Join your pro conversion copywriter on a creative odyssey as she shares her top secrets on how to create a wildly successful digital product sales page.

Guest post by Cassandra Lane, Wild Spirit Copywriting.

Read time: 15 to 20 minutes (Worth it, but make sure you grab a beverage before you settle in.) Theme: Pack your Pegasus; we’re flying into Ancient Greek mythology.

Here’s a question for you: Would you rather live a long (but mundane) life in anonymity … or perish young but be blessed with eternal fame and glory?

If your name were “Achilles” and you were swinging spears around in Ancient Greece, your answer to that puzzling prophecy would have been a resounding, “Gimme my fame, peeps!”

Which, you know, ended pretty badly for him. #RIPhisankle

Or, maybe it ended pretty well, considering everyone in the world still knows his name today.

But you’re not Achilles.

(Praise Athena.)

You’re a digital product creator who is clever enough to know that having a great e-product isn’t enough … You’ve gotta have the gifts to sell it too.

Now, you’re probably wondering, “What the fiddlesticks do Ancient Greece and random mythology have to do with creating digital product sales pages, Cass?”

Well, hold onto your war chariots, because you’ll get the answer to that by the end of this article.

But before then, I’ll be taking you on an adventure to discover how to create a sell-out digital product sales page.

Let’s start with the basics.

What the Hercules is a sales page?

A sales page is a stand-alone space on your website devoted to promoting your offering. It has its own URL and, ideally, menu link.

Here’s one of mine as an example. This is a sales page for my creative website copywriting and, as you can see, is a stand-alone page on my site that can be accessed in my menu bar.

Now, the purpose of your sales page (as you might have guessed) is to sell your offering.

Simple, right?

‘Cept it doesn’t begin and end there. Selling is the final outcome. And a good sales page does some (invisible) heavy lifting to take a visitor from first glance to final checkout dance.

It’s a lot to ask from something that can’t even order its own Uber, right?

But wait … shouldn’t a great digital product sell itself?

After all, you’ve invested a whole lot of time, effort, money and late-night donut runs into perfecting your idea and creation.

(Or, if you haven’t, you’ve been clever and scrolled to the bottom of this article and signing up for our Digital Product Idea Creator. Wink wink.).

Once people see your digital product, they’ll love it. Right?

Well, sure, you could go ahead and brain dump all of your product features, list it on your site and hope that your peeps will connect the dots and figure out why your genius product is so wonderful.

… But, they won’t.

This is the age of the smartphone. Attention spans are short. Patience is shorter. And there’s a new Netflix series begging for their attention as we speak.

Your sales page is the bridge between your awesome offering and convincing your dream customers that they should care about what you’ve created.

(‘Cause that doesn’t happen automatically.)

Which is why your sales page needs to have more arms than a hundred-handed giant (yep, they were a real(ly scary) part of Greek mythology!)

… That gets zero sick or vacation days.

Ever.

Convinced you to need some sales page action in your life?

Now that you know what a sales page is and why it’s so important, it’s time to crack open my conversion copywriter playbook and release my tried-and-tested secrets for creating a sell-out digital product sales page.

Let’s kick things off by sharing something that might sound a little counterintuitive …

Your sales page isn’t really about your offering.

I mean, yeah, your sales page exists to sell and promote your offering. But that’s not what it should really be and do. It shouldn’t be a pure brain dump of all your products’ nifty features and cool inclusions.

(Not if you want it to succeed, anyway.)

Instead, your sales page is all about acknowledging and solving your audience’s problems.

It’s about them – your dream target market – not you.

So before you put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, you need to be SUPER clear about who your target market is and what their needs are.

Then … we’re going to aggravate them.

(Don’t forget, if you have NO clue about this, don’t panic. Just scroll to the bottom of this page and scoop up your freebie. Shay and I will walk you through the rest.)

How to create a burning need for your offering

Sounds like a bit of a jerk move, right? Aggravating your target market?

I get it, but the truth is in order to highlight the value of your product and really illuminate the problem it’s gonna solve, you’ve first gotta spend time talkin’ about what that problem is.

In detail.

Which won’t feel great for your audience.

Nobody likes having their problems poked at.

But, look at it this way, you’ve gotta be cruel to be kind.

You’re here to help. Your digital problem is going to solve their problem(s) and change their life for the better. They need it in their world.

But the only way for you to get it into their life is by reminding them why it’s important … Which you’ll do by aggravating their pain points.

Lemme give you an example.

My gorgeous client, Anna Dower, offers a six-week boot camp for graphic designers ready to transform their design biz from struggling to successful.

