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Many business owners and marketers still believe that preaching to prospects is a tenet of good marketing, that over-the-top sales pitches are the only way to ensure people buy.
However, it’s obvious to me that, if you take the time to cultivate meaningful conversations with your people, you don’t need to preach to the choir.
Moreover, if you’re making a substantial value promise that aligns with a real need in the marketplace, why the tall dancing?
It’s a case of thou doth protest too much…
Yet we’re all guilty of it.
We’re guilty of not being 100% certain of our value. We’re guilty of not knowing how to articulate that value in a relevant way. We’re probably guilty of using over-the-top sales tactics as easy filler.
With all the raging debate about sales pages and how they’re written and formatted, I think it’s useful to lighten the mood a little and maybe even laugh at ourselves (or those “other” marketers and copywriters). Humor is a great vehicle for deeper learning to occur too. Goodness knows we can all improve our marketing.
So, here are 10 ways to know if your own sales page is over the top:
1) Hyperbole dominates every headline and sub-headline with words like killer, rockstar, skyrocket, millions, billions, countless, staggering and amazing.
2) The supposed dollar value of your bonuses adds up to more than the price of the actual offer.
3) You can’t make out what the call to action says without putting on sunglasses and standing at least 10 feet back from your monitor.
4) Highlighting key information in yellow is the only way to help readers filter out the garbage and see what the offer is about at a glance.
5) There are so many PS’s and PPS’s at the bottom of the page that, by the time you leave, all your’e thinking about is pee-pee and pee-pees, not the offer.
6) When you talk about yourself in the copy it reads like an unedited draft of Keith Richard’s autobiography.
7) The sales page is littered with multiple stock photos of well-dressed business people looking either suicidal or orgasmic.
8 ) You check email and twitter while waiting for the page to load due to how many large graphics and complicated gadgets it contains.
9) You have the Messiah Complex. Instead of describing specific results to be expected you make multiple claims about how the reader’s entire life will change for the better. Seas will part, mountains will move, and we’ll be many steps closer to world peace.
10) You claim the only alternative to your solution is a life of utter misery followed by eternal damnation in the bowels of Hell.
If you’ve committed even one of the above sins of sales page copywriting and design, it’s okay. I forgive you. Though your readers may not. So ask yourself: Why am I trying so hard? And … How can I articulate my solution in a way I’d be happy to say out loud if the reader were sitting right in front of me?
Yes, sales pages can be this comfy.