Pre-selling is the difference between a 2% conversion rate and really ranking in some sales. If you find solid Affiliate programs you think are a good fit for your audience and don’t work with adware, have coupon sites poaching from searches like url.com+coupons in the engines and remove leaks from their sites; pre selling can take your conversion rates and sales up pretty drastically. Pre-selling is how you convince people that they need a product or service and then how you get those people ready to shop. You can be direct, or you can go after your readers subconscious or emotions. You can use images or words or even just banner ads to help drive an action. Anyway you do it, the better you are at pre-selling products and services, the higher conversion rates and the more sales you can achieve.
Sell the products in the copy with text links
If you have a cooking site and are talking about recipes and how to prepare something, this is ideal for not only building your internal linking structure, but you can also sell a ton of products from within your article. When you are talking about preparing a recipe, instead of just saying to mix everything within a bowl, be specific about it and mention what you are using to mix products with. Are you using a blender (and the type of blender or mixer), a wooden spoon (and the type, size or model) or even just mention that it is a plastic cake frosting tool (and mention where you can find them on sale with a link). By doing this you can either lead the people from your link to a page all about that specific product to help it rank in the SERPs (Search Engines), but then your readers can read about how to use the tool, find out where to buy it so that they can use it to prepare your recipe and also see other uses for it. Seeing the other uses will help to get your readers to see how useful this product is and further encourages them to buy it.
Talk about the usefulness
When you are blogging about or writing about a product, don’t just talk about the most obvious use. Everyone knows that that is if they know the product. Instead, go over it and then also talk about some of the other ways that you use the product that will not cause harm or put anything in danger. Some products only have one or two safe uses and shouldn’t be used for anything else. By showing how something can be used in multiple ways you can help to show the person why they should buy it. Knowing it will solve multiple issues that they had, even if they don’t know they had that issue, will help to get them to shop and justify buying it. This is also the perfect type of post or content to cross sell products and services in as well.
Go after thoughts, emotions and memories
This is one of the best ways to generate happy customers that will purchase things on an impulse. If you think about it like Retro Marketing, people shop because you can spark an emotion, a memory or something that makes them feel good inside. It could be an old movie or tv show, a specific model of car or even just a familiar smell or image. When you can spark someone’s memories that are positive and that thought makes them feel good, they don’t always want to let it go. By using products that can spark these types of feelings and by preselling the products in your copy with words to help bring those positive and comforting memories to the person’s mind, you can easily generate a sale on a product the person might no have thought of. This is pretty much how almost all collectibles work, figurines work and collectors items work. The next time you see them in a collectables store, on an infomercial or even just see an ad for them in a magazine; listen to the music, pay attention to the words they use and also look at the color scheme. You’ll see that they play to your childhood, better times and use things like classic, at home, with your (parents, loved ones, family, etc…) or even something you can cherish or share with your kids, bond, pass on for generations, etc… They are amazing at using words, colors and music to sell products that you wouldn’t normally buy. I’ve done this with a ton of companies and it works amazingly well!
Selling with product links and images
Sometimes you can sell a product alone through just linking to it from a text link within a post. Other times you won’t sell a single product through a text link so you need to change the way you show the product. One thing that I do is add an image to the link and show the product so as the link is clicked on, I show an image of it or I create a storefront at the bottom of the post so that you have the product labeled with a link, the price of the product and a description. This is what can help close the sales when people click a text link but they don’t shop. You have to remember to continue constantly test new ways to use a link that isn’t making sales and find a way to make money from it. If selling a product from it doesn’t work, try a cost per click or an impression basis.
Mention to click on the images or links to the right
Sometimes pre-selling a product doesn’t work enough to generate a click on an image. When talking about the product and letting your readers know why it is important and how it can help doesn’t generate enough interest to click on it, try telling them to click on the link. Unless you are being paid on a click basis, I don’t think there is anything wrong with this. When product links don’t get clicked but I know there is traffic on the page, I tell them to click through to buy or find out more information. This is usually what ends up working. Sometimes you need to tell your readers what to do. Think about your call to action on a banner and then test the different words you use.
Add trust
Adding trust to a product can help you pre-sell a product and make turn the reader or viewer into a sale. Adding trust means showing yourself holding the product, using a product or even having testimonials from people who actually have and use it. Here are three ways that you can add trust to your post or article and help to generate a sale from a review. You have to have the product for one of them, unless you want to use other people’s videos and pictures. (You do need to be careful using other people’s videos because they can take them down, change them and add on their own sites and urls which means you could lose the video or sales because you don’t have control over them and the post can change if you don’t check on it.)
Testimonials – Testimonials are awesome to build trust for your review, but you have to also have them be trustworthy and credible. If everything is possible, the testmonials look fake. If everything is negative, you can still drive sales, it just may not be as many. If you have people who look and sound fake then your testimonials won’t work. Find honest reviews or buy the product for your readers, give it to them and have them come in and actually review the product. This is how you build trust with a testimonial. They’ll give a real opinion and help other people decide if they should buy it or not.
Showing you have the product – Showing you have the product or use it and how you use it is the best way to build trust. By shooting a video of yourself using it, showing the size, the uses, etc… you show that your site is legit, your reviews are real and you bond with your readers since they actually get to see you. This can also easily help to increase your readership and your amount of comments and sharing with your readers because they can now put an image and a personality with the person whose blog or website they read and follow.
Guarantees on purchases (from the merchants) – One thing you can do to build trust is to go over the merchant’s guarantee on their products and purchases. Talk to their customer service and take a screen shot of their response on return policies and guarantees. If they say on their site that they have a guarantee on their product, take a screen shot of it and show it in your post…just make sure to date it and let your readers know that their guarantee can change without warning.
Building trust for your posts and sites will help you to pre-sell anything and can also help to increase your sales. You just have to be honest and use real testimonials if you want to keep your readers. You also shouldn’t be afraid to have bad reviews posted as well since they also help to show that not everyone likes every product. Having a mix can actually help to increase your sales and conversion rates, depending on the product and how much trust your site has with your readers and people who are new to it.
If you are already generating sales or if you have traffic and nothing is working to sell products, think about how you are pre-selling the things you think people should be buying. Try changing the way you link to the products. Try pointing them to another page which explains more benefits from the products and also build their trust in your review so they know how the product can help them when they buy it. If you can pre-sell the product you can help to generate more interest, more clicks and hopefully more sales.
