Going Nuts Over The Lack Of Focus

One of my coach­ing stu­dents, Dave Mar­tin, asked me to quickly cri­tique a sales page he will be work­ing on. The site is for “Gourmet Sweet Nuts” by Lady Betsy, which, accord­ing to David, are “Gawd-​​awful good!”

The prob­lem is, this page sells the prod­uct directly but was orig­i­nally intended as an intro­duc­tion let­ter to candy stores and deal­ers. (That explains why it isn’t sell­ing as well as it can.)

Just like try­ing to mix SEO with good sales copy, it’s a hard thing to do when your page has more than one goal. It requires skill. But in this par­tic­u­lar case, it’s best to focus only on one core mes­sage. In fact, I always try to stick to the “rule of focus” in copy, which means…

… Focus only on:

1. One audi­ence
2. One mes­sage
3. One out­come

One audi­ence means, your copy should speak to one audi­ence only. Try­ing to cover so many vari­ances in your audi­ence dilutes the power of speak­ing one-​​on-​​one with your reader. You must paint your copy with broad brush­strokes in order to appeal to every­one, which causes you to lose cred­i­bil­ity, impact, and sales.

If your copy is too generic, or if it speaks to sev­eral peo­ple in the same copy, peo­ple will think that you don’t have their best inter­est at heart, or that the prod­uct is truly not for them. Instead, make your copy inti­mate, per­sonal, and con­ver­sa­tional. And stick to no more than one core audience.

One mes­sage means, don’t try to com­mu­ni­cate dif­fer­ent mes­sages in your copy. Imag­ine read­ing a story that goes off into so many direc­tions. When this hap­pens, you lose focus and fail to cap­ture the essence of the core mes­sage — and will likely stop read­ing it because it’s just too confusing.

Focus on only one key or core mes­sage, and drive that mes­sage home. Try not to go on tan­gents, and stick with what’s rel­e­vant. Remem­ber, a con­fused reader will never buy, since the con­fused mind always says “No!”

One out­come means, ask them to do one thing — and, if at all pos­si­ble, one thing only. (Which in many cases is to buy.) You may have two options for the same thing, because it’s still part of the same offer. But don’t make sev­eral offers on the same copy.

In other words, I don’t mean options. That’s one choice (i.e., one offer), and it’s still one out­come. I’m talk­ing about two dif­fer­ent out­comes alto­gether. If you must (and only if you must), offer them to go some­where else, likely after they’ve responded, for another offer. But don’t con­fuse them with mul­ti­ple calls to action in the same salescopy.

Bot­tom line, if your mar­ket is com­prised of two or more audi­ences, tells two or more sales mes­sages, or requires two or more out­comes, I sub­mit that you should have sep­a­rate pages and copy tar­get­ing each one.

In the end, avoid con­fu­sion. Be sim­ple, focused, and straight to the point.

Now, com­ing back to Lady Betsy’s copy:

At best, I would sim­ply pro­mote two sep­a­rate pages entirely. At worst, I would have the page focused on sell­ing the nuts and have a link some­where for “dealer infor­ma­tion,” which leads to a sep­a­rate page that sells store own­ers on sell­ing their prod­uct for them — as well as all the ben­e­fits from a store owner’s per­spec­tive, not a con­sumer let alone a sweet nut enthusiast.

With that in con­sid­er­a­tion, here’s what I rec­om­mend with the copy. Here’s a screen­shot, just in case you’ve changed it…

The for­mat­ting def­i­nitely needs improve­ment. The spac­ing is wrong (there’s a big gap on the left and no space at all between the head­line and the top header graphic, mak­ing the head­line really hard to read).

The font needs to def­i­nitely be at least 10pt. It’s hard to read — espe­cially for the dis­crim­i­nate reader, which makes up this product’s tar­get market.

The pic­ture should be higher up, near the begin­ning. Right now, being in between the copy and the order but­ton, it will deter response. For one, it’s not above the fold, so it’s easy to miss. Sec­ond, the order but­ton is not as promi­nent, mak­ing THAT easy to miss, too.

