How to Write a Sales Page
Reading time 7 minutes
Writing an effective sales page is a lot like cooking a delicious meal. You can’t just get started without any ingredients, without kitchen tools, and without a recipe. You need every one of those things to cook something edible, otherwise, it’s likely you’ll be ordering take-out for dinner.
Getting the right ingredients, tools, and recipe may be a tall order for anyone who hasn’t written a sales page before and may not have a sales background. But fret not! It’s not as hard as it sounds.
Writing a sales page that sells
Like most creative products, sales pages have a process. When you break it down to its foundational elements, you’ll see that writing a sales page may not be as tough as it looks. The first thing to know is that every sales page is made up of key components – so in many ways, you don’t WRITE a sales page as much as ENGINEER it.
Of course, a little creativity can go a long way, but the mechanics of a sales page are far more important than artistry. So first of all…let’s get clear on what a sales page actually is.
A sales page is a web page that is created for the sole purpose of … you guessed it… selling. It’s right there in the name!
But .. you may ask, a landing page is created to sell. So is a sales page, a landing page, or are they different? That’s a great question, so let’s take a closer look at the difference.
Landing versus sales pages
The confusion between Landing Pages and Sales Pages is very common and understandable. That’s because both Sales Pages and Landing Page are designed to sell.
The only difference is HOW they do it.
Sales Page
Long-form (mainly, but sometimes or short-form)
Lots of writing and lots to read
Lots of persuasive text that drives prospects to buy
Designed to sell a product or service
Landing page
Short-form (mainly, but sometimes long-form)
Not too much writing and less to read
Designed to convert (not necessarily sell)
Minimal text highlighting benefits and other info driving people to take action
From the comparison table, you can see that landing pages are usually short pages with minimal copy. They’re very quick to read, with text that gives you the general overview of the course in headlines, feature tables, icons, bullet points, all short and sweet.
Just like sales pages, landing pages are designed to convert. But that conversion doesn’t necessarily mean a purchase. It could also mean signing up for a mailing list, registering for a webinar, filling up a contact form, and more,
In other words, a landing page is a page dedicated to your course, but it doesn’t necessarily have to sell it. It can also encourage visitors to, for example, sign up for your newsletter, enroll in a free webinar, or get in touch with you to book a consultation.
By contrast, the ONLY purpose of a sales page is to sell.
Sales pages are often long-form pages with lots of copy that requires a bit of time to read. At first glance, the sales page will look like free-form letter writing, but don’t be fooled! Every paragraph is there for a reason and follows a particular structure that works on an emotional level to move your prospects one step closer to buying. Just like a landing page, a sales page’s main goal is to convert, but unlike a landing page, that conversion is a sale. In other words, a sales page’s main goal is to get prospects to click the ‘buy’ button on your course.
Cooking up a sales page
Sales pages have a specific flow to them. Every part of a sales page has a particular purpose, from the intro that highlights a problem to the call to action, that leads prospects to buy the solution. Every part functions to move prospects from the point of consideration towards the buying decision. There is a psychology behind this flow, and battle-tested copy techniques that have been proven to work.
Before you get started cooking up a sales page, you need to have a very deep understanding of who your course is for and the benefit it provides them. This insight is captured in two foundational tools. Your customer persona and your value proposition.
Before you get started cooking up a sales page, you need to have a very deep understanding of who your course is for and the benefit it provides them. This insight is captured in two foundational tools. Your customer persona and your value proposition.
Your customer persona is a snapshot of the ideal person who’d be interested in your course. It’s an incredibly handy tool to keep next to you while you’re writing your sales page. Essentially it’s the person you’re teaching. It’s the person who’s going to buy and benefit most from your course.
To get a clear picture of who this person is, you may need to do a bit of desk research, like browsing similar courses, online forums, social media, and review sites, to get the information that you need.
Once you have that, capture the insights you glean in our first foundational tool – a customer persona profile. There are lots of resources that will help you define your customer persona, and plenty of templates you can use online. If you want a process that’s a bit more interactive, Hubspot has a great tool for creating a persona through an online walk-through process.
When you’re clear who you’re talking to, you know what to say, and how to say it, to appeal to them.
Think of your value proposition as an essential cooking tool, like utensils, or fire. You can’t cook anything up without it. Value is what your audience will gravitate to. It is what they will resonate with. And ultimately it is why they will hit the BUY button on your sales page.
After reading your sales page for a minute, your ideal customer HAS to FEEL that your course is going to solve a massive problem in their life. If they can’t identify what the main benefit of your course is, then you’ve lost your target and you need to take your sales page back to the old drawing board.
In your value proposition, you want to identify very clearly how the knowledge you’ll share is going to solve a big problem that your prospect is having. The bigger, the nastier, and the ickier, the problem is, the better.
The main format for writing a value proposition for your course is:
“<Course name> helps <customer persona> solve <a big problem> by teaching them <course content value>”
Remember there are 3 things you want to clearly get across with your value proposition.
- What your course is
- Who it’s for
- How it will benefit them (greatly!) – ie its value.
Who are they? What problem are they experiencing that your course can solve?
You need to know your customer first before you know how to make your course irresistible to them.
There are plenty of copywriting formulas you can tap into to write your sales page. They all work, and all of them will essentially break down the structure of your sales page into 4 main sections.
In the intro section, you want to start by highlighting the big problem that your course will solve in a way that is authentic and relatable. Share how you know about this problem, how you discovered it, your experience grappling with it, why you decided to take the time and invest the energy into solving it. Get to a feeling that you experienced or an observation you had that they may not have heard it expressed so clearly before. This will grab their attention. What you’re trying to build here is empathy. You want to express a deep knowledge of this problem your course is solving so that your reader feels that they have finally found someone who’s going through something they’re going through, gets how they’re feeling, and knows the way out.
