“Get Real” With Your Traffic & Subscribers – Dr. Fresh

Sales copy is the most important element in any online business. What you write or say in your copy directly controls the success or failure of your next promotion. Whether it be a squeeze page to gain subscribers for your mailing list, a sales video for your next product, or simply a product review – what you say in your copy is the main factor that decides your conversion rate. You could sell a PDF about toothpicks if your copy is good enough. What I’ve written in this article is from my experience in the IM niche, but a lot of it can apply to other niches. I’m definitely not an expert, but hopefully my examples help you with conversions!

Honesty IS The Best Policy

First, being honest is the most obvious thing to keep in mind when you’re writing copy – if you are honest with your visitors they will know it. As an example, my Clickbank product review site usually stands out like a sore thumb on the SERPs when chalked up against the majority. A lot of my reviews in the past have directly addressed Clickbank vendors on their claims, especially if they’re of the “push-button software” kind. I always write in 100% honesty on there – while other “reviewers” may enforce the vendor’s claims just to hype up the product even more and get their commission.

So how do I get sales if I’m writing negative (honest) reviews? It’s really simple. I have a set few Internet marketing products that I personally have benefited from in the past – and that I would even recommend to a friend to get started in this business. After a real, honest review of “the next big thing”, I’ve already gained the visitor’s trust and made an impact on their decision to buy – so I can capitalize on that in the end of each review with my recommended courses. To sum it up, I’ve had great results converting visitors on products other than what they’re searching for, so honesty is very powerful and easily detected by your visitors.
Be Personal With Your Readers/Listeners.

Let’s say you’ve got a video squeeze page in the works and you want your visitors to opt-in for a free gift. Be yourself! Don’t try to sound like a late-night infomercial salesman. That kind of approach always raises the “BS” meter and automatically causes your visitor to be skeptical of what you’re claiming. This can be a good thing, in that they might be curious, opt-in really fast to make sure you’re not lying or giving them hype, but for the long -term, you want to build a solid relationship with your subscribers and always keep the “same face”. Being real and personal right off the bat will give them an idea of who you are and also make them realize that you’re a real person with something real to offer them.

Hype is necessary where it’s due, but remember that the first impression is always what counts. If you push a product on the other side of the opt-in, what you just said and how you said it will be fresh on their mind and affect their decision to buy. Also (if you were real with them), they’re more likely to remember you and care about what you have to say in your next mailing. On the flipside, your list could become diluted with freebie seekers who probably get dozens of emails per day from other marketers– and in all likelihood, you won’t stand out from the crowd. Be real and personal upfront and they’ll pay more attention.

Always Deliver On Everything You Claim

There’s really not much to say about this. If you’re claiming that you make x amount of dollars per day, I would highly recommend that you do a video screen capture of you logging in to your affiliate accounts to prove it straight up vs. screenshots, which everyone knows can be easily manipulated. The visitor is feeling you out for inconsistency the moment you make a claim that seems it could be untrue.

They want proof that you’re being honest with them. So in the IM niche – screenshots are much less believable and just don’t get the job done in my opinion. In another scenario, if you’re offering a software that supposedly takes 9 clicks to make affiliate commissions – it had better do just that or your refund rate will be through the roof. This was what the “G-Headshot” sales page claimed and it turned out to be a simple (and useless) blog template from what I can remember, though others might have gained something from it. In the past, Clickbank vendors in the IM niche have notoriously failed to deliver on what they claim. Some even lie in their copy to get sales – the TOS change by Clickbank is the direct result of that. Hopefully we’ll start seeing some real products launch more often. Always deliver!

Make It Interesting Just Have Fun With It

Keep your visitors interested and curious about your offer. If you’ve got something unique, capitalize on that in your copy and even mention that what you have is unique and something they haven’t seen before or ever thought of. Give them bite sized bits of information to keep them interested and don’t “spill the beans” all at once. “The beans” should be spilled after they opt-in or purchase what you’re promoting.

Know Your Market

Always keep in mind who you’re marketing to. In a recent product I JV’ed on, I created a squeeze page that pretty much does everything I’ve written about thus far. It’s in the IM niche, and it’s geared towards anyone and everyone who reads the newspaper. Any traffic coming from newspapers is not likely to have a clue about Internet marketing and will probably be extremely skeptical of anything they see online.

If you’re doing PPC campaigns with broad keywords like “make money online”, the same applies. Most people think that everything online is a scam – so I made sure to appeal to that crowd by addressing their fear of scams first thing. I then talk about myself, how I came to the whole online business thing, and introduce them to Internet marketing by first mentioning random online business opportunities that I looked into and didn’t cut for me.

Give Your Visitors Contrast

Don’t just be gung-ho about your promotion. If you let them in on the negatives that are related to your offer, they will be more likely to warm up to what you’re promoting when it’s introduced in your pitch. So know your market and push the buttons that you know will have an effect on the visitors. Email marketing “Dr. Fresh Style”

The first follow-up email in many of my lists tells the subscriber that they can directly contact me by replying to the address it was sent from. This builds even more trust with your subscribers. It lets them know that there’s a real person behind the emails, not just a spam bot. Most of the topics I’ve written about above here can be applied to how you write your email copy. Be honest, real, personal, etc…

If you have a good relationship with your subs, they’re much more likely to care about what you’re promoting and take what you say seriously. There’s a little “dangler” opt-in form on my review site that visitors literally have to mouse-over before they can opt-in. I’ve gained a sweet little list that trusts me from that and they always ask questions about new IM products and whether not they should buy. Remember – this traffic opts-in from my review site where 9 times out of 10 I recommend something other than what they searched for on Google. I’m not a “mega IM expert”, but I think that’s pretty cool.

Don’t promote junk! Always check out the product to make sure it’s something appropriate to send to your list and most importantly, something that will help them succeed. This takes a slight amount of extra effort, but it’s worth it to know that the sales you make are actually helping your subs rather than hurting. Along with that, if they do gain something or have some success from what you send out, they’ll trust you even more.

The frequency of your mailing also has an effect on how your list feels about you and how often they respond. I personally don’t email out more than once per week or every few days unless I’m releasing a new product. Lots of marketers mail twice per day, which in my opinion is a little too much and will eventually just dilute the list, but then again I’m not an expert – I just know what works for me.

I often see two emails per day from the same marketer with the same title, same content, (which is very annoying) and more often than not I go the extra mile to find their unsubscribe link. With that said, I won’t give any clear suggestions on how frequently you should mail, but I know that when I mail out it’s only when I find something really good and something my list can benefit from.

That pretty much sums it up! I really hope you enjoyed this article. The topics weren’t in any specific order and I basically just wrote from examples of how I’ve handled my projects in the past. Again – I’m not an expert and a lot of what I wrote about is pretty basic and likely things you already know, but hopefully you can apply some of this and better convert your traffic/subscribers into buyers.

Dr. Fresh (Sean Sorrell) is a full-time Internet marketer and musician and currently is focusing on product creation, SEO, and recording/producing music. Contact here. He is the author of Mack Daddy Ads. Here is a video which describes his product: