This blog post is going to take on a very simple format: first of all I’m going to present my landing page as a “good cop persuader” and refer to the work of Gerry Spence. Then, I’m going to present my landing page as more of a “bad cop salesman” and refer to the work of Dr Robert Cialdini. I’d love to give you more, and I had lofty ambitions for this post, but that’s all I’ve got space for.
Caution: I have to say, Spence and Cialdini are not in the mould of Bryan Eisenberg (a true online conversion expert, and author of “Call to Action”), in fact, I would be willing to bet neither Spence nor Cialdini have ever heard of the term “landing page” before in their lives… but, then again, neither had I until recently… so let’s just go for it!
Here are the two books I’ll refer you to:
- How to Argue and Win Every Time by Gerry Spence (ISBN-13: 978-0312144777). Gerry Spence is often referred to as “America’s finest trial lawyer”.
- Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Dr Robert Cialdini (ISBN-13: 78-0688128166). Described by the Journal of Marketing as “one of the most important books ever written for marketers."
You are very welcome to pay me a visit over on my own blog if you want to check out my latest meanderings, and I’ll certainly still be lurking around here at SEOmoz.
First: Introducing “How to Argue and Win Every Time” by Gerry Spence
I argue that the powerful argument comes not from disavowing our divine uniqueness in favour of someone else’s style, or values, but from tapping into the wondrous well of our own personhood. We do not fail to make a persuasive argument because we lack electric genius or lightning wit, we do not fail because we possess but a sparse fund of words, we fail to make the successful argument because we have fixed certain locks to ourselves, locks that imprison our arguments, locks that bar us from assuming a successful stance or from adopting a winning method. -- Gerry Spence
So, what represents the divine uniqueness of SEOmoz? I would argue that it is the story of the “Linkerati,” as found in the SEOmoz blog archive. As I read the series of articles rand wrote on the “Linkerati,” a little siren went off in my head… and I knew these articles would arouse what I will call the “let’s go!” feeling within a small section of the target market. I’ll concede to you that my exquisitely sensitive emotional antenna wasn’t really tested during the process of identifying these articles on the subject of the “Linkerati”, because for a long time they were among the most popular on the SEOmoz blog (as measured by number of thumbs up). So, I’ll just have to ask you to take my word for the fact that I would still have “felt the force” even if it weren't for all of the thumbs up. This work on the “Linkerati” was clearly written from the heart and based entirely on what I perceive to be the core beliefs of SEOmoz as an organisation. What I’m saying to you here is that the Linkerati story “persuades” people in a way that is entirely moral, ethical, and truthful. In other words, by putting the story of the “Linkerati” front and centre in my landing page I helped to free SEOmoz from their own “locks,” as Gerry Spence would put it. I just helped SEOmoz say what they had to say.
Yes, I realize that to all of you “old pros” out there the story of the “Linkerati” is all a bit ho-hum and “heard it all before”. However, as I mentioned in the last post, my landing page was targeted to those who fall into the category of “newcomers” to the SEOmoz community; and to them the story is hot stuff.
Finally, because the core message (the “big idea”) of my landing page is entirely in alignment with what I perceive to be the core beliefs of SEOmoz, I think this should help to silence a lot of questions about the intelligence level of people signing up to the premium membership package from my sales letter. I’d love to talk with you more about switching off the “oh yuck” reaction in people (people like me, for example) who generally don’t buy from sales letters… but I simply don’t have space to do so in this post. The cat & mouse game I’m referring to has been going on for more than 100 years, though - Robert Collier wrote briefly about the “dying sales letter” a century ago. The sales letter is always dying in one form or another, but just remember the nature of human psychology hasn’t changed much since the beginning of time and it won’t change much in the future, either. OK, I’m tired of being a good guy; let us move swiftly on to Cialdini.
Second, Introducing Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Dr Robert Cialdini
Although there are thousands of different tactics that compliance practitioners employ to produce "yes," the majority fall within six basic categories: the principles of consistency, reciprocation, social proof, authority, liking, and scarcity (not included among these 6 principles the simple rule of material self interest) -- Cialdini
Cialdini examines the ability of each of these tools to create a kind of automatic, mindless compliance that makes people say "yes" without thinking first. Consider: as human beings we don't have time to critically analyze every new situation, person, or choice we are faced with on a daily basis. We have to take some “autopilot” decisions and focus only on a few normally reliable features of the “whole,” during our decision making processes. A quick example: if a policeman knocks on your door, flashes you a badge, and asks to come in to your house so he can ask you a few questions about an “incident” across the street, few would hesitate to comply. Not many of us would ask him to wait at the door as we call his station, check his badge number, and so on. Criminals frequently exploit this fact to do people harm. Another example of a shortcut response: expensive products = high quality products.