In the next section, you want to start explaining how you’re going to help them tackle this problem. You want to be clear about how you solve your own problem by knowing what you’re going to teach them. Layout the course contents for them and tell them exactly how it’s going to help. Explain how you used this very same information to tackle your problem and be very specific about the results you experienced.
The next section is dedicated to getting through their objections. This is where social proof, evidence, and risk reversal fit (but more on those ‘ingredients’ later). Use this section to set up every objection they may have. Do it in a way that further proves you know what they feel like. You know these objections, you’ve been there before, but when you finally put those excuses to the side, you could experience the solution. Really help them feel like you know what they’re going through. Help them visualize what you bring to the table so that they can get a peek at the potential relief from the problem that they will eventually experience when they take your course.
Every sales page ends with a ‘buy button’. That’s the big button moment the whole page is leading to! Landing pages have CTA on the top of the page. Not with a sales page. That’s because, on a sales page, you want to encourage people to read through the text, so you have time to relate, engage and share all the reasons why your course will add value to their lives. If you’ve shared your story authentically, proposed a logical solution, and clearly communicated what knowing the information in your course will feel like, then this section is a no-brainer. All you have to do is add a button that says “Buy Course” or “Let’s Get Started” and your work here is done. The contents of your sales page will encourage a quick click of the button, that’s if you’ve been able to connect deeply with your audience and tell them you’re offering information that is truly life-altering. On a sales page, this is usually the click button that leads to a sale.
The Ingredients
Mostly every sales page is built from the same essential components. Some pages feature all of them, others just a few. How many you include will come down to how long you need the page to be.
Research has shown that people usually skim read through web pages mostly reading the headline. So you want to make sure you’re including all the benefits of your course in the headlines where people can see them. Make your value proposition a headline. Agitate the problem and offer solutions in your headlines. The big bold type takes up valuable real estate on your page, so make sure your headlines are working for you by announcing all the life-altering (and other) benefits your course can offer them.
Here’s a truth you may already know. Noone’s really going to believe you when you say your course is great. It’s a lot like not believing mothers when they say their children are the smartest/brightest/prettiest in the world. You, like your mother, are understandably a bit biased when it comes to your ‘creations’.
The way around this is to get other people to agree with you. Humans are social animals, and it’s programmed somewhere deep in our DNA that if other people think it’s okay, it probably is. So get busy getting testimonials for your sales page as soon as you can. There are many ways to gather them. A quick and easy one is to send them a google form to anyone who’s taken your course. Ask them for their thoughts on what they learned, and on you, as an instructor. Ask them to share any problems your course solves, or how their lives have otherwise improved as a result of taking your course.
Other forms of social proof that you can gather and feature on your page include; video testimonials, reviews from course sites, and screenshots of comments in your community.
If your course results can be backed by data SHOW THEM. This is a great way of proving your course can work. Are you promising that you can help people who use your methods can increase their earnings? Have them show their statements. Are you promising that your diet program will help people lose weight? Show pictures. You get the idea. People want verification for the claims that you’re putting forward. So if you make a claim anywhere on your page, back it up with evidence to really drive the point home.
FAQs traditionally stand for Frequently Asked Questions, but they’re actually rarely ACTUAL questions that are frequently asked. FAQs have become more of a format, a Q/A format, to respond to specific objections your customer may be grappling with. You can create FAQs by phrasing any common objections into questions. The two most common ones are time and money questions: How long will this course take? Can I learn at my own pace? Do I get lifetime access? Can I pay in installments? Can I get a refund? The trick to answering these questions is understanding that your potential learner’s probably apprehensive about putting in the time and money to take your course. Ease those apprehensions with facts and try to turn those objections around so that your prospect feels that your course offers SO much value, that they can’t afford NOT to take the time and spend the money taking it.
Having a section with two columns, one listing that lists the type of learner that will benefit from your course, and the type who won’t is a great way to boost conversions. This works for several reasons. It manages expectations. It filters through people who may not actually be ready for your course, and it creates credibility among those who are. It’s a way to show you genuinely want to help, but requires your learner to genuinely want to be helped. It shows who’s not fit to take your course, and in so doing actually encourages prospects who fit the bill to sign up, because they see themself in your “who it’s for” description and feel like they’re a perfect match. Here’s an example of a who-it-for-not-for section, and how it can be worded, from a high-converting health and nutrition course taught by Dr. Turjillo.
https://www.ehealthchange.com/road-to-change
Many people get excited to try out a new course, but they don’t want to feel like they’ve wasted their money on something that doesn’t bring them value. By removing the risk of spending money with no reward, the risk reversal removes the risk with a money-back guarantee.
Also from Dr. Trujillo’s course, the Road to Change here’s a great example of what a compelling risk-reversal section looks like.
Sharing Is Caring (And Connecting)
As a course creator, your sales page is there to inform, but you’re there to truly teach.
Almost every part of the page calls for you to share what you have learned and how you believe it will make a difference in your students’ lives. It’s an opportunity for you to connect with your potential student.
After all, isn’t a good meal a chance to share and connect too?
If you can convey, with warmth, how you understand what your reader is going through, and can share the logical solution you’ve discovered that can help, you’re halfway there. Your sales page will write itself, and when you’re done, you’ll have a 24/7 salesperson working overtime to bring more visitors to your table.
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