(You can check out the sales page I wrote for her here.)

Now, her digital product, an e-course for graphic designers, is nothing but wholly positive. She’s over there, changing businesses and lives, helping peeps kick goals and become mega profitable.

And yet I’ve spent the first part of her sales page really honing in on her target market’s pain points.

Here’s an extract:

“AND SO, LEMME GUESS:

You spend your evenings scrolling through packed-to-the-digital-rafters-with-other successful-designers social media, muttering to yourself, “How the hell do these designers make money?”

AND YOU ARE:

On the verge of breaking up – and giving up on – your business. You’re taking any client that’ll have you (and, spoiler alert, they’re usually the crappy ones), watching your hours get chewed up by endless admin and wondering if you’ve been hit with an invisibility curse, ‘cause you just can’t seem to get your design biz noticed. Put away the tub of Chunky Monkey, lady.”

This part of her page is DELIBERATELY meant to feel pretty fricken horrible.

But it gets better.

(More on that soon.)

Now, you *can* skip this section. I call it “negatively-framed need recognition”.

I’ve written successful sales pages that haven’t poked at problems. But if you don’t include negatively-framed need recognition, then you absolutely have to include the next part.

Meet your conversion creator: The emotional imagination

Okay, so let’s pillage Anna’s sales page a little longer (she won’t mind) while I show you how to follow-up on the problem-poking.

‘Cause, yeah, it’d be mean if you left things at that, right?

“Oh, you have a MASSIVE problem and it hurts like heck. Here are my product inclusions.”

Nope, not gonna work.

So, instead, I infuse some feel-good feelings into the sales page by drawing on the two most powerful conversion enhancers there are: Emotions and imagination.

There’s a whole industry devoted to studying how and why we buy (consumer psychology – let me sum up the boring bits for you), but it all boils down to this:

We don’t buy with logic. We buy with emotions.

We’re humans, not robots. We have complex feelings, histories, opinions, values, dreams and Netflix recommendations. All of which need to be honored and respected.

So if you want to create a sell-out sales page, you’ll need to take your visitors on an emotionally compelling journey.

On Anna’s page, this journey has already begun with the negatively-framed need recognition. Next, I’m going to make this an emotional double-whammy by inviting her target market to envision a future where those problems we poked were solved.

Here’s an extract.

“Imagine going from Plain Jane generic hobby freelancer and wallflower … To THE in-demand expert designer changing people’s lives.”

We’ve then paired this positively-framed need recognition with some social influence by showing transformational before and after stories featuring real past students of Anna’s.

And voila – the emotional imagination has been struck!

We’re essentially saying, “What if xyz weren’t a problem anymore?” and then giving them solid, clear, and emotionally compelling descriptions that tickle their imagination and cement the need for our digital product.

The closer that your descriptions are to their desires, the more likely it is that your dream customers will whip out their wallets and invest in your digital product.

In consumer psychology, this is called the expectancy theory.

So, does this method work?

Let’s take a look at Anna’s page.

Your Turn, How do you plan to plan your social media like a boss?

Not bad for one digital product and one sales page, huh?

Okay, take a sip of your drink. Stretch out your shoulders and neck. Pat your hellhound.

Now that you’ve mastered the foundations of your digital product sales page (know your audience, poke their problems and give them a powerful vision for the future), it’s time to dive in deeper.

The goddess is in the detail: Five copywriting secrets for maximum sales page genius

Secret #1: Your digital product sales page needs to appeal to two kinds of readers.

There are two types of readers who will browse your sales page.

The skim-readers who scroll through your page faster than a runner-up Formula 1 driver in the last race of the season.
The detail-loving readers who carefully linger over each word and idea in your page like it’s a piece of handmade Swiss chocolate imbued with nymph-made ambrosia.

Your job? To create a sales page that appeals to both kinds of readers.

Here’s how you’re going to do it.

Secret #2: Storytelling sells.

Did you know that in Ancient Athens, your position and rank in society could be influenced by how persuasive a storyteller you were?

The Athenians called this the art of rhetoric and it impacted history as we know it, with the emergence of some of the world’s most revered classical philosophers.

Why does this matter?

Well, remember earlier I asked you whether you’d rather long life of obscurity or a short life of distinction? Then I drew you in with the mention of Achilles? Now you’re here, 2,000 words later, still reading along?

That’s the power of storytelling in action, friend.

As humans, we’re drawn to stories. Our minds crave it – as do our bodies! In fact, our body releases oxytocin whenever we’re enjoying a character-driven story.

Storytelling is in our blood.

So if you want your sales page to be as persuasive as possible, you need to master your stories.

