Give Customers What They Want… All the way through!
Let us imagine a customer is currently Googling “titanium ping pong paddle.”
Just from this little knowledge, we can begin identifying the customer in some ways. First, the person is likely male. I don’t know a lot of female ping pong players. And those who play are generally not avid enough about the sport to want to Google something like this, so we can probably assume he is an expert ping pong player.
So let’s assume we have a male who is Googling something I didn’t even know existed: a titanium ping pong paddle. I don’t know anything about titanium ping pong paddles or that much about the sport, but let’s give a shot at selling to this customer.
Here is what a PPC ad would look like:
Titanium Ping Pong Paddle
Improve Your Ping Pong Skills
#1 rated by Champion Xica Gobba
www.fakestore.com/TitaniumPingPongPaddle
Now when the person enters your product page, you want to make sure you are repeating what the customer wants in your page headline.
Here is an example:
You searched for: titanium ping pong paddle
Webber Excalibur Ping Pong Paddle featuring Titanium Construction
* Indestructible paddle
* Raise your game to new levels with more control over the ball
* Learn to hit the ball faster with precise accuracy
$99 suggested retail
Save $20
Super low Fake Store price of only $79
FREE Shipping for orders of $150 or more
Order by 3 PM Eastern time and receive yours tomorrow!
Now in order for the above to work best, you need to eliminate anything else on the page that is not directly talking about titanium ping pong paddles. In other words, don’t try to sell the customer anything other than what they want until AFTER they have committed to buying. Then it is OK to push other products, but until that happens, keep the focus of your page on the product you know they want.
Now we have a nice PPC ad and a decent landing page for the titanium ping pong paddle.
Our next step is to get them through the buying process. This is where the majority of your sales are lost.
The first thing you should do is make sure you have eliminated any unnecessary steps. After you do that, identify how many remaining pages are in your shopping cart process. A good example to follow is the shopping cart checkout process used by Amazon.com. Their process is actually much longer than necessary, but if you can keep your process to the same number of steps or less, you are good to go.
The second thing you should do is remember to keep selling the product again and again. Everyone works their butts off to get a customer to put something in their shopping cart, but after that they completely stop selling. They think the biggest obstacle is getting the customer to put something into the shopping cart. But that is not true. The majority of sales are lost within the shopping cart.
The reason is that the shopping cart is full of friction to the customer. They are constantly bombarded with things that make them think about clicking away. They are asked to create logins, enter shipping and billing addresses, phone numbers, emails, and worse of all – credit card info!
To overcome all this friction, you have to keep selling the product to the customer. In fact, you need to oversell it!
For example, the product can be listed on shopping cart pages as just this:
Webber Excalibur Paddle $79
But it is better to list it like this:
Webber Excalibur Ping Pong Paddle featuring Titanium Construction
* Indestructible paddle
* Raise your game to new levels with more control over the ball
* Learn to hit the ball faster with precise accuracy
$99 suggested retail
Save $20
Super low Fake Store price of only $79
“I just had to write and say how great this product is. I purchased it after my game had stagnated. Now I am beating everyone I play and it’s all thanks to the Webber Excalibur Ping Pong Paddle!
Gratefully,
Chuck Simons
Lansing, Kansas”
Constantly reminding the customer of why they want to move forward is crucial to keeping the highest percentage of sales. Every page of your shopping cart should continue to preach the product the customer is buying, and this includes repeating the product’s picture and the summary of its benefits. Placing a different testimonial about the product for every page of your shopping cart is also a great idea. This will keep the customer focused on the product instead of the money and time they are spending to get it.
Third, repeat the slogan of the company on all pages. In this case, our store was called Fake Store and their unique selling proposition was:
FREE Shipping for orders of $150 or more
Order by 3 PM Eastern time and receive your order tomorrow!
This should be repeated on every page of the shopping cart process! It is a very important strategy to increase your sales.
Now, if you managed to close a sale, here is when you can and should begin to up sell customers on other related items. For example, perhaps you have a nifty leather carrying case for the titanium paddles. Offer it as a quick two-click purchase. First click to say they want to view more details of the product, and second click to confirm they want the additional product after viewing it.
Jeremiah Thompson
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