirts, who's buying from the mother and daughter, that is huge. That's their unique selling proposition right there. Right? So that's just Case in point of that kind of abusing your USP throughout your sales page or your story to really sell the thing.
Monica Pitts 40:41
Do you think it's different for people who are business to business? Because in a in a personal story, it's easy to wait, it's like, easier, I feel like to weave it through. And then you have multiple people in a business and they're trying to explain their unique selling proposition. Do you have any advice for like those business to business? companies out there? Sort of like? Because it because it's a group of us, right? It's not just one human, and it's an evolution of people to it's not just the same people throughout? I'm going to stop talking and let you answer the question. Now. Any advice?
Tiff Carey 41:21
Yeah, no. And actually, your website is a beautiful example of that coming to fruition, is that, you know, yes, there are multiple people on your team, you know, there could be large corporations that are still, that's all part of your brand, and who you are. So like, the core message of the company, the people that are inside the company, you know, like, what is that, and yes, it's made of all these little, it's made of all these different people's characters and their traits and their talents and everything, but at the end of the day, it is kind of like a, this is lack of a better word, Frankenstein, of all of those humans in one human, you know what I'm saying? So it's, it's, then it becomes more of like, a brand thing, like our brand represents, you know, coming together, our brand represents the community, we have a large sense of community, we're creators, you know, like, that's kind of the thing. And that's definitely the vibe that I get when I look at your website, for example, when you have, you know, there's little personality pops throughout the, throughout the website, where I'm like, I'm getting a little bit, a little taste of you. But then I'm also getting a little taste of parts of your team, of people popping and all over the place. And that feels good. So that makes it feel like I am purchasing from humans, not just making a transaction. Yes.
Monica Pitts 42:50
That may so when we transitioned from always selling face to face to almost exclusively selling via, like virtual meeting. That was years ago, that was probably almost 10 years ago. And at first, it was really difficult. And none of our stuff on our website had our faces on it. It wasn't nearly as authentic as it is now. And then I went through and I was like, no, no, no, these people, they don't see us as people, they just think that we're like some business, some entity. And that's not who we are. And so we did go through the whole website and think to ourselves, where do the people need to be? Where do we need to show our people and make sure that they understand that this is like a team of human beings that work with them, and for them to get them what they need. And so that was a big thing for us. And I think the other thing that was big was really identifying our core values as a team. And making sure that those came through in our words, because we all share certain core values. And that's what makes us come together and work together well, because if you don't like being flexible, or tackling a challenge, you literally will not fit into our company at all.
Tiff Carey 44:05
But that's also what makes you unique, so unique, right? That's your unique selling proposition is that people that work with you, like, where did they come from? And what do they do? That's yeah, like you said, there's certain things that really bring in that brand messaging and the core messaging of the company, and that's what makes you unique, right? Yeah,
Monica Pitts 44:28
yeah. So I'm glad that you noticed that because that was a concerted effort. Like we purposefully went through and put heads all over everything and had the dog come in and out because we were like, We if you don't like dogs, we are probably going to have a hard time working together. It's going to be really challenging. It's almost a small side note. It's almost like a doggy playground right now at the office in Colombia. So to the gals that work in office in Colombia. I both got puppies at the same time. And so I was like, I think we're gonna have to put up puppy gates outside your office. Because we've just got like, it's like, Oh, it's great. It's great. I love it. And sometime soon I'll have a puppy. A puppy daycare at my office again, too, but right now I'm down to one dog. Okay, though. Okay, so, um, one last question I had on that last point was like, how different is your unique selling proposition from competitive advantages? Are they like close to one another? Or are they I mean, do they overlap? I mean,
Tiff Carey 45:39
when you're saying competitive advantages, what are you meaning by that? Tell me what you mean by that?