The reason why we trust our shortcut responses so much is because they are extremely accurate, dependable, and helpful. In fact, we'd all be completely lost without them - stuck in a state of "paralysis by analysis," if you like. The following point is critical:
The proper targets for counter aggression are only those individuals who falsify, counterfeit, or misrepresent the evidence that naturally cues our shortcut responses. -- Cialdini
Reciprocation
The rule says that we should try to repay, in kind, what another person has provided us. We are obligated to the future repayment of gifts, favours and the like. There is no human society that does not subscribe to the rule. We are human because our ancestors learned to share their food in an honoured network of obligation. -- Cialdini
My landing page gives people the story of the Linkerati. This story of the Linkerati is nothing new to all of you SEO veterans out there. However, to people outside the SEOmoz community it's news, and a very fun, interesting and educational read. Bottom line: my landing page induces a desire to reciprocate in those readers for whom the story of the Linkerati is fresh.
Social Proof
As a rule, we will make fewer mistakes by acting in accord with social evidence than contrary to it. -- Cialdini
The use of testimonials is classic social proof in selling. The reason why I didn't use testimonials in my copy was because I didn't feel the testimonials on file offered general appeal; they sounded "too far up the ladder of abstraction" for my liking. However, it was a weakness on my part not to weave in some relevant testimonials throughout the copy. Question: are there other ways to "trigger" social proof besides testimonials? Yes, the idea is basically "monkey see, monkey do".
Liking
We like people who are similar to us. This fact seems to hold true whether the similarity is in the area of opinions, personality traits, background or life-style. Consequently, those who wish to be liked in order to increase our compliance can accomplish that purpose by appearing similar to us in any of a wide variety of ways. -- Cialdini
Wonder no longer why my landing page uses a "just you and me talking" tone of voice. To paraphrase SEOmoz member Mike Tekula, who put it so eloquently, "The writing style is less about presenting a product or service and more about you sitting down with Paul (Rand) and having him explain a few things to you." I'd also include here under “liking” the picture of Rand and the SEOmoz team. This increases likeability by helping to humanize the selling effort - we think we are far less likely to be ripped off / get a raw deal if the guy selling to us is willing to show his face (and the face of his team).
Authority
It is the extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority that constitutes the chief finding of the study -- Cialdini
Logos for The Washington Post, USA Today, Newsweek, and so on... all demonstrate or imply authority. Selling Rand as a consultant to Fortune 500 companies on a minimum retainer of $10,000 per month? That is authority building, too. By the way, building Rand up as a $10,000 per month minimum consultant is also an illustration of what is known as the "contrast principle". This makes the required investment of $399 seem small when compared to what others have paid for access to the same/similar information.
Commitment and Consistency
The tactic of starting with a little request in order to gain eventual compliance with related larger requests has a name: the foot-in-the-door technique. Subjects had innocently complied with a trivial request a couple of weeks before, and these people became remarkably willing to comply with another such request that was massive in size. -- Cialdini
Libraries could be written on this subject, because the power of commitment and consistency is mind blowing. Some say (Robbins, for instance) that commitments are the basis of all selling, and I would tend to agree.
All I'm going to do here is explain a seeming discrepancy in the data of the landing page results: Carlos's landing page had an opt in rate of 12.5%, which was much higher than mine, yet his overall conversion rate was lower. Now, obviously people who read a few dozen pages of copy are much more committed to buying than people who simply look at a table. What makes this more interesting, in my opinion, is the fact that… for “raw” traffic not logged into an SEOmoz account… my landing page redirected people to an “error” page (my fault). Understand this: when the WANT within someone is stirred up, you would be amazed at how tolerant/savvy they will become in order to fulfil their desires. By all logic, this error page should have been a conversion rate crusher, but it wasn’t (or at least didn’t seem to be) because people were already committed to the idea of buying at the time they clicked “Enroll”.
Please also recognize that it is perceived to be less of a commitment signing up for a service when people have a money-back guarantee to fall back on: the idea is to get people thinking "I'll hand over my money now, check it out, and if I change my mind later I can always get my money back". This works because people are much more likely to make a small commitment than they are a larger one, however the larger commitment follows naturally from the smaller one with astonishing regularity (as Cialdini’s work demonstrates).
Scarcity
Opportunities seem more valuable to us when their availability is limited -- Cialdini
Very few resources in this world are infinite (maybe none?) and I would argue that the same is true of the SEOmoz premium membership, because SEOmoz is made up of a small team and there will be a limit to the number members that can be serviced to a high standard (Q&A etc). When I chose the number 7,000 it was fairly arbitrary… I tried to lean on the high side. Scarcity is some very powerful “voodoo”.
