The Amazing 5R Formula
That Plugs Profit Leaks
In Your Online Copy
& Supercharges Your Sales!
Part 3
In this issue:
- How to sequence your selling elements for maximum response…
- Why less is sometimes more… and how to carve complexity out of your sales process…
- How to build a bridge of belief…
- What an irresistible promise often needs before it can generate profits…
- And more!
Dear Web Business Builder,
If you’ve been following along over that last several weeks, and tearing apart a promotion or two with the 5R system, you’ve probably identified at least a dozen ways to strengthen those promotions by an order of magnitude. Today, in part 3 of the series, we’re going to take the next step toward optimizing your campaigns.
You’ve identified your right audience, catalogued all of the essential elements required to deliver the right overall message to that right audience, and positioned the person delivering that message in the most authoritative light.
Now, it’s time to consider sequence. In what order will your spokesperson deliver the various elements of your sales message? Remember the 5R formula: The right person, communicating the right message, to the right audience, at the right time, and in the right way.
How to Sequence Your Selling Elements
for Maximum Response…
The Internet, as a marketing medium, is unique. Unlike direct mail and space, where you can, if you so desire, effectively “push” your entire message out to cold prospects, the Internet demands you communicate your message in a series of linked steps, each one “pulling” your prospect deeper into your overall message.
Here is a very simple example:
As you can see, this has the effect of segmenting your overall sales message into a series of messages. Each one must perform a specific function. The number of discreet messages you will use, what the objective of each of those messages should be, and in which one of them the time is right to begin asking for the sale are all key considerations.
Take out a sheet of paper or fresh word doc, and create a flow chart of your sales process, just like I did above.
You’re going to define your objective for each piece of media. The example above might look like this:
To stimulate your thinking, let me point out that this is just one of many ways to go from touch point to sale. You could buy a larger banner ad, and drive committed buyers directly to your shopping cart page. You could put the bulk of your sales message on your shopping cart page (technology permitting), and eliminate the landing page from the equation. You could put a squeeze page between your banner ad and your landing page in order to collect your prospect’s contact information before they even see the bulk of your sales message.
How you chop things up can make a dramatic difference in your results. Here are a few things to consider:
Why less is sometimes more…
and how to carve complexity
out of your sales process…
Generally speaking, the less steps the better. Every step should have a sound reason for being. Just because everybody else has such and such a step doesn’t count as a sound reason. Look at each box in your flow chart, and ask yourself whether that particular box is absolutely necessary. Is there a way to eliminate it?
Some shopping carts (1ShoppingCart.com for example), allow you to add virtually unlimited HTML top code above the form that collects buyer information. If you have this capability, do you really need a landing page?
You’ve got to test, because adding extensive top code makes the already slow 1ShoppingCart links even slower. But eliminating your landing page, and going directly to the shopping cart is definitely worth considering, especially if your landing page file isn’t terribly large. Just take the landing page code and slap it on top of the shopping cart order form.
If your sales copy is short, you can buy large banner ads, and move the bulk of your copy right out to your touch point. The benefit here is you’re going to be able to test various headlines and appeals far more quickly than you would be able to do otherwise, and once again, you have a very simple, straightforward implementation.
These clear-cut, go-for-the-jugular approaches are most effective when you’re selling a low cost item, or you already have the contact information of the people you’re targeting.
If on the other hand, you’re selling an item that lends itself to a multi-step approach, for reasons we’ll discuss in a moment, your campaign flow may end up looking something like this:
Yes, it can get nastily complicated, but there are many situations where multi-step selling will yield both a superior immediate and long term result, particularly when taking into account the lifetime value of the names you collect.
Here are some additional factors to consider when making this call:
- The level of competition – If you’re selling in a relative vacuum, chances are you need less copy and less complexity in your selling process. If you’re selling in a highly competitive environment, you may be able to gain competitive advantage by taking a value-added, educational approach to your copy, facilitated by multiple steps.
