Last I wrote, I was going to test the Virtual Sales Agent (VSA). I know it’s been a while, more on that in a moment…
What about the test? In the markets I tested them in (non-Internet Marketing) the VSA didn’t fare so well. As a matter of fact I noticed no increase in optins or sales at all. So was the experiment a complete bust? Maybe not.
I’ll be the first to admit I’m not solid on this technology. Maybe I went about it the wrong way or came off too snide. It could be the markets I tested in were wrong for a VSA. It’s also possible I would have experienced better results with a better script. It’s hard to say. It wasn’t a total failure either…
One of the tactics I tried was admitting the VSA was indeed, well, virtual and then I tried to elicit some questions from the visitors. I did get some questions. I dropped that ball because I left out any way for respondents to receive an answer. So how would I fix this?
When I do this again, I may try a couple of different ideas. First is to simply add a place to gather an email address so I can reply with an answer. But what about the increasing resistence to email marketing? Hence idea number two…
Tell readers up front I will select the best questions and post them on the blog. I say the “best” for a couple of reasons. First, this gives me an out from posting every question. Second, should I not get ANY quetions (yes, it can happen - even with substantial traffic) I can post an entry dealing with this with no loss of respectability. This second option offers several advantages:
No worries about emails such as resistance, fears or spam complaints .
Makes the site “stickier” because vistors will return for answers.
Builds traffic as answers may draw more vistors
Builds content as questions are answered
Of course you can do all of this with a simple poll. There’s no real need to use a VSA to do this but it’s worth testing both to see which garners the most response. Especially since the VSA script is so cheap. Plus it works really well.
Now about that personal confession…
You may have noticed my blog entries have dwindled lately. It’s because my wife and I have been preparing to sell our house. Where are we moving too? We are not sure yet.
This may sound crazy but we believe God is moving us to get out of this mortgage. Whatever we do, our plans right now are to get out from under.
Unfortunatley, this is the worst possible time to sell. But we are trusting in God to provide. The nice thing about this is, even if we are wrong about what God wants, we can trust Him to help us out if we get in a big pickle.
As I said this may sound crazy, but in my over 30 years as a Christian, God has never, EVER failed me.
I’m not even sure I’ll continue copywriting or marketing via the Internet. Bluntly put: everything is in God’s hands and I’m committed to doing His will no matter what.
Maybe you’ve seen this claim. Maybe not. At first glance the statment is impressive but there is also room for a great deal of skepticism. And there should be. Before I delve into this particular claim, how about we lay some groundwork for such claims in general?
One of the first questions I always ask is “40% of WHAT?”. It makes a difference. You’ve seen figures like this before in my posts.
For example: increasing from one sale a day per 100 visitors to two sales a day brings in a 100% increase in sales from just one sale. However…
If you ring up 20 sales a day that one extra sale is now only a 5% increase so the first thing you want to know is where the claimant starts from.
Next I want to know the conditons of the “miracle”. Where did the prospects come from? Was it search engine traffic? Did trafic come from somone’s list or a big promotion? As always the “quality” of the traffic needs to be considered.
Plus what is the market? Is it a hot market or just lukewarm? The more resistance to sales the more I’m impressed by big victories.
Finally… who’s making the claim? Are they trustworthy? Well-known? You and I will have a lot harder time selling something in the same market as someone with established credentials in the field.
Now about the claim starting this whole post… a 40% increase in sales :
Let’s start with who is makeing the claim and for what.
The statement is by Dave Guindon for his Virtual Sales Agent He shows results from a number of marketers - most of whom are well-known or at least already successful. What does this mean? Well, for one thing… results WILL vary i.e. don’t expect to get the same.
In addition it seems these figures all come from the sizzling IM field where pickin’s are relatively easy and traffic is hot and heavy. Now don’t get me wrong…
Dave is a smart guy and an excellent marketer. Plus he doesn’t churn out junk. As a matter of fact his Virtual Smart Agent is an excellent product in itself. But will it work for you? Maybe. Maybe not.
In principle exit polls and/or offers tend to be very effective. Again several factors need to be taken into account. Credibility, the offer and the market itself to name a few. But overall invasive techniques work well. By invasive I mean something like a popup that people forced to pay attention to. And while the Virtual Sales Agent is not much different than a pop up it is perceived as having more class.
Plus, unlike a popup, the Virtual Sales Agent is interative. Getting your visitor involved makes a big difference in sales. Dave’s script allows you to offer different responses based on certain keyword “triggers” you define. What does that mean?
