Episode 26:Marketing and Sales Pages: Artisanal, Hand Crafted, Locally Sourced, Farm to Browser
How do you build a good marketing page? We have no idea, but we’re going to try and figure it out anyway.
Summary
Nick and Kai break down how to write marketing and sales pages that actually close, from opening thesis to objection killing to price. They cover page anatomy, where writers chronically underinvest (almost always objections), and why the whole thing starts with copying the customer’s own words back at them.
Highlights
- Nick writes about 15,000 words for every 1,000–1,500 word marketing page and won’t ship until someone reacts with hyperbole. Polite approval means the page isn’t good enough yet.
- Kai builds first drafts from customer language: Reddit threads, Amazon book reviews on related titles, and sales call notes stored verbatim in Evernote, sorted by page section before a word of copy is written.
- Objection killing is the most underinvested section on most pages. Ramit Sethi’s marketing pages run 40,000+ words, the majority devoted to objections. One was too long for Staples to bind single-sided.
- Nick cites third-party market data he didn’t produce, like the $300 million Walmart.com button test, to justify the argument without self-promotion. The data does the persuading; he doesn’t have to claim authority himself.
- List the plausible alternatives to your service, then name their costs: SEO takes six months, Facebook ads require upfront spend to calibrate, hiring is a gamble. Kai uses this structure explicitly on his outreach services page to dismiss competitors while building trust with the reader.
- A sales page has a buy button; a marketing page ends with an application or email capture. Higher-ticket services need the longer marketing page format because the buyer’s risk is higher and objections multiply.
- Kai copies verbatim sentences from sales calls into Evernote. Any question a prospect raises that the page doesn’t already answer goes onto the page within a week.
Read the transcript
So, marketing pages.
Marketing, marketing, marketing.
People think that I’m good at writing marketing pages, which is terrifying. I’ve had marketing pages where people will have a conversation with me and be like, oh, yeah, you should go to like draft. nu slash revise. And they like loaded on their phone and they want to forget about it because they’re having a conversation with me and it would be phenomenally rude and inappropriate to like stop talking to me. And then they stop talking to me and read the entire marketing page. And then they emailed their CMO and CTO that they absolutely need to talk to me. And then they all they do is talk to me about A-B testing for the next half an hour. That is what a successful marketing page should do. And there are a lot of things that go into that, right? It’s not just You have a good thing to sell, or you’re a charismatic person, or you’re a good writer. Those all help. I have the charisma of a 2x4 to the forebrain. So I’m not burning down that candle. There are other things that I’m doing that are trying to make a good marketing page. I believe that’s called a dump stat in Dungeons and Dragons. Oh my god. I’m doing what I can to get people interested about the offering. address and eliminate any objections that they may potentially have, lay out the terms of the engagement in a clear way, set clear boundaries around what it is I’m going to do for them, and then close the sale. Those are typically the anatomy talking points that I have on a marketing page. There are things that I add in, like maybe a money back guarantee. Maybe social proof. Maybe allusions to my previous track record and how great of a human being I am at delivering results to your organization. There’s an overall tenor that fits a writing style of a marketing page, which is that you don’t talk about yourself until you absolutely have to. You talk about them. You, you, you, you, you. And everyone does this. I have to scrub my marketing pages of me-focused language every time I write them. I also obsessively edit my marketing pages. They are boiled down to their absolute skeletal structure. I write about fifteen thousand words for every 1,000 to 1,500 word marketing page that I do. And that shows people and I listen to their reactions, right? I do not ship a marketing page. Until I have people that are like, oh my God, this is amazing. I do not take anything less than hyperbole. From any of my marketing pages. If somebody’s like, that’s a good idea, they’re a yes person, they’re being polite. Fuck them. It is not good enough.
You must bleed. You must bleed for your market.