- The price of the product – A high priced product demands more trust. Multiple contacts may be necessary to build that trust.
- The lead source – Endorsed traffic converts much more easily than bought traffic, and lends itself more readily to single step selling.
- The adoption curve – If your product requires significant effort and training to implement, or you’re selling in situations where the cost of disentanglement from a competitor is significant, it’s likely you’ll need a multi-step process to overcome the natural aversion to change that people have.
- The familiarity of your spokesperson – An unknown spokesperson necessitates additional exposure to build trust, and may demand multiple contacts to close the sale.
- The type of product – Certain products that are bought by the term — insurance and mortgages for example — are usually shopped for well in advance of their actual purchase for obvious reasons. The sale of these kinds of products almost always benefits from a multi-step sales process where leads are collected on the front end before trying to close the sale.
The downside to splitting your process up is that it becomes difficult to track and manage. Each additional component adds exponentially to the amount of time and effort required to co-ordinate the various piece parts into an optimized whole. If you elect to go this route, the process of scrupulously defining the objective of each element in your process flow, and measuring the effectiveness of each element becomes even more important.
Nonetheless, it’s not as daunting as it looks, because all of the raw building blocks for each element have already been mapped out in the first three steps of the 5R process. It’s just a matter of sequencing the copy you’ve already been working on for maximum response …
So how will you do it?
What copy elements will you put in your banner ads… in your sales page headlines… body copy… autoresponders… etc?
There are three overriding principles you need to apply to move your prospects successfully across the various pieces of media you will use from touch point to sale. You must stimulate their curiosity… arouse their self-interest… and inspire their belief at each link in the chain.
Take a look at the transitions between the various pieces of media your copy spans, and ask yourself whether those transitions are as effectively positioned as they could be. Do the breaks occur in the optimal places? Could you be stimulating your prospect’s curiosity and interest about what lies on the other side of each click more effectively?
You may find you want to sift copy around from one piece of media to another, effectively moving your transitions forward or backward in the overall copy flow.
How to Build Bridge of Belief…
Next, look at each piece of media in succession, and ask yourself if your target audience will be ready to accept the message conveyed.
All of the copy you’ve written… all of the promises you’ve made… all of the proof statements you’ve assembled… all of the questions and objections you’ve answered etc… all of it has been put together with one overriding purpose: To take your prospect from what he believes at the exact point he collides with your touch point, to what he must believe before he’ll buy your product.
This is the rite of passage you must guide your prospect through with your copy, if you are to be successful. You do that by organizing it in such a way as to create a stream of acceptances. At each juncture in your campaign flow, your prospect must be nodding his head in agreement, seeing his existing beliefs affirmed and gently extended, one delicate step at a time, until the bridge is crossed, and the gap is closed.
Let’s go back to step 1 of the process, and run through an example to demonstrate the incredible importance of sequence and timing, so you can map your copy out in the most effective fashion. A number of the questions were designed to help you to identify the gaps that you had to bridge with your copy.
You asked yourself pairs of related questions to help identify that gap, such as:
- What do they believe now about themselves as it relates to the goals my product can help them achieve?
- What do they need to believe about themselves as it relates to the goals my product can help them to achieve, in order to buy now?
Suppose you’re selling a home study course on how to play the piano. Your prospects, at the point of impact, believe it takes years to learn how to play the piano and that only very gifted people can play by ear, not them.
Your big promise is that you can teach them to play any song by ear instantly in 4 easy steps. So in order to make your sale, your audience must become convinced there is a good chance that it is indeed possible for them to learn to play by ear.
This is one of the gaps you need to cross. Is the gap too large to span in a single step? Well, unless your home study course is pretty cheap, it probably is. You’d be much better off luring people to your site with the promise of free lessons, and then collecting their contact information in exchange for access to those lessons. That way you’ll have multiple opportunities to sell your home study course, and prove to them that it works.
Regardless of whether you opt for a simple or complex process flow, the sequence in which you present the various promises, proofs, and calls to action that comprise your sales message are of prime importance.