Closing Thoughts
As I said to you before I’m happy to offer you full disclosure, so feel free to ask me any questions you want. I’m not claiming I’ve been able to cover everything in this post. But, wait a minute… when I made the offer of ull disclosure was I stating what I genuinely felt was the right thing to do (being truthful with you)? Or was I trying to induce reciprocation within you? Was I trying to increase your level of “commitment” to me by engaging you in dialogue? Was I trying to make you like me? Was I trying to pass myself off as an authority? When I said that I would “vanish into the night” was I trying to make myself out to be a scarce resource?
Am I a good cop or a bad cop? Have I been trying to persuade you all along? Well, there are no easy answers… sometimes life can be “blurry” like that. I’ll leave you all to draw your own conclusions. All I will say is that it’s been my pleasure to try and help explain my landing page a little bit, and I hope you found this post to be of some value to your own endeavours!
All the best,
Paul Robb
This increases likeability by helping to humanize the selling effort - we think we are far less likely to be ripped off / get a raw deal if the guy selling to us is willing to show his face (and the face of his team).
This is a very interesting observation - I commented quite a lot on peoples posts / responded to them etc, but NEVER got thumbs up, regardless of how good/bad my comments were.
I decided to ad my photo (a.k.a ugly mug ;-) to my profile, and the next few comments started receiving thumbs... a coincidence? Of subconscious confidence in the comment if you can identify its author?
Rishil
You inspired me to snap myself on my grainy Sony Ericsson mobile phone camera and upload it. I don't think I'm going to be winning any grooming awards (just like my landing page)... but I have a terrible head-cold here and I haven't even showered yet this morning (yuck).
I just wanted to let people see my face.
All the best,
Paul
lol excellent! well I am winning no awards either - and thats at my best... lol ;-)
Hey, Paul, congrats. This has been a really interesting competition.
I was the designer of number "2," yanked in round one, about which comments ranged from "overwhelming" to "outstanding copy" (but hated the design), to "I would have gone for it," to the group critique "spammy." Ouch! My aim was to write great copy (I sweated every word), bring the look more in line with the SEOmoz site (integrated design is what I do for a living), and write for folks who were already in the know, at least somewhat.
Your tactic of writing for those who are not in the know was stunning, you are a natural at copy, and your commentary is very thoughtful.
A point that was touched on just lightly but that struck me as crucial from the first time I saw your design: do not underestimate the power of that major photo front-and-center. I think it may well have been worth... dare I say it... a thousand words. I considered it but didn't go that way, and the minute I saw yours I knew you had created a powerful connection to the prospect. Time and time again, people are drawn to photos of people.
Of drills and selling: You obvoiusly are very well-read, so I hope you won't mind my suggesting a book: The Innovator's Solution, by Clayton Christensen. He rephrases brilliantly the old saying that people don't buy (or search for) the drill. They buy the hole. In my opinion, we "market" best when we try to engage with those trigger moments--"I need to make a better hole today"--rather than when we attempt to push a product. I personally love Ryobi, but last year when mine died I bought a Dewalt. It was the right choice for me in spite of my brand preference.
Did I "sell the hole" in my design for SEOmoz? Well, I thought I did, but the proof is in the pudding. You did it in this challenge, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I encourage my clients to insist on measurable results, not just pretty for pretty's sake. As Mark Stevens says (paraphrasing), if it's not making money ditch it... and your landing page makes money!
(Would you convert more if your long ago English teachers had hounded you about wordiness as much as mine did? You have a real way with persuasive copy. I think you'd have blown us all out of the water at half the length... which still I believe would have been longer than any other competitor's.)
Regards,
Kelly
Hi Kelly
I think your comment demonstrates your substance. By the sounds of your post, when you work with your own clients you watch the numbers like a hawk and then engineer the necessary adjustments to help bring in the money for them. One could (should?) argue that is the true test of one's abilities - and something it was not realistically possible to put to the test during the SEOmoz contest.
Imagery: For sure, I'd support your view that the imagery is very important, because, yes, it helps to create a connection with the reader and even differentiate my landing page (very slightly) from the "ugliest of the ugly" sales letters you see out there. I'd just like to be absolutely clear for people reading this that I see the imagery as a "multiplier" of response, and not something to be considered in the same breath as the story of the "Linkerati," which forms the beating heart of my landing page and the core of the campaign. You can't multiply zeros, and without the story of the Linkerati there is nothing to multiply!
