Facebook Pixel
Join our Facebook Community

Build Blog Products That Sell 6: Tell the World

Build Blog Products That Sell 6: Tell the World

This guest series is by Greg McFarlane of Control Your Cash.

Welcome to the final installment in our hexalogy, concerning how to sell blog products in an era when people are reaching into their pockets and finding mostly lint. So far, we’ve discussed how to plan out products drawn from your expertise, create them, distinguish yourself from your competitors, test-market, figure out how much to charge, and find a clientele. If you’re late to the party, check out the previous parts of this series, right from the start, before going any further.

Say you’ve done all of the above. Now, the only remaining step is to get the sale. Sounds obvious, but all the preliminary work means nothing if you don’t close. You need to tell people to buy, rather than just crossing your fingers and hoping that they might.

It’s not just writing…

There’s a certain finesse required with this. You don’t sell in the same voice in which you entice, cajole, or inform. Lots of bloggers have trouble making the transition. If you’re going to put yourself out there as a seller of “you-branded” content, you don’t have the luxury of stumbling through and hoping that your sales pitch falls on receptive ears.

At this point, considering how much you’ve put in, selling yourself is mandatory, not optional. You have to use language forcefully, more forcefully than you do in your blog posts. Burrow into your prospect’s head, and by extension, your prospect’s wallet.

Focusing on the benefits

There’s a timeless axiom in the advertising business: People don’t want a bar of soap, they want clean hands.

The benefit of the product is far more important than the product itself. When you instead start focusing on the product—which, granted, you expended considerable effort to create—you’re not exactly empathizing with your clientele. It’s supposed to be about them, not you. No one cares how many hours you spent interviewing people for the DVD series you’re selling. Nor could anyone be less interested in how many pages your ebook is. (Beyond a certain point, of course. If you’re going to charge $329 for a three-page ebook, it had better contain the GPS coordinates for the Ark of the Covenant.)

No, cost-conscious buyers—any discerning buyers, really—want to know the answer to the universal question:

What’s in it for me?

How are you going to make your readers’ lives easier/simpler/richer? State how you’re going to do it. Yes, it’s great that you poured your heart and soul into your work, but that doesn’t necessarily make it sellable.

The human tendency is to concentrate on oneself, rather than other people. Which makes perfect sense—of course you’ll brush your own teeth and wash your own windows before doing the same for your neighbor. But if you want other people’s money, you have to force yourself to think about them first, as unnatural as that might sound.

Here’s an example of what not to write to get people to buy your products. The example is technically fictional, but it’s a composite of other bloggers’ calls-to-action:

“Starting today, I’m running a discount on my latest project. You can get my 36-page, 8,459-word ebook for just $11.99. This ebook, Car Noises And How To Diagnose Them, is the result of many months of research, and is now being made available to you for a special introductory price.”

Wow. Thanks for doing me the favor of offering to take my money. This is like the employee who walks into the boss’s office requesting a raise, and the first point he cites is how many hours of uncompensated overtime he puts in. Or that he has a baby on the way. You need to give your employer, or anyone else in the position of enriching you, a reason for doing so. Again, concentrate on the end users here. Without them, you and your product are nothing.

Here’s an alternative sales script, one that focuses on the buyer. It’s longer, but it also (hopefully) appeals to the buyer’s senses:

“Your car makes an unfamiliar noise. So naturally, your first reaction is to drive to the nearest mechanic, and waste maybe half an hour in the waiting room, putting yourself at the mercy of a professional whose livelihood rests on finding as many things wrong with people’s cars as possible.

For the love of God, don’t. Stop throwing your money away. That knock you hear doesn’t mean you need a new $1400 transmission assembly. It means you need to spend a couple more dollars on higher-octane fuel. That ear-splitting undercarriage rattle can be quieted in seconds, with the appropriate ratchet and a quarter-turn of your wrist.

My new ebook, Car Noises And How To Diagnose Them, breaks down the most common, least pleasant sounds that can emanate from your car. It tells you where they originate, what they mean, and how to prevent them. Some will require a look from a technician, but you’ll be amazed how many won’t. Fix them yourself instead, and you’ll save untold time, money and aggravation.

Car Noises And How To Diagnose Them includes sound files of dozens of the most common noises, along with complete directions on how to locate and assess them. Download it here for just $12, and I’ll include a mobile link for iOS and Android (because very few car noises occur when you’re sitting in front of your computer at home).”

Obviously that sales treatment isn’t going to be suitable for your blog and its products, but you get the idea. People are more budget-conscious these days than they’ve been in some time. They will part with their money, but you need to give them a compelling reason to.

Drawing the line

This doesn’t mean you should be penning advertising copy with dubious assertions. (“Scientifically proven to regrow hair!”) Quite the contrary. If there’s ever a time to be honest, it’s when you’re explaining to your readers what your products can do for them. Your readers will respect you for it, and if you give them value, they’ll spread the word.

For an established blogger, creating products that extend that blog can be a rewarding way to engage your readers and foster an ever-growing audience. For an up-and-coming blogger, selling a worthwhile product can cement your reputation as an authority in your field all the more quickly. Creating blog products takes plenty of time and effort, and while selling them in a rough economy can be a challenge, it’s such challenges that separate the average bloggers from the remarkable ones.

Say what your product’s benefit is (not what your product is, what its benefit is.), and sell.