Monica Pitts 45:47
Like, why are you better than the competition? Why would somebody buy from you instead? Oh, yeah. Which kind of feels a little bit like you're, yeah, that's
Tiff Carey 45:57
an overlap for sure. I think the difference would be in the delivery of the message. So your competitive advantage would be things like, you know, get it done in half the time that it takes from that other to have others do it kind of a thing. Right. So that would be you would be stating your competitive advantage through the verbiage that you use throughout the page. Whereas the Unique Selling Proposition would be, we're a team of movers, shakers, creators, and we're all local, you know, so you could turn that into a competitive advantage that says we're all local. So you don't have to worry about talking to somebody globally, or something like that. Right. So you could turn those USPS into competitive advantages. I think there's a time and a place in the sales page for those for that differentiation. But in large, basically, they are kind of the same, they do overlap quite a bit. It's just in the delivery that they're differ. Gotcha,
Monica Pitts 47:00
different. Okay, so competitive advantages, and your USP overlap. It's more about the way you deliver them that make them different. Alright. I think I got that. Thank you for the clarification. Can we? Can we talk about buttons now, because I really want to talk about buttons. And at the beginning of this episode, I said you were going to help us understand how many buttons is too many buttons? And how many isn't enough buttons? Oh, no. And should they be bright colors? Okay, so
Tiff Carey 47:38
here's the thing about buttons. So funny too, because in the gazillion sales pages and things that I've written, you're, it's funny. Some people just don't use them enough. It's like, I want to buy that thing. Let me buy that thing. You've got to make it easy for someone to get onto your website and buy the thing, right. So I don't want to hunt around for it. I don't want to have to do like a scroll of death to get to the very bottom to buy it like I want it to
Monica Pitts 48:10
be. Oh God, especially not on a mobile device.
Tiff Carey 48:13
I want it to be front and center. Right. So actually, I don't know if this is this is gonna jive with what you think, Monica, but I think you should on your sales page, have a buy button right in that top, above the fold? Because great.
Monica Pitts 48:31
I agree. Because I've I've been there three times. Yeah, I need the button. And this isn't my first rodeo friends, I read your I read your sales
Tiff Carey 48:40
page. And whether or not it's a high ticket item, or it's a low price offer. It is your right people will go back to sales pages over and over. We live in a world right now where there are 9000 people selling exactly what you sell. So aside from all that unique selling proposition mumbo jumbo that we just went through, they're gonna go back and forth to your sales page very potentially many, many times. And when they do finally make that decision, God help us we really don't want them to scroll for hours to try and find that, like, let me just give you my money. Let me give you my money. So I'm a big believer on Buy button, front and center. Just do it. It's never too soon to ask for the clothes, never too soon to ask for the clothes. So I always go with that as kind of the thing. But I think another thing is that people don't realize that like the placement and how they look. It really does affect the conversion rate of your page. So you know, I'm typically a fan of using the same treatment on each button throughout the page. So and you can obviously speak to this design wise Do you know are my buttons banana yellow? Yep. Then my button is going to be banana yellow throughout the whole thing. And what that does to me as a buyer is it says, Oh, this is where I sign up, oh, this is where I sign up. As I'm scrolling through, I see all of these things. And it's also, you know, subliminally telling me bye, bye, bye. Now, that being said, I don't want to scroll through and find a complete smart like a, you know, nothing but banana yellow all the way down, like after every canvas that gets really annoying. That is like your salesperson, I like you're ready to go, you ready to go? You're ready to go? No, let's just calm down, right? So on every sales page I kind of I go through, it really does depend on what the program, it's, it's very customized on what you're doing. But as a rule of thumb, minimum, three buttons. And, you know, I mean, I guess if it's long form, I hate to put a maximum on it, because it's long form, it could be a long way down. But I think anywhere between three and five is like a safe spot. What if we're, you know, we're not talking about too complex programs right here. So I'm not talking about, you know, selling an online course that might last a year, you know, then in that case, you're gonna have way more buy buttons. But for the for the, you know, purpose of our conversation today, I would say anywhere from three to five is pretty good.