Wordiness: Yes, fair comment. I remember a post saying my landing page runs to 32 pages in Microsoft Word, and when you put it like that the whole thing does start to sound very silly (even for a $399 product, never mind a $49 product). I think the optimum version of the SEOmoz landing page will be, let us say, a little bit more "concise". However, that does have to be proven and not merely assumed. Why is my landing page so long? Well, as I created the landing page I wasn't treating the whole thing like a "job," I was trying to have some fun along the way - hence the use of humour in the copy, for example, as Hamlet pointed out earlier. Did I get a little bit carried away with the length? Very probably the answer to that question is yes.
Book: thanks for the recommendation, I'm not going to give you my word that I'll read it... just in case I bump into you :). However, I will definitely make a note of it!
All the best,
Paul
Dude...I would hate to buy a car from you ;)
that was a great read, thanks.
Actually, no. You'd love buying a car.
You might hate the car though ;)
Paul - I was looking forward to this post. Thanks for explaining your methodology in such great detail. You forgot to explain why you chose to make your copy humorous, though. Please let us know.
Hamlet
Bang. You got me! What I really need to do is write out the following phrase 100 times:
"Using humour decreases response"
There are exceptions this rule, yes, as with all things in life, however 99 times out of 100...
"Using humour decreases response"
I heard it said somewhere (I can't remember where) that only about 50% of people in most audiences actually have a sense of humour in the first place.
All the best,
Paul
Paul,
The posts and comments have been exceptionally interesting and helpful, and I will be applying some of what I've learned on various sites that conform to certain characteristics:
For example, a store that is running and SEM campaign for power tools might get someone who searches on "cordless drills" to click on ad. At this point, we don't know what brand/price point/feature set they are looking for. We also know that they can likely purchase the same product somewhere else. In this case:
The first goal seems to be to communicate concisely what options are available that are likely to include the ideal solution for the variety of customers that might type that query.
With such a different customer and solution set, what can we learn from the winning landing page's style?
Hi spinnakerguy,
Thanks for your post.
On the one hand you could say I'm way out of league offering an opinion on a SEM campaign... on the other hand... it's all just selling. So, I've taken your example and examined the SEM campaigns running for the term "cordless drills" here in the United Kingdom, and I see something very different going on (different from my own personal interpretation of what you were suggesting):
1. User types in the term "cordless drills"
2. All companies running SEM campaigns position themselves uniquely, and present themselves as specializing in exactly what a small segment of the "cordless drills" search traffic will indeed be looking for...
They do not make the mistake of trying to meet the needs of everybody, because when you try to mean all things to all people you end up meaning nothing at all to anyone. Result = ruined campaign.
3. Having qualified the prospect, these companies communicate concisely what options are available within their chosen niche, which are likely to include the ideal solution for the qualified prospect. And this gets around a lot of the problems that you raised in your post.
I'd welcome further discussion on this, because my instinct would definitely be to niche myself immediately and position myself uniquely. Then I'd run testing from that starting point.
Thoughts?
All the best,
Paul
Thanks for the thoughtful response. SEM is simply one of a bunch of possible sources for leads to a landing page, so the nuances are mostly academic as you point out. "It's all just selling."
[Added on edit:]
Interestingly, the types of differentiation you describe are not at all what I see here (Seattle, WA, USA) when I search on Google. None of the top 1/2 dozen ads mention brand names or parts. All say something about broad selection, and several about cheap prices. Also our experience is that it's fine to focus when the users of the search words in question are largely homogeneous in their target, but this is very often not the case.
[/Added]
This is a viable option in the sense that you can reduce (in theory) the number of clicks from people looking for drills that aren't interested in the product lines you carry. (In practice, many users are very fickle or naive and often such efforts to get leads to pre-qualify before incurring your charges works surprisingly poorly.) There are two problems with this approach:
The problem is that that us advertisers don't know the "true" intent of the prospect, and there isn't a good way to figure this out. That's one of the biggest challenges for search engines to figure out, let alone us poor little advertisers.
So, that's a long-winded way of getting to what I think is the basic question:
It's GREAT to know what the customer is looking for, but very often lead sources can't do that.
Right after I finished the last comment, it occurred to me that one basic solution is this: create a two-step process in which the first step is to provide a list of all relevant (likely to be chosen) options that each lead to very targeted landing pages.
Ugh.
Practical challenge: What if I sell 50+ models of drill? A landing page for each?!?
Design challenge: What is the ideal designfor the first "diambiguator" page?
Practical challenge: What if I sell 50+ models of drill? A landing page for each?!?