No, you have to grab someone by the shoulders and shake and slap them with your words. There is. There is nothing more essential with a marketing page. And that is the hardest thing. It is the hardest and most essential thing. You are not done editing your marketing page ever. So that’s a little bit of table setting there. Let’s maybe go into every part of the marketing page because there’s a lot to talk about. The first thing that, and I’ll turn this over to Kai in a moment, but the first thing that I do is I set basically a statement of purpose. Why are we here? What are we talking about? What is the thesis of the argument? What does this look like in practice? Let’s say with DraftRevise. A-B testing is hard and important. You are operating at a scale large enough for it, and you have no idea how to do it. So it alludes to a specific pain that you’re feeling. It alludes to the importance of it. It alludes to the importance of getting a separate expert in, right? And it’s making a very clear and forceful statement of its purpose. You may disagree with that. That means you’re not a good fit for the offering. But it exists, right? What do you do first on a marketing page? Is it similar?
The first thing I do on a marketing page is very similar. I start off with a base understanding of any service I offer or anything I offer online needs to solve a problem for The person reading the page, the best buyer I’m envisioning. So, step one is understanding what that problem is. Step two is making sure that the solution I’m presenting, the package, the download by free ebook here. aligns with that problem. From there, I go through and I have a template that I use that Eric Davis, no relation, gave me to outline my marketing or sales page. But then I take a detour into finding customer language. And there’s a couple different reasons I do this and a couple different ways. The reasons are I want to be speaking to my customer the way my customer speaks to their colleagues. I don’t understand my customer well enough. Nobody does. And the best way to understand The actual language one of your customers uses is ask them directly to talk about their problems in email or in a conversation. Read what they’re writing online in watering holes like Reddit forums or mailing lists or Slack communities. And read one great copywriting tip is Read the reviews they leave on Amazon books to see things of praise that they talk about and points where the book misses the mark, but their actual language is there. And then I’ve gone as far as in draft one of a sales page or marketing page, just saying, okay, I know like section one is going to talk about the problem, then who this is for, and then the solution, and then what’s included. As I find relevant sentences or relevant quotes in my research, I will just store them in an Evernote file and then sort them appropriately on the page as draft. 1. and start writing from a place of this is how my customer or my ideal customer talks about the pain and problem and refine from there. But it all starts from a point of understanding the person is coming to me in a state of pain. I am providing a solution to solve said state of pain. How do I best describe it in a way that they know in a way that resonates with how they communicate? That will move them towards taking an action. I had somebody reach out to me for my outreach services and in their application form. They did a beautiful job of saying, Well, hey, we know this is something we need to be focusing on, and we’ve done it before, but it’s always been people coming to us for joint ventures or people coming to us. To interview us on podcasts, but we’ve never done it proactively. We’ve never approached it as something to invest time and attention in, which is why we’re coming to you. And I’m like, that’s making it into the next version of my marketing page because it specifically describes the pain and problem that they’re experiencing. Experiencing and the solution that they’re looking for. We want somebody to handle it for us. We don’t want to worry about it anymore. We have some experience with it. We know it’s valuable. We know it will work. But what’s the number one challenge? Time. And when I started off selling outreach services and marketing these services, I didn’t realize that one of the major benefits I provide is you don’t have to invest the time anymore. But time and time again, ha People have called that out as being a major benefit of the service. So, for me, it’s a process again of starting with that pain and problem, understanding how I could help the person. Using their language as much as possible, and then building the sales page from there, following a template, which basically breaks down: like, here’s the pain, here’s the problem, here’s the solution, here’s who this is for, here’s who this is not for, here’s Some social proof. Here’s what the price is. Here’s what you get for the price. Here’s the buy button and putting it up. And I’m less rigorous about revising as you are. I’m more excited to Write the sales page, go through a couple iterations on it over a few weeks, share it with some people for feedback, and then get it out there and in front of potential customers as soon as possible. Because that will give me the greatest feedback. I’ve soft launched sales pages and marketing pages before by typing them up in Evernote, sending them to a prospect, and saying, Hey, I’m thinking about a new offering. Can you read through this? And we hop on a 10-minute Skype call and You tell me what you think about it, and I just listen for their feedback and then I ask questions. I’m not suggesting anything or saying, like, oh, I really meant this. I’m just saying, like, oh, uh, what do you think? And they’re like, I don’t really understand this part. And I’m like, tell me more. I just want to get their actual language describing what they see as the holes in the page because I might look at it and say, perfect. They might look at it and say, I don’t understand what I’m getting. What am I buying? What’s costing me $1,000? And until I have those conversations with potential buyers, I won’t have enough data to effectively optimize or effectively revise the page.