Secret #3: Be specific

I’d have called this secret ‘specificity sells’, but I didn’t want to be repetitive. Instead, you’ll just have to take my word for it … being specific will help you sell more digital products.

Being vague and using general terms, words, phrases, and descriptions is not only lazy writing (sorry), but it also lets your product down as it doesn’t showcase its originality and your unique value proposition.

So instead of saying, “This ebook will transform your business” …

Tell them exactly HOW reading your ebook will change their business and WHY it matters/works.

Here are some examples for you.

You’ll learn [xyz] so you can then [achieve zyx].
By creating [xyz], you’ll [improve zyx] and be able to [achieve xyz dreams].
XYZ ebook is your pathway to discovering [zyx] and unlocking [xyz positive emotions/outcomes].

Back up your outcomes with emotional triggers and add you’ll add meaning to the results you offer.

Secret #4: Keep it simple.

Okay, okay, I know it sounds like I’m giving you conflicting information. Be specific. Be simple. Always treat your copywriters with chocolate. (Wait, how’d that last bit sneak in there? Weird.)

But being specific and being simple are interconnected, ‘cause at its barest essence, your sales page needs to make it easy for your target market.

Research has shown that when consumers get overwhelmed and confused, they experience buyer paralysis.

Which looks like … your dream peeps frowning, sighing and clicking off your site to find another, easier, one to buy from.

Yep. It sucks.

So how do you keep things simple? Here are some suggestions.

Use simple, everyday language (no jargon or overly complex word usage, please).
Write clear sub-headers that help your visitors navigate your sales page.
Ensure your value proposition is crystal clear (and persuasive!)
Don’t clutter your sales page design. Befriend white space!
Perfect your pricing (if you have multiple price tiers or packages, pop your most profitable one in the middle – this is called price framing and has been shown to appeal most to consumers).
Use a common sales page structure that is unique (content-wise) but familiar and easy for your visitors to navigate.
Make your call to action button (“buy now”) easy to find. Bonus points for making it big, bold and centered in the middle of the page.

Secret #5: Have a back-up plan

Nine out of ten consumers click onto a site to do something other than making a purchase the first time they visit.

Yep, that’s 96% of peeps that land on your site and have zero intentions of handing over their credit card.

And, honestly, that’s totally fine. As I said earlier, your sales page isn’t there purely to make a quick sale.

While you’re busy finding your next dream vacation destination, your sales page is there to walk your potential customers through everything they need to know about your incredible offer.

But it *probably* won’t convert on the first visit.

And here’s the bigger problem: There’s no guarantee that first-time visitors will come back.

Which is where your back-up plan comes in!

At the end of your sales page, include an opt-in offer. This can be a free webinar or a series of lessons delivered via email. It could be a worksheet or an infographic. Or it might just be a really juicy newsletter.

Whatever it is, it MUST connect to your (segmented) mailing list. Here’s why.

Clever, huh?

Because the truth is that you should always be pondering how you can better serve your target market by helping them solve their problems and fulfill their needs.

Okay, we’ve covered a lot today. So if you’d like a simple summary to refer back to (or you’re a skim-reader scrollin’ quickly), here’s what you need to know.

The wild success blueprint: How to create a sell-out digital product sales page

Get to know your target market in detail.
Poke their problems and aggravate their needs.
Provoke their emotional imagination and present a powerful vision for their future.
Create a page that appeals to how they read and digest information.
Use storytelling to capture their attention and build a bond with them.
Get specific about the benefits, outcomes, and results you offer.
Make your page, copy, content, pricing, and call to action simple.
Have a back-up content plan to convert browsers into buyers.

But wait, before you go …

DON’T FORGET TO SCOOP UP YOUR FREEBIE

THE DIGITAL PRODUCT IDEA CREATOR: YOUR VIRTUAL GUIDE TO COMING UP WITH A DIGITAL PRODUCT IDEA YOUR AUDIENCE WILL ADORE.

Author bio

Hey, I’m Cass! I’m the creative word nerd and mythology-obsessed conversion writer behind Wild Spirit Co., a creative copywriting agency for adventurous businesses.

I blend next-level word nerdery in the form of consumer psychology, neuromarketing strategy and creative storytelling for personality-driven words that woo and copy that converts.

The post you just read? That’s cornerstone content – a great source of traffic and leads for your biz. Learn more and get some creative content goodness of your own over at my site.

You can also hire me to write your digital product sales page here.

P.S. The super cool infographics in this article were made by Esley Studio.

Article sources

Secrets of the mythical sell-out digital product sales page