Why no fact, feature, benefit or advantage
is an island unto itself…
Gene Schwartz, one of the greatest copywriters of all time made up his own word for this in his watershed book, Breakthrough Advertising. He called this process of beginning with your prospect’s existing beliefs, and gradually affirming and extending those beliefs to where you need them to be, “Gradualization”.
Persuasion has been built on this principle since the beginning of time. The Socratic method, which forms the bedrock of personal selling, is in fact a process of gradualization. The fundamental premise is this: No selling element is an island unto itself. Every promise, every proof, every call to action, every fact you articulate in any selling argument has two sources of strength—
- The content of that statement itself, and,
- The groundwork you’ve laid for that statement (The Set Up), or your acknowledgement of the prospects existing biases toward that statement.
When I was a sales rep selling long distance services in the early 90s I had a script that I used to book appointments. Ringing people up on the phone and trying to book appointments was tough. Without gradualization, it would have been impossible. The script that I used went something like this:
“Hi Mr. Customer, Daniel Levis here from XYZ company. How are you today?”
“Fine, what can I do you for?”
“We’ve helped a lot of businesses in your area to slash monthly long distance costs by as much as 25% with a new technology that lets you monitor the usage of your employees to ensure they aren’t making personal long distance calls on the company dime. In fact, we offer a free audit that shows you approximately how much you could save based on your existing call detail records. I’m calling you today to set up a time to come by and share the details of this exciting new service with you. Am I calling you at a bad time?”
Now, if Mr. Customer happened to be fuming about long distance costs, or had a suspicion that Nelly in the steno pool was yakking to her boyfriend in Poughkeepsie on company time, sometimes he’d agree to an appointment right away, especially if he didn’t realize that my company was a competitor of the reseller he was already using. Often though, he would object, and say something like:
“Oh you’re with XYZ, we’re not on the market for long distance services right now, we’re using ABC.”
“Are you satisfied with ABC?” I would ask.
“Oh yes, they do a wonderful job for us.”
Undaunted, I’d press on …
“How long have you been using ABC?”
“About 2 years now.”
“And before that, did your firm use a reseller?”
“No, our company was using the phone company before that.”
“Then I’d probably be safe in thinking you had a great deal to do with the switch to ABC?”
“Yes you would.”
“And you made that switch, or recommended that switch, based on quite a bit of analysis and research didn’t you?”
“Yes, we did a tremendous amount of research. We did a complete market analysis covering 10 different resellers. Our research convinced us that ABC was the best.”
“You were looking for significant savings when you did that study two years ago, weren’t you?”
“Certainly.”
“And the results have lived up to your expectations?”
“Yes they have. We’re very satisfied.”
“Tell me, since you’ve saved so much money over the last 24 months by considering, and then making a change two years ago, why should you deny yourself the opportunity to repeat that process? Your research back then led you to savings that contributed directly to the bottom line of your company, and greater professional prestige for you personally. You did it once, so the possibility must exist that you can do it again, don’t you agree?”
“Yes, well I have to agree with that. It’s a possibility.”
“Great, what day is better for you to look at this new free service that’s helping companies in your area to save up to 25% on their long distance? Would Friday be good for you, or would Monday be better?”
Do you see gradualization at work there? Do you see the stream of acceptances I engineered into the conversation? You’d be amazed at how often this tactic got my foot firmly wedged in the door of a new account.
The power of gradualization to open somebody’s mind to a proposition they would otherwise patently reject is profound.
What an irresistible promise often needs
before it can generate profits…
Schwartz cites a great example of gradualization in Breakthrough Advertising. An information publisher was unable to profitably sell a manual that showed TV owners how to conduct their own repairs. They were losing money with a single step ad. The headline read “Save Up To $100 A Year On Your TV Repairs!” At the time, that was a big promise.
Schwartz identified a significant gap in what people believed about their ability to accomplish their own TV repairs, and what they needed to believe in order to buy the manual.
