A Method to the Madness - The Art of Persuasion - Part 1

Have you ever found yourself on a web page with no ending?

One with massive titles liberally sprinkled in many places - we are talking about font sizes of nearly an inch in height - colorful, bold and demanding that you look and look right now!

Quite a multimedia frenzy, some would say because this uniquely structured page looks like no other yet has pictures, perhaps audio, some testimonials and of course video and more video and more testimonials?

Welcome to the long page sales format.

More than likely, this page is what we technical marketing geeks know as a "long page sales format" and although we all love to hate it, if we got to this page by clicking on a link, we are already deep inside the spider's lair.

The page is typically so long that many of us say it simply tires you out with its tens of testimonials, video proof of this or that.

"So, why tell me why, do idiots create pages like this", you might ask?

The answer is simply : Because it works.

This style, known as the "long sales format" can magically and mysteriously close 2% of sales when properly tuned.

A well tuned regular 50 to 300 word document, in contrast, has traditionally done less than .5% in sales.

I won't go into the mechanics of why it works, primarily because half a dozen experts will have two dozen very correct opinions as to why this format works and to be truthful my opinion really isn't any better than theirs.

Does it work because the long sales format :
- Hits all our objections and then some
- Blasts through the credibility wall like a hot knife through butter
- Has pics,videos of "real people" claiming how it worked for them
- Prominently displays a Gold Seal 100% money back guarantee beside the "Act Now - limited items available" call to action button ?

I don't know, but what we do know is that nearly all of us are programmable animals that respond to certain incoming stimuli in a refreshingly regular way that commercial programmers just love to use.

What that means for you as a marketer is that documents that you create which are meant to encourage a point of view need a structure not taught in English class in any university.

They need to hit and stick immediately with an audience having a 3 second attention span

Your web page needs to load in less than a second so that you haven't wasted any of that 3 second attention span. Ha ha, bet you hadn't thought of that one.

Still clueless?

Try this format :

Start with the pain first. Your product resolves some issue, right? So, lets assume that that was the issue that got the user to your page.

Dive right in using large text and hit the pain right on the head?

- Haven't had a date in 6 months ?
- Having headaches that your doctor can't fix ?
- Feeling arthritis and taking too many PILLS already ?
- Feeling hurt, lonely and rejected ?

Then commensurate with the sufferer

- I too hadn't had a date in more than a year ...
- My son's headaches were killing him ...
- I lived on the first floor for 3 years, couldn't take the stairs, the arthritis ...
- The ache and loneliness is a physical pain and colors everything we do ...

Then offer your solution

Add audio/video testimonials from those whom it worked for

Go back into pain mode

Tell them why your solution is unique above all others

Continue into the long sales format by alternating between pain, your solutions, testimonials, why other solutions don't work, the pain, your solutions and why they need to act now.

Or just go directly into the act now with the money back guarantee and the Gold Seal beside it.

Don't do it without a visual Gold Seal, for some odd reason, this programming button appears to increase sales by a factor that could be as much as 10-15%.

Ahh, there another secret out of the bag.