The purpose of your copy and advertisement is not to entertain people, but rather to sell your products and services. Being aesthetically pleasing does not automatically mean more sales. In your role as a professional entrepreneur, you should aim to increase sales at the lowest possible cost.

You need to think like a salesperson when writing your sales page. While you are passionate about your job as an expert, coach, consultant, social media manager, or yoga instructor etc., anything sales-related may put you immediately out of your comfort zone. Nevertheless, as an entrepreneur, your job is to persuade people to purchase your services (because they need and want them).

Financial decisions, purchase behavior and decision-making are largely driven by emotional factors. In fact, 95% of purchasing decisions are subconscious, so people are not as savvy as they would like to believe regarding financial decisions. When evaluating a purchase decision, you may compare different brands and prices, but there’s more to it than that. Most people are driven by unconscious urges, the most significant of which is emotion. As a result, we come to realise that humans are not as logical as we might think.

When it comes to your services, understanding the difference between benefits and features is imperative, as consumers buy experiences and not features. Features provide facts about the program, and benefits show what the service does and the results a prospective client can expect. When marketing your services or writing your sales copy, you should emotionally connect your audience with your offer. It can incorporate all the best features, but if it doesn’t stir up an emotion in the prospect, they will lose interest.

Always think from your potential buyer’s perspective; how do they benefit from buying your offer? How will they feel when they are reading about the benefits? Stress out the benefits of your services and mention the features only after you have got their attention so that you can build up the excitement about working with you/buying your services. Your industry might be very saturated and there are already tons of service providers, online courses, and programs. However, this does not mean that yours would not fit in the mix. What attributes can be stressed that your “competitors” have not?

Feature example: 6 X 60 min coaching sessions

Benefit example: “Get rid of the fear of public speaking”

Focusing only on features your service leads to a primarily self-centered focus. There’s just one thing about this situation: you don’t matter. Therefore, when marketing and selling your services, your focus should be on your ideal clients as well as on their pleasure and pain points. What is the outcome and the results that your client will receive from working with you? What is the ultimate goal your ideal client wants to achieve? What emotional value will your ideal client receive once they purchase your services? For example, if you work as a health coach, your client wanting to lose weight is the means goal and not the end goal. Your client’s end goal might be to be healthier so that they can spend time with their loved ones. Your offering will then be focused on your client’s end goals and the lifestyle they will receive as a result of working with you. 

Making the sales copy about you and your service (features) will make a potential client or customer feel sold to. This will lead to buyers feeling like they are not being truly heard, which will build up their resistance. As a result, they might feel you’re only interested in making money, rather than helping and serving them.

Make it about them instead – their biggest struggles (pain points), their biggest dreams and goals (pleasure points), and how your expertise will change their lives. By understanding their actual pain points you can provide them with a possible solution. Instead of focusing on the features, you can explain what purchasing your services means for them in the long run and how it addresses their pain points.

By using pain as a motivator, let the reader move from the pain points (problems) to the pleasure points (their dreams, wishes, and goals). Your ideal client cares about the things that will make their lives easier, nicer, more prosperous, and healthier. These needs are caused by stressors that cause them “pain”. You can emotionalise the problem by asking questions that they will answer with a YES! Balance the pain by explaining how you have the cure for that problem, which you actually do as an expert in the field. It is also important to show empathy or that you understand the problem by the form of telling your own story; how you moved from a pain island to a pleasure island, and how you can help the ideal client to do the same.