On Persuasive Writing, Narratives & When To Call The WordMaid

Being told no sucks.

No matter how hard I orient myself around the perspective that being wrong is the best learning experience, being told no one wants what I am trying to sell is hard.

I’ve been thinking a lot about conversion rates recently. Not just because I sell things online, but because I have two upcoming product announcements that are about boosting conversion rates.

You know, the awesome thing about conversion rates is we talk about winning 10% of the time. Not losing 90% of the time. If your target conversion rate it is 10% and you hit that you have a “the glass is full enough for us to drink” outlook, not a “the glass is quantifiably speaking, less than half full” view of the world.Yesterday, I shared a draft of a post I’m working on about one of those products with my team and they called it “good persuasive writing.” I hadn’t thought of it as persuasive writing, I just did what I do — write a story about something I’m working on.

I’m not telling you what these two new products are, yet. I’m taking you along for a narrative journey to them.

If You Need WordPress Sales Copy Done Right, Talk To Lisa

Social proof works, friends.

When I started CalderaWP I knew I’d need to do a lot of writing of sales copy. A lot really, since we have so many plugins. You have no idea. Seriously, go to our plugins page, look at all those plugins, realize that there are a ton more we haven’t QAed yet.

I wasn’t worried. I think I’m pretty good at writing about WordPress. People keep telling me I am. So I wrote a bunch of sales copy that I thought was simple and easy to understand. People started telling me that it was “to techy” and didn’t make the benefits clear.This upset me, because I thought I had made it all simple, clear and not too technical. I love doing it all myself, but I also know the value of building teams and outsourcing when needed. So I hired Lisa Gibson of WordMaid.com to fix some of our sales copy.

Why her? Andrew Munro of AffiliateWP and Easy Digital Downloads endorses her on her site. That’s about as targeted of social proof as you can get. I needed someone to improve the sales copy for products in a similar niche to what Andrew does, and I’m selling them on a site powered by Easy Digital Downloads that uses one of Andrew’s themes.

Go niche or go home.

Did I mention she delivered, and delivered really quality work? Seriously, she made the pages for Caldera Forms, Easy Queries and URL Builder so much more clear and simple. And guess what? They convert better now.

Start With The Other Why

It’s about the journey, not the destination.

So I realized that I needed help making my sales copy clear, simple and easy to understand, so I hired Lisa to work her editing magic. It made sense and you should to.

But, sales pages are not your only sales copy. When someone gets to a sales page, they are looking for the details. Why do I need it? How does it do that? What does it cost? Your sales copy needs to give them that and make it clear why.But how do you get them there. You engage them with a story.I’ve written before on how I work to craft my WordPress tutorials as a narrative journey in which build empathy with the reader. I do it to empower them to go on a journey where they believe they can do the thing I’m explaining. It’s important since explanation is worthless if the person you’re explaining to doesn’t believe they can accomplish the goal they have set out to achieve.

Simon Sinek’s “Start With Why” has become a sales mantra. Start with why someone needs your product, or to believe in your cause, why it reinforces their notion of self. Not what it is or even worse how it works.But you can step back a step, and take people on the journey off why you’re making a product, why you’re championing a cause.

I Think Y’all Like Me

If not, be nice and don’t say anything

Since I first wandered randomly into the WordPress world it’s been amazing how welcoming I’ve felt. Sure, I get socially awkward, and convinced I’m a fraud and no one likes me as much as the next person sitting alone in his room letting impostor syndrome consume them.

But y’all keep sharing my articles, downloading my book (1400+ times,) inviting me to speak at WordCamps (8 by years end,) downloading Caldera Forms (we’ve pentadrupled the active install count since launching CalderaWP) and otherwise making me feel welcomed and appreciated.That’s super awesome.Thing is y’all inspire me more than you know.

So why wouldn’t I share the journey that is taking me to all these fun things I get to be a part of making?