Using a story about marketing to market your new marketing product, eh? I'm onto you!
I don't have any products to sell, but it was still an interesting read. Good to see you focusing on building trust before selling since that was one of the things your last e-book sales page was lacking (at least in my opinion).
That was exactly what I thought when I came to the conclusion: a nice marketing story to make an announcement of the product that improves conversion. Should I trust you product?
Am I the only one that thinks offering a free e-book and some drip marketing emails feels like those spammy SEO software companies?
You get a landing page where you have to give your email to get a download. The "Guide" is usually just some distilled thinking that's rarely worth the email you traded for it. If you were smart, you probably used an email address you use for all of your spam, because you know once you get the guide, the next thing up is a bunch of drip marketing emails to get you to upgrade.
The email tips are often just as vapid as the guide and you know you're in for at least 4 to 6 of them over the next 60 days, so you ignore every one of them and route them straight to notifications/promotions/spam.
Drip marketing and free giveaways isn't anything new, and it _can_ be effective, but it's not a silver bullet to sales, by any means.
Don't dismiss a method because some people use it for questionable things.
The goal is to build trust over time before asking for a sale. So putting out low quality content, followed by emails that aren't worth reading, doesn't build trust.
Use this method to deliver value and the sales will follow.
Perhaps something like this has more valuable for big-ticket items. I'm personally put off if I go to what I think will be a product page but instead get offered marketing spam. In my mind, it's a sign that the product on offer is no good, or is at least a poor value.
Can you point me to one you believe is done really well? The ones I have encountered, without exception, fail to deliver on this promise, and feel more like spam and less like value.
Was I the only one who saw this for the genius it was. The author walked us through the pain, selling us the problem. How he would never sell us a book he just wrote without developing a rapport. Then over the next paragraphs he transitioned us into buyers:
"Once you’ve had a chance to learn a lot from my material, and you’ve had enough time to start to trust me, then I tell you about the book."
then
"To put it in web marketing terms, the conversion rate will be incredibly higher by asking for the sale after building trust."
Followed by how hard it is to do this:
"It’s actually really painful to setup."
Oh but wait! I have a software suite that does this for you:
"With ConvertKit it is easy to set up a new landing page, upload a PDF or another file to offer as an incentive, then let the subscriber opt in to an email course."
I am not sure this is THAT big of a pain point. I do like the idea and direction sort of a mailchimp meets https://gumroad.com - but $37/month? Although I will admit there are a LOT more non-technical people who still struggle with wordpress - so maybe more of a integration/leverage from that might be ideal.
One feature you should think of is hosting the landing page on their specific domain. For example - the user can buy a domain, point it at the DNS and you take care of the rest. Rather than having convertkit.com/[some-random-hash] or a variation of it.
Looking forward to seeing the results and/or how well received this idea is
Yep, it's the best way to sell products online. I'll be writing a lot more blog posts about the process and how to implement it on any platform (not just mine).
Thanks for the encouragement! I'm definitely trying to hit that goal...
I'm curious to learn more about how you decided on your pricing. I've used Marketo for a few years now, it's an absolute PITA to set up simple campaigns and I've often thought of creating an alternative simply out of frustration.
I wanted it to be high enough that I could actually make money with it (i.e. not $15/month), but low enough to be accessible to people at my marketing level a year ago.
This is the product I wish I had when selling my books.
I really liked Visual Website Optimizer's pricing, so I used that as a model.
Lots of good takeaways from this post, some of which might be a bit hidden or subtle.
If you're launching your e-book, SaaS app, online course, etc. you'll need to build a reputation based on trust and value. Think about it: how many people will find themselves on your landing page, looking at some of your app screenshots and click on your big fat "Sign Up!" button because "Wow, I've only known this company existed for 3 seconds but here's my credit card!". You can do better!
In this case, a free guide to "Designing Forms That Convert" is a great example of educational and valuable material. Nathan gets your email address, you get some information you're interested in receiving and everyone is happy. If you educate people like this, frequently and with valuable content, you'll have their attention when you're ready to sell them something that they actually need.
(Patrick McKenzie earned a reputation in the HN community over the years by sharing what he's learned. Sharing == educating. When he's goes to sell a ~$500 video course on email [0], he seems to do pretty well.)
There's a reason why Nathan's CovertKit plans include thousands and thousands of emails. That's what you should be doing: sending emails and keeping a dialog with people who know you and your work. You don't have to pitch your SaaS app in the footer of every email, but it's important that you become an authoritative resource for the market/audience that you're working with. You'll likely have much better success selling to them.
