How do you double your conversion rate?
Well, you can try changing your headline. You can tweak the price or your offer itself. Or you can do what Joe Sugarman did back in the 1970s for one ad he ran in magazines like Popular Science.
Sugarman was the genius behind BluBlocker sunglasses — he sold around $300 million worth of those. But he also sold a lot of other random stuff through ads in magazines, even including an airplane.
For instance, the ad I’m talking about today was for something called Consumers Hero. This was basically a membership club with a $5 signup fee, which allowed you to buy refurbished goods at cut-throat prices.
Old Joe, marketing maven that he was, tested everything.
A new headline improved response by 20%.
A different price didn’t seem to have much effect at all.
But changing just the guarantee — or as Sugarman calls it, “satisfaction conviction” — doubled the response. So let’s look at these guarantees, before and after.
The old one was pretty vanilla, something along the lines of:
“If you don’t buy anything through your membership and you want to cancel, I’ll refund the unused portion of your membership.”
Standard, right? But now, here’s the one that doubled response:
“But what if you never buy from us and your two-year membership expires? Fine. Send us just your membership card and we’ll fully refund your five dollars plus send you interest on your money.”
Creative. And likely to make potential customers think, “he’s going to lose his shirt!” According to Sugarman, that’s the kind of reaction you’re looking for when writing a guarantee.
By the way, I got all this info from Joe Sugarman’s book on copywriting, original titled “Advertising Secrets of the Written Word.” It’s one of my goto’s for copywriting wisdom.
That’s why it’s going on my “Copywriters Hero” bonus that I’m making available for free to people who get my upcoming book on freelance copywriting on Upwork.
The book itself will teach you the business side of getting set up on Upwork, getting clients, and charging increasingly expensive rates for your copywriting services. But it won’t teach you anything about the craft of copywriting. You’re on your own for that.
However, the “Copywriters Hero” bonus will include a list of the best resources I’ve used to actually learn about the craft of copywriting, and ones that any newbie can use to get up to speed fast.
If you want to get a copy of the Upwork book when it goes live on Amazon in a couple of weeks (there will be a short free promo period), sign up below to get notified when it’s out: