Why You Need To Understand The Funnel, Even If You’re Writing A Sales Page
If you’re a freelance copywriter who has made the switch from content-based stuff to direct response marketing stuff, then you might be under the impression that you don’t need to know about your client’s blog, emails and other funnel items.
After all, you are the sales letter guy, and so you deal with the conversion-based copy and leave the content to the content marketers, right?
Wrong.
This is a terrible approach, and in this article, I’ll show you why.
Why You Need To Understand The Whole Marketing Funnel
You need to understand the whole marketing funnel because – unsurprisingly – the marketing funnel will determine the type, number and quality of leads you get.
In an ideal world, you want your sales page to be seen only by people who are interested in your product, knowledgeable about your product and if you’re really lucky, desperate to buy your product.
In reality though, you get a mixed bag of leads. For some cases, you’re going to get leads where you have to teach them, educate them and give them the whole menu up front before they buy. Hence the 45 minute long sales videos where you don’t even see the product until 35 minutes in.
An Example
Let’s say you’re selling weight loss products.
Your sales letter is for the “get a super fit toned body in 40 days” program.
Your sales letter will be determined by the audience, and your audience is determined by the funnel.
You can’t write a sales page for a forty-year old mum if the funnel is collecting twenty-year old wannabe Instagram models. Nor can you start talking about “super magical fat loss secrets” if you’re talking to female bodybuilders who know what they’re talking about.
Also, the amount of selling you’re going to do will depend on the quality of lead.
Are they highly targeted? Some lists are comprised of people who’ve been on a list for years, open every email and buy every product. If that’s the case, then your sales letter is going to fall along the lines of, “Hey. Here’s the product. This is the teacher. You know what you’re getting. Buy before we put the price up.”
On the other hand… If the company has gotten 10,000 new leads off a Facebook advertising campaign that’s grabbed a whole new bunch of people who don’t know the first thing about fitness, then you’re going to need to spend a lot longer telling them why your solution is the miracle cure for their lives.
This is exponentially true if you’re working with affiliate marketers and the Clickbank entrepreneur types.
Why?
Because they can get some really poor quality leads. Some affiliates will cloak and “sign up for a free iPad” deal and you want to know if your campaign is getting sent out to a bunch of bogus addresses.
But Why Do I Care About That?
In short… you want your sales letters to do well. The better your sales letters perform, the more work you’ll get, the better you’ll get paid and the happier people will be to give you money.
Also, at a certain point you’re going to want to charge royalties or commissions for your work. When you get to that stage, you want to know a lot about the companies you’re working with and you need to know a lot about their funnels to write sales pages that make you a ton of money.
Also, if you market based on certain results, for instance, “My sales pages convert at 10%” and you then work with an affiliate who sends junk traffic to your sales page, you need to know that.
- Because you’re going to earn less money than you anticipate
- You don’t want that guy to tell everyone your figures are untruthful
- He might not even be aware of the nature of junk traffic and so say, “Hey… you promised me 10% conversions why aren’t all these Indian bots that I paid $5 for not converting?”
Finally, you’re going to get ideas, angles and feedback that you need to craft the best letter you can. Nobody wants to pay a copywriter four-or-five figures to craft a letter that’s anything less than the highest-converting letter they can, so it should be win-win for everyone.
Value Add
There are angles and other services you can throw in for this. It might not seem like much, but think about this scenario:
You’re working for a company. They want you to write a sales letter for their high-end consultancy package. So you ask to look at their funnel. You realise that their landing page and emails suggest it’s for small businessmen with a limited budget, but then WHAM! They hit customers with the five-figure sales page.
You say to them, “I can write this sales letter… but it’d be a lot better if you changed X, Y and Z to cater to the right audience.”
You offer this advice for free and they change the marketing funnel. They collect better leads and send them to your letter. You all make more money. Happily ever after.
Now you could charge for the above or you could offer it – like I said – for free. Or you can refuse to do the work and not get paid, or otherwise just write the sales letter and have it not perform as well.
My point is that you have a range of different options to explore and if you an notice issues and address them, not only will you have a better performing sales letter at the end, but you’ll also provide a ton more value to your clients.
And providing more value is always a bonus. So read, learn and understand the marketing funnel. Then make your sales piece part of the funnel as opposed to something stuck on the end.