My 12 Best Conversion Tips in 2019

There are a million and one things you can tweak and test in any funnel, but from over 2 decades of testing across everything from press ads, direct mail, emails, online ads, landing pages and even phone scripts, here are some universal truths that any business should be able to rely on…

1. Headlines are the kings of conversions
   On any kind of ad, email or landing page, the headline sums up the “what’s in it for me” for the reader.
   They’re easy to test, but the best ones are based on real market insight that can take months if not years to uncover.
2. Follow-up relentlessly
   Email, mail and the phone are your friends.
   Very few products worth having will be sold on a single exposure. I had “6 ’til it clicks” drummed into me early in my career.
   Get to 6 contacts with your prospect in under a week and you’ll skyrocket the number of sales you can make.
3. Be consistent.
   Get your ad guys, landing page guys and product guys in a room together. Make sure they are as tight together as possible on the offer, their promises, the imagery they are using, everything.
   Don’t ever leave your prospect wondering if they’ve taken a wrong turn.
4. Be focussed.
   Sell one idea, one thing , one promise at a time.
   That newsletter with are a roundup of brain-farts from your team isn’t doing anything for you.
   2 products to sell and can’t decide which to sell first? Make a decision dammit, that’s what you’re paid for.
   And while you’re at it, get rid of that sodding slider on your homepage – it’s only there because you don’t know what proposition is your strongest one.
5. Feed the famished, not the fat.
   Find hungry buyers with a means to pay.
   That’s it.
   Don’t worry about the rest. Unless you’re selling trivia and impulse purchases, anyone else will put off a big decision until they’re in pain.
6. Prove it
   Proof is fuel on the fire of sales.
   If you don’t have any proof, don’t even try to take someones money.
   Get a group of testers, make it worth their while to really dig into our product, and insist on either a 5 star review, or telling you what you’d have to change to give you one.
7. Have more than one thing to sell.
   Making a profit on a first sale is getting harder and harder.
   What makes big companies into big companies? Lots of product, enough for a lifetime of sales.
   You can’t make a living off $7 ebooks unless you can sell a whole series of them.
8. Know where your market becomes your audience
   By the time you decide to create a product, you should know your first half dozen buyers by name
   That shows you know where they hang out and you can find more of them.
   If your market is billionaires having affairs, you might have the best product in the world, but you’ll go broke trying to find them.
9. Fight the race to the bottom
   Find reasons why the top of the market should pay 10x the price of your competitors, and stick to them.
   If no-one wants your $100 product, cutting it to $50 won’t make a dime of difference. All you’re doing is moving to a market with even more cheapskates, and it’s really hard to claw your way back again.
10. Substance beats style, unless you’re selling handbags.
    Ignore your graphic designer with his elegant pages that your eyes wash over.
    Sure, 95% of readers will just skim any copy, but the 5% are the ones who are going to buy.
    Saying no-one is interested in researching your product is the same as saying no-one is interested in buying it.
    Make your ads, emails and sales pages easy to skim, but don’t be shy of substance that they can dig into on a second pass.
11. Know your numbers
    “Gut” is good for coming up with new ideas, but it’s no good at saying which ones will win.
    Test every change, track everything to sales, even if that means waiting months, not days for results.
    Have patience. Your numbers will reward you.
12. Dessert comes last
    Don’t start eyeing the sexy sweets trolley of marketing until you’ve eaten your meat & potatoes.
    That means do your research, understand your market’s pain, know where you’ll find them, and have a product worthy of your name. With those pillars in place you won’t need a lot of tactics & trickery to sell.

If anything in that list has helped, or you’d like more help with creating great offers, selling digital products online and scaling up sales, you can get weekly tips from my emails