Key points

  • Understand that writing sales copy is different than blogging.
  • Don’t write about yourself.
  • Don’t write about your product.
  • Write about your product’s benefits.
  • Practise makes perfect: keep trying to improve your sales writing skills.

That’s it for our tour of the tricky business of building blog products that sell. How are your products selling at the moment? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Greg McFarlane is an advertising copywriter who lives in Las Vegas. He recently wrote Control Your Cash: Making Money Make Sense, a financial primer for people in their 20s and 30s who know nothing about money. You can buy the book here (physical) or here (Kindle) and reach Greg at [email protected].

About Guest Blogger
This post was written by a guest contributor. Please see their details in the post above.
Comments
  1. This one really tied it together, Greg. The final step is certainly the hardest, and can make or break the previous 5 steps and months of work. I think it is always good to start with the end in mind, and that’s the path I’m taking.

  2. I am loving this series of posts that build off of one another. It’s like a daily mini course that is making my life as a blogger so much easier. Thank, Darren and Greg.

  3. Thanks for pointing out this key distinction between writing for a blog and writing sales copy, and for the awesome example of the Car Noises e-book. It’s very helpful to see a before-and-after e.g. of what you’re talking about.

    As bloggers, I know many of us feel perfectly comfortable writing for our blogs, then freeze up when it comes to writing sales copy. I know I do, but I’m working on it. : )

    I’m in the process of re-writing my entire “With With Me” page right now, using the principles of writing sales page copy to better position myself and get more clients for my service business. As I work on writing copy for my service offerings, one piece of advice I’ve been following is to keep the target client’s ideal solution/outcome in mind, and work backward from there. It’s a work in progress, and it may take me weeks to get the revised page copy just right, but now that I have a clearer focus on solution & outcome, it’s smooth sailing for the most part.

  4. A blog is a great promotional tool, especially for products, either your own, or someone else’s. If you have a product you want to sell, consider creating a blog. Blogging has huge advantages over static websites in the search engines, which means you’ll start getting traffic to your blog almost immediately.

  5. Nice conclusion to the series, thank you. I went right out and changed the overview page on my book to focus more specifically on the meaningful benefits for potential readers and make a more aggressive call to action. I knew to do this already, but your post spurred me to do it better.

  6. I’m not really into selling stuff on my site but I read all articles in problogger for the insight. And this one is the best structured I have read in a long time! Especially though the examples I did get your point. Very nice :)

  7. Thanks for this. It really makes sense. I can see that the sales pitch for my spend-less book needs to be rewritten.
    So easy when you know how…

  8. My blog is so non-niche specific that I have never been able to come up with a tangible product offering that I create and offer to my readers, instead I rely on affiliate marketing of other products related to my articles, technology…etc. This keeps my earnings much lower than smaller sites that have specific niche and can put together their own product.

  9. Great post, and great series in general!

    I’m particularly impressed by your worked-out example here – it’s very easy to talk about benefits in theory, but they’re a hard concept to grasp without seeing the results. Also, props on creating a sales letter that would have persuaded me to buy more or less now had it been a real product!

    I’m featuring this post on the Internet Marketing Gourmet later today – our remit is to highlight the best writing on web biz every day, and this post definitely fits into that category!

  10. Selling doesn’t come natural to most bloggers and I find it’s the hardest thing for me to do.

    Thanks a million for the tips.

  11. This series has been wonderful. As a new blogger building my audience, improving my writing skills and planning my 1st salable product I have learned much here. The example was very illustrative clarifying the difference and the idea of “more forceful writing”.

    Thanks!

  12. Free stuff also a good promotion strategy. They read content but they also love free stuff, they looking for what they need because of curiosity. Bloggers is a huge community. If you own a website or blog, you make them become popular, it’s a promising oportunity to gain traffic. No traffic no sales. Good tips! Cheers!

  13. Hi Gregory,

    Thank you for your blog it is a blessing I believe others will be blessed to do blogging more effectively.

    In this day there are major shifts occurring affecting so many people in different ways or struggles.

    For some the struggle may have been a some of kind of lost such as health, family, job,.. that needs to be shared in an environment where they can see the hope of the victory.

    Then being equipped to do get their victory in a process of growing and learning to be successful.

    I share in a website blog post how thousands have been achieving success over their struggles and helping others in the process. Resulting in a WIN-WIN-WIN-WIN.

    Thank you Gregory Keep on, Keeping on !

  14. This is actually linked together. The final step, is certainly the most difficult, and can make or break the previous steps and months of work. I think it is always the beginning and end well, and that’s just in my own direction. Thank, Darren and Greg.

  15. Excellent post, Greg! It’s not an easy task for Bloggers to do, but practice makes perfect, as you said.

  16. You are right on this selling is something which i have not mastered till date and it takes a lot of time for others too but the points you have mentioned is going to help a lot of people and thanks a lot for this

  17. Thanks For the tips excellent post, I think tapping into the readers emotional buying trigger’s is what you have nailed!! And of coarse what’s in it for them is important, You know your subscriber and the conversation that is going on in there mind when they visit your page witch makes it easer to market back to them I think I have to step up to the plate when doing the sell posts. Thanks

A Practical Podcast… to Help You Build a Better Blog

The ProBlogger Podcast

A Practical Podcast…

Close
Open