Monica Pitts 51:18
I think where you find a natural break, where it's like, alright, I made my point. And you're probably ready now. So let's move on over. And I, I love your tip about keeping them consistent. That's one thing that I talk with my designers about all the time is just consistency, because it makes people feel in control, it makes them not have to think about what they're looking at when the button is the same all the time, then, you know, that's what it does. But it shouldn't be the same as like the button that takes you out to find more information. Like, if you insist upon having the button that takes you out to find more information, I would not make it yeah, this last banana yellow button. And maybe it's just an outline. And it's not fully colored. And I want people to get more info, but I really want to keep them on the page. And I love the idea of the consistency, sometimes I do vary the size of the button. So I might make it huge in one place and maybe a little more understated in another place. But it's always gonna be the same color, the same fun type on it. You know, like just really consistent that way? Yes, yes, no. And
Tiff Carey 52:31
you got any of what you were saying about the placement of the buttons. And remember in that sales narrative in the conversation that you're having with the buyer on the sales page, if we're going back to even like our testimonial, what I mentioned about doing testimonials, and you know, you have your problem, agitation solution. And you're just thinking to yourself, like, where do I put these buy buttons, and you know, you've stated maybe the problem, and then you're telling them what the solution is. And then you have a testimonial that says oh my gosh, I did this and that person, then now we're ready to buy? You know what I mean? So just think about naturally, if you were trying to sell someone, you know, if you were trying to sell someone in person? Well, that could be kind of hard, because people could be like, Oh, I don't know that I would ever ask for the clothes. You have to ask for the clothes, right? You gotta gotta ask for the clothes,
Monica Pitts 53:29
you lose one 100% of the opportunities you don't just
Tiff Carey 53:33
stick to the three to five in your mind. And then look at those places that occur naturally to you that you think okay, this is where I might buy the program then. Then stick your buy button there.
Monica Pitts 53:47
Yeah, or go yet somebody else's stuff. Totally. Like somebody big. That's that's doing it all the time. They might not have your exact style or language or even you know, but if you see it, I mean, I was just considering, like re formatting our show notes for all of our podcasts. And so I'm like, Alright, I want to see, I want to see any 40 or Amy Porterfield does it I want to see how Rick Moretti does it I want to see you know how the TED Talks one does it like how do they all do it? differently? Which is not a great research experiment for me, but I did see things in each one that I thought I really liked that that works for me. I think I'm gonna put that in my like, yes. My want. Yeah. For my list of wants for these reformatted show notes. Yeah. Show Notes. Copywriting conversation. Yes. Okay, Tiff we have like pretty much abused your knowledge, you know, not all of it. I just mean like, thank you so much for sharing everything today. And it's such an open and transparent way because obviously we just like really picked away at all of your expertise, and I hope that everybody can take away with them. use bullet points have like at least two to five sets of bullet points, you're going to use social proof. Tiff says, three to five testimonials. You can use data and factoids along with your emotional selling. And that's going to really help convert people. Make sure to have your USP which I already forgot weak selling
Tiff Carey 55:26
proposition need unique selling proposition. There you go. You're tied
Monica Pitts 55:32
into your whole story. And then you need to have buy buttons three to five, and one of them easy way up at the top. There you go. So if you didn't listen to anything else, now, you know, that's what Tiff says to do. And Tiff's the master. So we're gonna we're gonna follow her advice. Tiff, all your smartness, right? Where are people going to get that from you? How can they work with you? And you write the sales page for them so that way, they don't have to like, Yeah, do it on their own, ah, did
Tiff Carey 56:00
they can jump on to my website TiffCarey.com, I have a sales page. Imagine that, I actually have a couple of them. But they can sign up for sales page audit, which means that they have a sales page already, I can pop on the phone with them and kind of just give them you know, 30 minutes of here's all the changes that I would make. And here's how I would tweak what you have to make it work a little bit better. And then I also do have a service called The Seven Day sales page sprint where I write and put together your entire sales page for you. Done For You service in seven days.
Monica Pitts 56:44
Boom, boom. So if you're getting ready to go to that trade show, and you know, you're gonna get a bunch of traffic to your website, maybe the seven days Yes, will be fun for you and your planners. Okay, so friends, thank you so much for hanging out with us today. If you enjoyed this episode, you could subscribe because next week we're going to talk about MayeCreate's favorite plugins. We're gonna go from writing all the way over into web developer. Whoa. And we're going to tell you the plugins that we use all the time because we maintain hundreds of websites and we cannot have them breaking down and and they have to work right. So we have our favorites, the ones that work day in and day out that will not let you down and we are going to go through our favorites in our next episode. So subscribe so that way you don't miss a thing. And once again, thank you so much for listening, and until next time, go forth and mark it with purpose.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
