Let’s leave aside all the tricks and tactics, the maze of funnel patterns and all the other grunt-level stuff the gurus will try to sell you. I want to share a pattern I’ve been working on for a few months that’s working really well for me.
The path to making a sale is in your customers mind, and there are three things you need to work on to get you both to the goal of them investing in your product.
- Focus
- Attention
- Star Wars Episode 1
I’ll get to the Star Wars bit, I promise.
The first step is to get them to focus on your product. To move away from the rest of the noise in their life, to stop scrolling, to sit up on the sofa.
A great front-end offer will do this for you. Some crappy lead magnet you spent 5 minutes on won’t.
Make something good. Give away something your customers charge for.
I did this recently on a productivity course. We designed a day planner as a PDF and just gave it away. The results were incredible – $0.40 leads in a competitive market, and great engagement and sales from the emails that followed.
Next up we need to hold their attention. This is where most people screw things up.
With everyone from Best Self Co. to Seth Godin charging $50 or more for their productivity planners, we took the meat right out of their sandwich and gave it away. That got their attention for a few seconds, but a cat video would do that.
We need to hold their attention for long enough that they realise that the subject we are talking about is important. This is where we make the shift from planting the seeds of attention, to them growing roots.
So, we followed up with a short personality profile quiz. Not one of the 3-5 question lightweight fluff that you see on Buzzfeed, but a real one, 30+ questions, each one of them poking at a weakness in their problem.
By the time they get to the end they already know if they’re in trouble or not, but our results confirm their fears. At that point they can’t shoot the messenger, because it’s their data. They ARE the messenger.
By holding their attention we’ve shifted the problem to front and centre of their thoughts.
Now we need to shift them into action. This is where the rubber meets the road and you either earn big or learn big.
Let’s take a small step backwards here though, to the moment when they clicked on your ad.
Remember, they clicked on your ad. They did something. Whatever promise you made in that ad spoke to them. It stirred a moment of unrest that may have been buried deep inside them. And you almost certainly weren’t the first.
Here’s a little tip. At a certain point in our funnels we ask a question about what solutions to the problem they’ve tried before, and what problems they had with that route.
The responses to this question are pure gold.
The more in-depth their response to the question, the higher likelihood of them buying from you., as long as you can prove that they’re not just going down the same dead end street in a different colour vehicle.
How we do that is wrapped up in a single sentence that is, on its own, an entire masterclass of persuasion, by Blair Warren.
People will do anything for those who encourage their dreams, justify their failures, allay their fears, confirm their suspicions, and help them throw rocks at their enemies.
The second phrase of that is important. Before we can get them to move, we have to uncouple them from the weight of guilt about their past failures. This is where the Star Wars reference comes in.
To get our attentive prospect to take action, we need to offer them A New Hope.
Our offer needs to be somehow different in its content, or its delivery, form what they’ve experienced before. If that difference wipes out the reason for their previous failure, they’ll jump across moving trains to get to you.
“Weight loss without the hunger.”
“Sales without the awkwardness.”
“Beating depression without the drugs.”
“Productivity without the extra hours.”
“X Without Y” is a dull copywriting formula on its own, but wrapped up in a story, it’s one of the most powerful persuasion messages we can create.This whole process happens in just a few web pages. No breaks, no sending them off to the email inbox for distractions, no pushing them round your social media profiles.
- Squeeze page
- Quiz
- Results
- Sales page
- Checkout / Appointment booking
That’s the lot. You can even roll the results, sales page and checkout into one page if you’re feeling brave.
To experience the whole thing for yourself, click on the ad below, or better still, use this link to see it in your Facebook feed as a real prospect would.