Yeah, you’re a lot faster than I am, and I actually think that’s a feature. I spend a lot of time creating my stuff in private, and I don’t launch as fast as I should. more or less fixing that right now. I’m drowning in work and don’t have any reason to launch anything right now. But I have basically a to-do list and it’s just going to knock it out and put it up and see what happens. And there’s not going to be a huge like fanfare launch around it. There are a couple of small exceptions with what I’m doing in my business. But you also, there’s another difference. You follow what’s called the pain dream fix model that I think Amy Hoy kind of pioneered a couple of years ago. where she alludes to the cla the customer’s potential pains, discusses what the dream is, like the pain would go away. And exactly what that would look like, and then provides the fix, right? The thing that you’re offering. This keeps it focused on what the person’s issues are and alludes to there being a pain in the first place. It also kind of sets the table that you understand what their problem is. So one huge thing that you want to be doing on a marketing page is Quickly as possible is establishing a rapport with the reader and showing that you understand their problems in a very deep and serious fashion. There are a lot of people who write Very self-indulgently in marketing pages and in general. And that doesn’t work very well. So when I’m creating my thesis at the beginning of it, I’m Usually admitting that there is a pain. That’s one of the parts of the anatomy of it. But it also outlines that the pain sucks. So I’m basically writing a giant diss track about the pain. And saying, well, it should be better, right? Like, why isn’t it better? Well, because you don’t have the internal capability to think about A-B testing, because it’s like patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time. That’s dumb. And then I lead into why I created the thing. Then I go back to the thesis and usually I cite research to justify my argument. And it doesn’t have to be my research, it can be other people’s. So, with the original version of DraftRevise’s marketing page, I cite the like, what was it, like $300 million button test where they A-B tested something on Walmart. com and it was Jared’s pool. I didn’t do that. I mentioned that as an example. I mentioned a couple other examples. I mentioned that it’s incremental. I mentioned that it’s cheaper than a redesign. So I’m automatically framing against alternatives. One of the things, to move into kind of the objection-killing thing, is why don’t we do X instead? Why don’t we redesign our site instead? Why don’t we just update our copy and launch the change instead? Why don’t we do this? Why don’t Do less It’s a way to show that you’re the best option, right? You need to convince the reader that this is part of their strategy and why. And that it’s the best option right now. Because they’re going to come in wondering every single reason why it’s not the best option.
One of the best books I ever read on marketing and sales was The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes. And in it, he talks about Two very, very key elements that we’re talking about here. One is the importance of bringing market data to the front of the conversation with the buyer because It doesn’t need to be your data, but it’s just data that’s circulating out there in the marketplace, research studies that people have done that show why what you’re promoting is valuable. If, you know. Badonka Donk Incorporated released a report about how A-B testing is the wave of the future and companies that invest in it get a two to one ROI on average. Well If you’re able to point to that as a third-party, unbiased source and say, they say this is valuable, it elevates you. It’s not just you saying, I think my thing is valuable, it’s you saying, This third party says this thing is valuable. Why do we often see third party research reports or research reports commissioned by a third party to take advantage and sort of use this shortcut? Like Coca-Cola will never do a research project about why sugar isn’t bad. But they’ll pay for a nonprofit to do a research report about why sugar isn’t bad and then cite that report as many times as possible. We could take advantage of this in our own industry, in our own marketing and sales pages, by finding supporting market data. I’ve been researching like how popular are podcasts? What’s the growth curve look like on podcasts? So As I rewrite my audience power up, I’ll get you on podcast marketing page. I could say, this is an explosive medium. And it’s not just me, this Jewish guy in Eugene telling you, here’s a list of things that talk about this as being important as well. And that adds up. To a more convincing sales page. The second most important thing that comes out of Ultimate Sales Machine, I’m trying to fill up time as I remember what it is, is the importance of highlighting Alternatives and then dismissing those alternatives. So, what could somebody conceivably do instead of this service? Well, they could do A, B, or C. Let’s take a minute and talk about why A, B, and C aren’t as good as we think they are. They’re great services, they’re great ideas, but they might not fix the problem we started off with. And in my case, I’m saying, like, well, hey, instead of outreach, you can do SEO. You could pay for Facebook ads, you could do a direct mail campaign, you could hire a salesperson. Those are all wonderful business growth tactics. I use a lot of them, I recommend a lot of them. But if you’re coming to this Page from a place of I need to, you know, promote myself, I need to make sure more people are aware of my brand. Well, then we could say, well, Facebook ads, they’re great, but you’re going to be investing a lot of money to figure out if they work or not. SEO is wonderful, but it takes six-ish months before you start seeing results. You could hire a salesperson or a PR person, but you don’t know if they’re going to work out. And so you’re able to. Put these other options on the table and then systematically say, Well, you could do this, but this is why it might not be ideal. Or you could do that, but that’s why it’s not ideal. And this builds trust with the reader as well because you’re saying like there are other options out there, but these are the costs of those other options. I want to make sure you’re well informed. And it does double duty by promoting our own service as the alternative and dismissing potential competitors. Somebody might be pitching a prospective client on why they should do A instead of B. And if you’re the guy selling B, it’s very important to say, well, this is why A might not make that most sense for your business. And somebody reading the sales page will be like, oh, gosh, I had that worry too. I had that fear. Thank you. Yeah.