Final point: writing good copy and valuable content is important and is what is going to make you money, not your perfectly refactored dashboard code. Are you a mediocre developer? Enough to handle CRUD and a few extras? Good. Now to get to work on your writing skills.
Well said. The more you teach, the more people will trust you. Focus everything on sharing valuable information and it won't be hard to build a business around that.
I eat out a lot because I'm a terrible cook. Even given my lack of culinary skills, I never get salads or burgers because I can make that stuff at home.
That's why I am stingy as hell with software. I don't pay for anything because I know I could build it myself if I really needed it. It's worked well so far and it's a big reason why most of the $ I spend on software is for games.
But I'll be damned if I didn't read this and think "I'd pay a little bit of money for that."
I've been following Nathan's work here on HN for a while, and I think that son of a bitch finally got me. :)
Good luck, Nathan; I'm looking forward to see what comes out of CK.
I don't know if I follow the "I wouldn't buy that, I could do it myself" approach, for a few reasons:
- variable quality: you could do it, but could you do it as well? It's not really a boolean proposition
- updates/patches: you could reinvent the wheel, but do you want to spend your whole life updating all the various wheels you've accumulated? Paying for dev is also paying for support and upkeep, especially in the security space
- time value: this is the biggest one, there's an opportunity cost attached to pursuing commodity projects. You could write Quicken from scratch, but the $20 you save probably doesn't cover your effort. And unless you were really interested in the tax code, it's probably not very fun.
Following your example about food: we have a boutique salad restaurant near my house. It's like $7 for a salad, which seems absurd. But they're giant salads, and really filling, and most crucially they offer about 4 dozen toppings. I can't personally justify having a fridge full of salad toppings: it's a lot of work to keep stocked on fresh stuff, and I don't know how much money I'd really save after all the waste. So I pay a little bit for the convenience, and I can have my kale salad with chickpeas and grilled tofu and beets and whatever else ridiculous stuff I feel like. It's all fresh and delicious, and I don't think I could have reasonably produced it at home.
That attitude extends to software as well. If it does what I want, and it does it well, I buy it. Apparently a lot of chefs end up eating out a lot, because they don't want to cook when they get home from work.
I've struggled with this issue a lot. I think when you are still learning or have free time it is good to code or design your own solutions. But after a while you learn that you could spend 40 hours (or more!) coding something, or you could pay $50/month for it. If you value your time at more then a couple bucks an hour (I do), then paying for software is a pretty easy decision.
Also I'd far rather have a team working on making it the best software for the job, rather than what I could do on my own.
I think this is exactly the problem Rob Walling is solving with his new app Drip (http://getdrip.com). Friction-free, end-to-end drip campaigns aimed at increasing conversion rates. Competition!
I've had success with drip campaigns, but one key factor that is non-negotiable is that the content has to be phenomenal. It's really not the tool that matters. The reason why Patrick McKenzie can rave about double-digit spikes from drip campaigns is because he is a great writer and even better marketer.
(FYI ConvertKit HTTPS is broken, at least on Chrome/Android.)
This was a no-brainer to buy:
* I want to do EXACTLY this form of marketing, and it's cheaper at $100 to buy it than build it, so +1.
* This is not my core competency, so another +1 to letting me focus on building what I want vs need.
* Finally, from an initial read it looks like you know what you're doing, and just the landing pages have enough tips/hints that I bookmarked them for reference whether I use ConvertKit or not. +1 again, and time to bust out the credit card.
When you create good free content for the user, they automatically asume that the paid content will be even better, which makes the selling point so much easier.
Unfortunately building trust using this method is becoming increasingly difficult. The more sellers use it (up to the point that books are written about it) the more it's being washed out and abused, the more aware consumers become of the manipulation and the more they reject it. I see more and more sellers having to resort to statements like "Free something - NO questions asked, NO registration, NO strings attached...", which defeats the whole purpose.
The problem you are trying to solve is not a software problem. the part which you are trying to solve is the easiest part of the process. What to give free, how to get them engaged etc etc are more difficult than just setting up a landing page on wordpress.
But the feeling I got in my stomach when I started reading about ConvertKit was not a good one. This particular post was not a sales pitch that (what I think to be) Nathan's audience would be comfortable with.
Ha, so true. It's always a challenge to sell to multiple audiences. That's why the main call to action on that page is to get a free guide on increasing conversion rates.
I don't have any products to sell, but it was still an interesting read. Good to see you focusing on building trust before selling since that was one of the things your last e-book sales page was lacking (at least in my opinion).