Shrinking commitments, BambooHR's secondary CTA, annoying gurus
(This originally appeared in my newsletter. Sign up now to get content like this every Monday.)
Welcome to a new week
As usual, I have three things for you:
A tip: improving your page's performance by shrinking the size of the commitment you're asking for.
An example: Sales calls are too much for some people, so Bamboo HR gives these people an option to learn about their product without having to have a call.
A thought: Some guru irritated me by bragging about his copy, when it was really his offer that made the difference.
Tip: Shrink the commitment
If you have a landing page that isn't performing, the problem may not be with the copy. Rather, it might be a mismatch between the amount of information you're providing and the commitment you're asking people to make.
There are three ways to solve this: 1) Figure out the extra information people need, and serve it to them. 2) Get better at driving more-qualified traffic to your landing page. 3) Shrink the size of the commitment you're asking people to make.
In lots of cases, option #3 is going to be by far the easiest one of the three. You can even do this without touching your original call to action. Just add a second, lower-commitment call to action, and mop up all the people who are keen, but not keen enough to make the big commitment.
Here's how I do this on my own website 👇
Example: webinar on a demo
Most B2B SaaS company home pages have the same call to action: book a demo. It's so common that everyone knows it's not really a demo; it's actually a sales call.
This creates an issue where some people may want to learn more about your product, but they aren't necessarily keen to have a 1:1 conversation with a sales person. If their only option is to book that call with a sales person, they are just going to leave.
I thought BambooHR did a great job of dealing with this issue. In addition to the standard "book a demo" call to action, they also have a demo webinar. This gives a pathway for people who want to learn more about the product, without forcing them to schedule a call. Take a look:
Thought: Annoying gurus
Been irritated for weeks at a tweet I saw back in March from an email marketing copywriter. He was showing a before-and-after of an email he rewrote/redesigned. "60% increase in click through rate," he proudly proclaimed in a followup comment.
Here it is (not gonna share his name because that feels kind of mean):
Here's what annoyed me: the two emails were completely different offers! The first one was asking people to fill out a survey, in exchange for which the reader could go in the draw for a free product. The second one was buy-one-get-one-free. Check them out:
Of course more people are going to click through when the offer is definitely 50% off compared to maybe, possibly 100% off. The copy/design would have had very little to do with that.
Anyway, it's been bothering me for months. Good cautionary tale to scratch the surface a bit when you see people loudly bragging about their results online. You don't need to hire a copywriter to make your offer way more generous.
Thanks for reading
Hope you enjoyed episode 2 of this new format. If you know a marketer, founder or anyone who wants to really optimise their marketing material by making high-impact, low-effort changes to their copy, forward this newsletter on to them.
Otherwise, have a great week.
Sam
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