So now that you’ve alluded to the person’s fears, what’s next? So I tend generally set out in very broad strokes, maybe two sentences tops, what the service is. and what the outcomes of the services is. So again, with DraftRevise. I run A-B tests, you get back to running your business. End of description. Next, I start killing objections. Here’s some example objections. You’re expensive. I could do X instead. I could hire internally instead. You’re a consultant. I could do it myself. I could I could do nothing. I could do nothing. I could do nothing. This is bullshit. I don’t need it. It’s not the right time. It’s you’re not the right person. Why can’t I choose giant corporation instead? Those these might be some combination of these is probably sensible for you. Probably some that I’m not mentioning sensible for you. Another is, I didn’t know I needed this until five minutes ago. What gives you the right? It’s a really common one. And that’s a complicated objection to be killing.
Yeah. And the specific for that objection, I’d say. If somebody shows up at the page and they’re like eyes wide open, oh gosh, I did not realize this, that’s where you link to supporting market data that you’ve created. Hey, you know, I wrote a book on this. If you suddenly realize you need A-B testing, Well, instead of investing X thousand dollars, invest $49, download my book, and then you’ll understand the problem better and well enough to decide if this is the right service for you. Perfect opportunity for a downsell, or to link to a collection of articles you’ve written, or any way to educate the person who’s like, oh shit, what do I do now? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
So, yeah, there’s definitely a you need to be addressing this. You need to do it in a way that’s not just a bulleted list. I generally make it more conversational. This is one of the parts that gets rewritten the most for me. And I am always thinking, okay, well, what am I missing here? Because there’s definitely like a Dunning-Kruger issue, right? So one thing that I do when I run my marketing page past other people before I launch is I ask, like, what are you thinking about that might be a better alternative? And then I end up slapping my forehead about seven or eight times, and I have to come up with something else. To kill off an objection. You need to be systematically and logically dismantling these objections. If somebody says that an objection is fair, Concede it, but then also say, and this might be a good fit in this situation. It might be that you can turn objection into a criterion for why they might want to apply for you, right? So one person is like, Well, I don’t get enough traffic for A-B testing. I’m like, That’s true. You don’t get enough traffic for A-B testing. Buy this instead from me. You know, like, don’t BS it. You know, like, you should still be. You should still be honest and forthright about it, and you should be finding reasons why people shouldn’t be applying to you. But if, like, you know, you keep doing that, maybe you’re coming up with the wrong service. Maybe.
I’d take that and turn it a bit and say, well, if you keep running into an objection like that, it might be that you’re marketing the wrong service to the right people. And if we take that a step further, an objection can be an indication of a pain that you have not yet solved for the customer. And it might be if enough people are saying like, yeah, this sounds good, but I really need something different. Well, Why aren’t you selling that something different if it fits into your overall positioning? If people show up and they’re like, yeah, A-B testing is good, but I really need X, and X is something that conceivably fits into the draft world. Why not make that available as a service? If people are literally saying, I’d pay money for this, but you don’t have it, take the money. Right. Yeah.