Even though the repairs were very often only adjustments made at the back of the set, when people saw the headline, they just didn’t believe they could do it. They felt they had no business messing with such a delicate piece of high tech equipment, and didn’t bother to read the ad.
So Gene took the above headline, and used it as a sub-head instead, preceded by a stream of acceptances. The new headline read, “Why Haven’t TV Owners Been Told These Facts?”
It seems hard to imagine now, but at the time Gene wrote this ad, people were spending a lot of money on TV maintenance contracts, and there were certain unscrupulous repair organizations that were gouging people. Gene’s new headline tapped into the widely held suspicion that TV owners were being taken advantage of. It met the target audience at their point of belief, and built a series of graduated acceptances that allowed them to accept the much larger, direct promise contained in the original headline.
I’ve discovered the same phenomena online. Very often a huge promise in the headline, no matter how true, will fail to pull a correspondingly spectacular sales result.
Interestingly enough, the very same headline will often perform astoundingly well when used on a squeeze page. The sequence in which the promise is made makes all the difference.
Is your copy begging to be "gradualized"?
Here’s another example of gradualization before you get down to work. Just the other day, through testing, I discovered I was making a premature promise in the headline on one of my sales pages. The headline went something like this: “Save $250, and claim $450 in FREE bonus gifts!” When I removed the benefit “Save $250” from the headline, and only mentioned it much later on in the sales copy, my sales shot up 15%! Why?
My guess is that some people who read the headline immediately made up their minds that they weren’t going to buy anything. They saw “Save $250” and figured there was no point in reading the page. How could they save $250 if they weren’t going to buying anything?
With “Save $250” removed from the headline, more people read the copy. More people had a chance to get excited about the product. And a good portion of these additional readers ended up buying… even through they had no intention of doing so just a few minutes before.
So here’s your homework assignment. Examine your campaign from top to bottom and ask yourself: How can I sequence my copy more effectively?
Are there opportunities to restructure the order in which I present the various copy elements I’ve created? Are there facts, arguments, features, benefits etc. begging to be gradualized? Am I meeting my audience at their point of belief? Can I eliminate any redundant steps in my sales process? Am I stimulating curiosity and arousing interest for what lies on the other side of each click?
Stay tuned for step 5 of the 5R system next week.
Until next time, Good Selling!
Daniel Levis
Editor, The Web Marketing Advisor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE™
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Daniel Levis is a top marketing consultant & direct response copywriter based in Toronto, Canada and publisher of the world famous copywriting anthology Masters of Copywriting featuring the selling wisdom of 44 of the "Top Money" marketing minds of all time, including Clayton Makepeace, Dan Kennedy, Joe Sugarman, John Carlton, Joe Vitale, Michel Fortin, Richard Armstrong and dozens more! For a FREE excerpt visit Sellingtohumannature.com
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Let us know what you think. Or ask us anything. Or offer your own sage advice.
The only rule: RESPECT THIS HOUSE! Postings that contain abusive language and/or personal attacks will be cheerfully VAPORIZED. One cross word and – POOF! – your well-thought-out post will be gone in a puff of smoke.
– Clayton
Comment by John C. A. Manley — June 14, 2007 @ 5:33 am
Excellent example there with the Schwartz TV repair article.
I would say another way of defining it, is identifying why a product would really be valuable to the target market, start there, and move up.
In that case the market didn\’t want to learn how to fix their TV. Or at least they didn\’t know they did. Not yet.
But they did want to save money on repair contracts and didn\’t like the fact they felt they were being taking advantage of.
So he starts there, and presents learning how to fix your TV as the solution.
The one challenge I\’ve been finding using gradulization is identifying when the process would be TOO gradual to be profitable. Where it just takes too many steps to bring the prospect from where they are to where they need to be.
Comment by John C. A. Manley — June 14, 2007 @ 5:35 am
By the way, great article, Daniel. Thank you! - John in Stratford, Ontario (former Torontorian).
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