No, no, no. It sounds to me like you have some sort of "online catalogue" selling all kinds of drills (my powers of observation are awesome, aren't they).
Here is what you should do:
Step 1: Observe what people are buying from your catalogue/website.
Step 2: Niche yourself based upon what people are buying from you.
Step 3: Rinse and repeat.
So the end result is you are running your "catalogue" campaign and your niche campaigns at the same time. This has all been proven with offline catalogues, and I have a hard time believing that it won't work online.
But what the heck do I know? You'd have to be crazy to listen to me!
All the best,
Paul
Paul:
Excellent article. Thanks for your evident willingness to explain as much as possible about your aproach to convincing users to respond to our calls to action.
I think the fact that people (i.e. potential members) responded so well to your copy is a pretty convincing argument for the power of the sales letter writing style, which you've outlined here. What you haven't touched on here is the question of the aesthetics of writing. In other words, what does the copy layout, typography, etc. tell us? Long copy sales letters have a very distinctive style, it seems. There is a lot of centered text, simple fonts, very little evident design, primary colors. Personally, this style makes me mistrustful of whatever is being sold simply because it looks "amateurish". However, from the results, it looks like style/aesthetics are not an obstacle to people at all. Can you comment on the importance of aesthetics to getting results from people? In other words, do we as web professionals tend to overrate visual bells & whistles? Do aesthetics really play any role in users' decision-making?
I am glad you asked that - how come long copy pages all have that same look about them? Do they only work in that format?
godofthunder1982
Great comment, let me respond to you this way:
"There seems to be an automatic response to attractive people. The response falls into the category that social scientists call "halo" effects. A halo effect occurs when one positive characteristic of a person dominates the way that person is viewed by others. And the evidence is now clear that physical attractiveness is often such a characteristic. For example: good-looking people are likely to receive highly favorable treatment in the legal system - the attractive defendants were twice as likely to avoid jail as the unattractive ones." (Cialdini, P171 - 172)
My landing page is definitely guilty on first sight to a lot of people!
My own view is that great design can give your website a "halo" effect that really "gets people on your side" and makes selling to them a lot easier, because great design can be the difference between a reaction of "oh, yuck" and "oh wow, I really want this to be good".
It's much simpler to sell to people when they are "for" you rather than "against" you, and that's the key difference aesthetics can make.That said, every single design element on a page has to clearly justify it's place... "bells and whistles" should only be included when they further the argument and offer some meaning that would not otherwise be possible without them.
Finally: the reason why a lot of simple, plain looking sales letters do so well is because when people go to a website they are hunting for INFORMATION, not a piece of beautiful-to-look-at "art". However, when those simple looking sales letters are triggering an "oh yuck" reaction in the target audience (because of their association with con-artistry, let us say), and people don't even start to read the copy, something has to change in order to help switch-off that conversion-rate-crushing initial reaction.
Does that help?
Paul
Paul, thanks for the response - very helpful. I've definitely enjoyed your insights in the last few days.
To all the critics of Paul all I have to say is get off your SEO high horse. Just because you have accomplished a few things doesn't make you are experts. Not saying that Paul is an expert either but the numbers don't lie.
This whole contest was to generate sales and clicks for SEOmoz so if you are upset or so "surprised" it should be at Rand and not Paul. Trust me, Rand is laughing all the way to the bank with all this "controversy".
Congrats Paul on winning, I will definitely use some of your "tactics" in the near future. It was a re-learning experience for me and it goes to show, when you think you know everything, something comes along and hands you a plate of humility.
I can't get off my high horse.... someone stole the ladder. Damn search wannabes....
when I get down someone is going to get it..........
Great article Paul. HAd me on the edge of my seat. Love your style! Keep it up. Thanks Rand and SEOmoz for always delivering the best of th best.
Good stuff! I'm going to have to spend some serious time reading all this and absoring it more fully.
"<i>But, wait a minute… when I made the offer of ull disclosure was I stating what I genuinely felt was the right thing to do (being truthful with you)?</i>"
I think you're just fishing for work offers :)
Very inspiring post, thanks.
Yes very well written and obviously well researched.
Superb! I really enjoyed this. Thanks.
great post. your strategies were obviously well informed and the results prove it. congrats!
I liked this article much better than the first one. Good work Paul. Those books have been on my Amazon wish list for a few months. You made my mind up to buy them.
"Now, obviously people who read a few dozen pages of copy are much more committed to buying than people who simply look at a table. "
Even though you stated this as obvious I overlooked this when analysing your landing page.
Mainly because I wouldnt commit myself to reading that much copy so made the unfortunate/blinding assumption that others would not read it all either.