So I think there’s a lot to be said for making sure that you’re laying out what is good and not good for it. That kind of, I end up saying often, I have bulleted lists where it’s like, who’s good for this service? This. Who’s not good for this service? This. That also helps promote exclusivity. So I spend the last basically third of my marketing pages saying that I am a prize to be won. Showing that the time is limited, that you don’t have a whole lot of ability to act, and you have to do it right now. You should be beginning a conversation as quickly as humanly possible about it. Yeah, and that’s basically it. I close with price usually and a link to apply. because it’s not for everybody, and I want to continue asking qualifying questions with usually what is a productized consulting service, that sort of thing. But yeah, yeah.
And I think that brings us to a distinction that we’ve danced around up until now. What is the difference between a marketing page and a sales page?
Yeah, so a sales page is probably asking for it has a buy button on it, for one. The marketing page probably has an application button. Or it spends a lot more time killing off objections. A sales page announces a thing exists, provides a few benefits, and that’s it. It gets in and out quickly. So it’s way shorter. It looks more like it probably belongs to an e-commerce site. It probably connects directly to a shopping cart. And that’s it. You might have it, you know, there’s a gray area. You definitely have sales pages that look like marketing pages, and vice versa. I try not to make an insane distinction about this. Do what makes sense for the offering. If it turns into a sales page, great. If you end up writing a lot and it turns into a marketing page, great. Be intentional about what it is.
The distinction I make is very similar to yours. I just bruised my ankle, oh God. No, it’s fine. Just decided to hit it on a glass desk for emphasis. The distinction I make is. Similar to yours, a sales page has a buy button. A marketing page either ends with a call to action or the sales page ends with a call to action to buy. The marketing page ends with a call to action of either enter your email here to get this freebie or enter your email here to apply. The marketing page is Both should be selling on the benefits and both should, I argue, take the same form or a very similar form. It would be easy to have your draft revise page, but with a buy button here, you’d get more looky-lose paying you money who End up not being a good fit, and that’s a separate topic, but they follow the same format and layout. The distinction, really, in my mind, being the marketing page. Sells on the benefits and moves them towards applying. The sales page sells on the benefits and moves them towards handing over their money right now.
Yeah. Yeah, you’re definitely you need to make sure that you are initiating a customer transaction in a responsible fashion. You know, like that is, that’s really what I’m getting from your takeaway here: is, you know, are you selling a $20 book? Well, up the price to $30 and then provide something that looks like a sales page. Are you selling a $4,000 course? You probably want a marketing page that is the size of the Sears Tower. That is a small book. Ramit Sati’s marketing pages run like 40,000 words. Cadence and slang was 42,000 words. You know? Wow. That should give you a sense.
Yeah. Yeah, I once printed out one of Ramit’s sales pages for Azero to launch, one of his past iterations, linked to in the show notes here. And it Staples called me and Staples said, So we printed it out single-sided and it’s not going to fit in our binding. Should we reprint it double-sided? That is the size of his marketing page. It was larger than they could affect. Bind. Like, this is a gigantic wall of text. And if you take the time to read through it, you’ll see it hits on all the elements we’re talking about. He starts off talking about the pain, he switches to talking about the dream. He switches to talking about who this is for and who this is not for. He switches to talking about what the trigger is for needing what he’s selling. And he’ll describe what you’re getting. In just a few sentences, and then he’ll move on to pages and pages and pages of objection busting. I think he spends more time on the sales page we linked to in the show notes talking about the objections somebody might have. What if my wife doesn’t like it? What if my husband doesn’t want me to buy this? What if it’s not a good investment? What if I already have a Badanka Donk?
Then talking about any other area. It’s staggering. It’s I mean look at it. I just I’m loading it on Evernote right now and it is Yep, my scroll bar is about the size of a grain of rice And not even a very big one. We’re talking like our Boreo rice. It’s a book. It’s a book. And it makes him money as a like a 15, 20 person company, as a large staff, right? He’s able to afford that staff because he spends that much time killing objections. One thing that’s a pitfall, I’m going to ask you in a minute what the pitfalls are, but one thing that I see is People don’t put enough time into killing objections. They just hand wave. They’re like, are your objections? No, that’s actually not doing justice to the fact that somebody has objections, and it’s not being considerate to the reader. So you need to spend more time doing that usually. You probably are underestimating it. What other things do you see people commonly with on marketing pages?
