Landing Page Sales Copy Tips For Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs don’t have to be copywriting experts. But you can do with some landing page sales copy tips.

Heck, even marketers who call themselves marketers aren’t really copywriters. Landing Page sales copy tips don’t have to delve too deep into customer psychology, consumer behavior, and David Ogilvy’s level of genius. 

For most things — including these landing page sales copy tips for entrepreneurs, marketers, and everyone else — things can be simple and effective (most things in life are simple; only we complicate everything). 

Do you know why some books go on top become bestsellers while others don’t even move off the shelves? It’s because of the choice of words, the pacing, the tone, and the fact that it’s easy to read some of those books (even if they are non-fiction and were essentially meant to be boring). 

In fact, Svitlana Graves of ConversionXL condenses it all down to just three important points: 

• What You Say.. (content meant to relate to the audience you are trying to influence, content that’s relevant, and content that can build trust) 
• How You Say It.. (voice and tone, just make it easier to understand and absorb)
• How You Structure it.. (point A to Point B?) 

Now, when it comes to landing pages, your copywriting has its work cut out for it. You have to be short, sweet, succinct, and nail it at the word “go”. You can’t drift. You can’t dilly-dally. You don’t have all the time in the world. 

Your Headline: This Will Make It Or Break It

On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.

– David Ogilvy, ad guru

We know that people just skim. It’s not until they are totally invested in what you are writing about (or offering) that they’ll read (or listen to) every word you write (or say). 

By default, we’ll only assume that people only have time to quickly scan your copy on the landing page. For that reason alone, your copy should be “scannable and still be compelling”. Joanna Wiebe has a few headline formulas for you. 

Here’s the gist of it: 

• Be specific
• Be succinct
• Focus on 1 thing that your prospects believe to be highly desirable (that you provide)
• Quickly reflect the expectations of the visitor

Plus, there are certain ways to format your headlines for best results. Joanna of Unbounce has tips to format your headlines for maximum impact: 

• Center your headlines
• Make them big and dark, dark grey (or, when on a dark background, white)
• Use “Title Case”, aka Capitalize Each Word
• Don’t use a period in the end as such visual cues present mental stopping points for your visitors
• Break up lengthy headlines with “eye rest” punctuation marks, such as ellipses and em-dashes
• Consider putting quotation marks around the headline as this can draw the eye
• Support each headline with a meaningful subhead written in sentence case, aka Capitalize the first word only

Those are just the basics. You don’t move on to send traffic to your landing page without making sure you got everything above right. 

Read:

700+ Power Words That Will Boost Your Conversions

10, 20, 30? No? Here’s 110 landing page examples you can draw your Inspiration from

Create Your Target Persona (& Communicate Like You Normally Do)

Forget jargon.

Don’t even think of trying to impress.

Get to the point quickly by using the simplest words possible and then try to do it a little faster than you thought you’d.

Once you create your target persona (like Jaqueline, aged 34, works as the head/VP/owner of a digital agency, drives a Lexus, and attends church each weekend, etc.), learn how to write to her directly. 

Or maybe you’d want to speak to her (with a Podcast). Or perhaps communicate with her using video. 

Pick your poison. The best kind of copy is the kind of communication you and I do when we are at our persuasive best while using the language of the customer. 

Read:

Writing landing page Copy That Converts: 10 Expert Tips

7 Practical Ways to Use Landing Pages to Boost Conversions for Small Businesses

Don’t Sweat Your Copy

I’ve been working for over 17 years with clients on blogging, content marketing, sales copy, landing pages, and more. This is what I usually see: 

“write sales copy for landing pages that get us leads are sales”

“Create stellar copy that makes us a million dollars in revenue, at a minimum”

See, this is how it goes: for the money you are willing to spend ($15 per hour?), you won’t get to hire a professional ad agency. You won’t get the likes of Dan Kennedy, Joe Coleman, Brian Clark, or the likes of any of those World famous copywriters. 

You’ll usually get regular copywriters or marketers who can also write sales copy for landing pages: this is markedly different. 

Take the best of what you get. However, don’t sweat over perfection, finesse, and the world’s best copy. 

You might not be able to wrap your head around this but the fact remains: the world’s best sales copy is usually simple.

So simple that a kid could understand (did you know that the food industry — everything from Burgers to soft drinks — targets kids in their advertising?).

Read:

8 High-Converting Lead Generation Landing Page Examples to Inspire Yours

34 Great Landing Page Examples You Gotta Save for Your Swipe File

Split Test Your Sales Copy For Landing Pages

There’s a reason why popular landing page builders like Unbounce, LeadPages, Instapage, Simvoly, and several others (Including WordPress page or site builders such as Divi, Elementor, & Beaver Builder) have a A/B testing option: split test everything).

It’s by split testing (also called as A/B testing) that anyone who isn’t a Dan Kennedy, John Carlton, or a Gary Halbert moves from point A to point B in advertising success.

Let’s suppose you want to know if a particular element on your landing page — such as the headline, the subheading, the call-to-action on your button, or an image — is effective or not. Test out each of those elements against incoming traffic to measure the success against the other variant.

It’s by regular testing (and over a period of time) that you’ll arrive at your champions. If and when you do arrive at specific ads, landing pages, and email marketing campaigns that work, you’ll see a positive ROI.

How do you know whether or not your conversion rates are good or bad? According to research by Wordstream, the average conversion rate is 2.35%. Be proud of any landing page that has a higher conversion rate, and rework landing pages with lower conversion rates.

Got a landing page ? You have no idea how well it’s doing or what it’s capable of unless you put your pages to a test. Use this landing page analyzer and see for yourself

If you are worried that A/B testing takes a lot of traffic to make sense of it all, you can also use smart features like Unbounce’s Smart Traffic™ to allow testing with significant results even with less traffic.