The copy is def­i­nitely less than desir­able. The lead copy, the Christ­mas story, is nice. But there are no ben­e­fits (aside from the mem­o­ries it can con­jure), par­tic­u­larly in read­ing fur­ther. Plus, your copy might alien­ate non-​​Christians.

If you’re going to sell it right off the page, you need to be allur­ing and sen­sual, and add more copy, espe­cially for a gourmet food lover (any­thing “gourmet” is usu­ally a spe­cialty prod­uct, in the four major cat­e­gories of products).

Gourmet prod­ucts appeal chiefly to the more sophis­ti­cated and dis­cern­ing cus­tomers. And the more intan­gi­ble, high-​​end, or spe­cial­ized the prod­uct, then the more visual and thought-​​evoking the copy needs to be.

It needs sex appeal, charm, and descrip­tions that, while read­ing it, “makes your mouth water, your heart pound, your thoughts drift, and your taste­buds rum­ble.” Eat­ing this prod­uct is such a del­i­cacy that “it’s too sin­ful” to savor.

Also, you might want to add ben­e­fits that are not just food-​​related but also gift-​​related, for instance. Because, other than being a del­i­cacy, offer­ing this prod­uct as a gift is a major ben­e­fit. Like the abil­ity to “sweeten any occa­sion” and “add that del­i­cate touch” to any social event, which will make it “an evening to remem­ber.” Etc.

For exam­ple (and this is just off the top of my head, with­out giv­ing it real thought):

“The sweet, spell­bind­ing aroma of Lady Betsy’s Sweet Nuts fills the air and instantly invig­o­rates the room. Their unique, exquis­ite, mouth­wa­ter­ing fla­vor that keeps you com­ing back for more will turn even the most sober indi­vid­ual into a child fight­ing for that last bite.“
“Com­prised of Lady Betsy’s pas­sion and exper­tise, her excep­tional recipe embod­ies the essence and fla­vors that sweet nut enthu­si­asts will savor. It’s the per­fect gift for any occa­sion, or to add that spe­cial touch to gift pack­ages.”

And so on.

Take a look at some of the gourmet foods online, like Lindt, Godiva, etc, and see the copy they use. That should give you some ideas to model and swipe from, too.

As for the head­line, I like the angle, but the copy doesn’t back it up. It seems to be too sen­sa­tional. (And peo­ple will think, “will every order taste the same, ’cause they didn’t write it down…” It’s risky.)

Instead, I would prob­a­bly say…

“A Secret Recipe, A Night To Remem­ber…” “Heaven is not as far away as you think.” Or some­thing along those lines.

Finally, I don’t know why there’s a shop­ping cart but­ton at the bot­tom, since this is a one-​​offer, one-​​product sales page. A sim­ple order but­ton or link is good enough.

You might also want to add order­ing instruc­tions — take the reader by the hand and tell her exactly what to do and what to expect. Talk about how to fill out the form, what’s the deliv­ery time and method, how it’s pack­aged and shipped, etc.

(You might also want to add a sep­a­rate order­ing process for those who wish to order the prod­uct and have it shipped to some­one else as a gift, per­haps gift-​​wrapped, with dif­fer­ent deliv­ery instructions.)

Finally, you might want to add “seals of approval” at the end, prefer­ably near the order but­ton or order­ing instruc­tions, since these tend to jump con­ver­sion dra­mat­i­cally. They increase per­ceived cred­i­bil­ity and secu­rity, and boost response in almost every case I’ve tested.

For exam­ple, adding credit card logos, per­haps seals or logos from awards the prod­uct has won (for exam­ple, if your gourmet nuts were talked about in a spe­cialty or gourmet food mag­a­zine, you might want to add the publication’s logo, with copy that says, “Gourmet Lover’s Pick of The Month, May 2007!”).

Another is ScanAlert’s Hack­er­Safe logo, which I highly rec­om­mend. I signed up for their pro­gram and added it to my new Copy Doc­tor sales page, which I updated three days ago (check out the new lay­out!), and it already bumped up response by 32%.

I hope this has been helpful.

About the Author

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