They’re not speaking the voice of the customer. They’re talking about themselves instead of talking about the customer. They aren’t including any social proof. They aren’t including any market data. They spend too much time talking about. The features of what the service is instead of talking about the benefits and who it’s for. A great analogy I draw here is: you walk into a cocktail bar, you sit down, and you’re like Tell me about your cocktail. And they spend 35 minutes talking to you about how they prepare all the ingredients and mix it together, which is like cool if you’re into the cocktail. Lifestyle, but if you just really want a rum and coke, you’ll be like, No, I just want, I just want to know what rum you have. Let me tell you about the 30-year history of this rum. You’re telling me the wrong thing. They’re focusing too much on The craft that they’re providing rather than the experience that they’re providing. And I think that’s very important to think about as you sell a service online.
I just saw. I changed the name of the podcast episode in Trello to Artisanal Handcrafted Locally Sourced Farm-to-Browser Marketing and Sales Pages. And you live in the state of Oregon where like they actually make fun of people having like organic farm to table stuff. But like I am personally highly fond of sustainable agriculture and farm to table food. If you ask somebody, what’s your thoughts on ConAgra? and they’re like net positive, either they’re part of ConAgra in some capacity or their entire town got funded by it. Like that’s basically the only reasons that. That would politically make sense. But people hate the like insufferability of asking whether or not the cow was massaged before it was slaughtered. You know, like. Everybody hates that. They aren’t looking for the cow to be massaged. They’re not asking questions around that. They’re asking questions about the responsibility of the thing. And often it is the burger good. Yeah. But also, like, sustainable food generally involves better ingredients, you know? It’s why people go to a farmer’s market instead of. you know, Jewel Osco or wherever you go to get your groceries. Like generally, the farmers’ market produce costs roughly as much and is vastly better. Why, you know? And and they’re they’re getting the pain is the food isn’t good enough. The fix is: I go to the farmer’s market and get my food. There are a bunch of knock-on effects that improve agriculture, and I’m not going to politicize anymore about this. But, like, you know, there’s. that’s not the reason people are coming in the door. So you have to understand their motivations. And this comes back to talk to the customer. I have never had a coffee date with a prospective customer and thought, man, that was a waste of my time. I regret reaching out and doing that. I know we’re all introverts. I’m going to be balled up in a corner after I go to my Tiki bar today. But, like, I. Swear to you that it will benefit you tremendously to sit down and shut up and listen and ask them what they want. Because then you’re going to make something that they do want. None of this advice that happened in this episode is going to matter if you build something that people don’t actually want. So do that.
Yeah, I’m a mentor in this next iteration of W Freelancing Academy, and I’m teaching the module entirely on outreach and validation. And spoiler alert, my Course material basically comes down to make a list of 10 people who match your positioning. Great, now go have a conversation with them. And every time I present people with this, they’re like, that’s scary and hard. And I’m like, yes, it is. But think about it this way. Would you pay $20 to have direct information, words from your customer or your ideal customer’s mouth, about the problems they’re experiencing, about the language they use to describe those problems? And people are usually like, yeah. And I’m like, go buy them a fucking coffee. Ask them questions, shut up and listen, and just write. And it’s so, so valuable. Whenever I get on a sales call with somebody, even if they don’t become a client. I’m furiously taking notes and Evernotes, like copying down verbatim as much as I can sentences they’re actually using. And quite often, those sentences make their way back into my marketing page. If they ask a question that I am not raising and then defeating on my marketing or sales page, That will be on the marketing or sales page within a week because other people are reading the page, asking the same question, and then not applying because they’re. They don’t know what the answer is. And it’s this iterative process that really comes down to understanding who your customer is and understanding how they describe the problem you’re going to solve for them.
I mean, you should be putting it up in less than a week. If you get customer insights, do it quickly and kill those objections.
But yeah, it all comes down to when you’re writing a marketing or sales page, understand who you’re talking to and what the problem is. And make it about them. It’s not about you. It’s not about how fancy your service is. It’s about the pain that they’re experiencing, the broken arm that they have, and they really, really need it fixed. And you’re the person they’re coming to to help them fix it. So. Position your service in light of helping them build a better business. Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.