If your prospect types in “Is there a discount?” (sale, promotion, whatever keywords you define) the program responds with the reply you provide - “Yes, I can give you a discount. Click on this link for details.’ (and then provide a link to your discount page or a coupon code) or you can respond any way you prefer.
But what if visitors ask questions you didn’t anticipate?
Prospects are famous for that. Dave has a couple of ways to deal with this. First, all questions are logged so you can spot common themes in the questions ask. Is everyone asking for a feature you didn’t think of? Are many looking for a bonus? This script is an excellent marketing tool in the right hands.
Prospects can also contact you with questions that don’t get answered in your canned responses so no burning question gets ignored.
All in all there are a lot of advantages to using this script. It is well-thought out script with a lot of powerful features. Is there a downside? Well…
It is a bit pricey. It’s regularly priced at $197 and I’ve seen Dave offer a discount as much as 50% (give or take a dollar). Still there’s no reason to think the lower price will return (if it’s not still available). Might there be future promotions? It’s certainly possible. Meanwhile unless you have enough sales to justify the hefty pricetag , it’s a bit much if you simply want to see if the technique will work for your market. Fortunately, there’s a very affordable alternative if for those who want to get their feet wet without a lot of expense…
It’s called Sales Bot Generator. It’ s nowhere’s near as fancy as Dave’s script but it’s
easy to install (just ftp one folder to your host)
easy to use - open an html file, add your domain path the to the script right in your browser and then copy and paste it to any page you want to use the Sales Bot.
Now all you do is tell your “virtual sales agent” what to say. Her name is Carol, but this is
easy to change to any name you any name you want. Simply highlight “Carol” and drop in any name that suits you.
You can use html to dress things up or pop in links to send your customers.
You won’t get all the “bells and whistles” Dave offers, like the ability to respond to certain keywords or track questions but this should give you an idea whether it would be worth the investment to spring for Daves Virtual Sales Agent or not for a very low price. How low?
How about $10? Yep, ten bucks. I’ll even toss in resale rights. Subscribers to my Copytactics blog alerts save even more, however that email already went out. If y0u missed it now’s a good time to sign up so you don’t miss the next great deal.
Yesterday someone mentioned to me he made some wholesale changes to his web site and he hasn’t seen a sale since! That happens. I told him to immediately put up his old page back. If he hadn’t saved the old page he could have face disaster. Sure, he may be able to reconstruct it eventually but… Anyhow he did save his old copy and was able to swap back. The “good” page was one he wrote himself after a copywriter dropped a bomb. In a related event…
Another copywriter asked me to review some copy he wrote. He mentioned the old copy was some shoddy page that converted fairly well. What’s going on here?
Stay tuned for not one but two important points here…
First: is it true that “crappy copy” cranked out by a novice can outsell a carefully crafted masterpiece wrought by a journeyman copywriter? You bet! Why?
It could be a number of reasons but high on my list are believablity and credibility. And yes, these are related. In both of these cases the copy was written by someone who knew the product better than anyone. They believed fully in the product and were enthusiastic about what they were selling. You can’t buy that. And it comes through on the sales page loud and clear.
The second point is not so obvious… or maybe it is: don’t just “swap out” sales pages! One copywriter put it this way…
Rather than “replacing” your web page - plant in your mind the concept of testing new ideas. It is so easy to do on the Internet these days. You can use Google Web Site Optimization - something I use and recommend a lot. Or you can choose from a wide variety of split testing scripts. Actually you’ll more likely want a “multivariate” testing script but that’s another post.
Many people see terms like “multivariate” and their eyes glaze over. Don’t let the big bad word scare you… it simply means “many thingys” as in what it tests. With split testing you should test one thing at a time. One headline vs another and so on. Multivariate tests lets you plug in several headlines, and other parts and test different combinations. All you do is tell it what parts to test and it does the rest.
Even if you think you’re “not ready” to test (you can always let someone like us friendly folks at sales page makeovers do it all for you you should at the very least make sure you save your old page just in case those spiffy new changes make things worse.
God bless,
Andy
P.S Update on the “Project Management” Software… I thought I had rights to this but I’ll be darned if I can find them. I’ve got a pile of stuff on a hard drive determined to give me a hard time so I have no idea when I can check it. Meanwhile, if you’re chomping at the bit for this leave a comment and I can get you a copy for $10.
Here’s a video entitled “The Magic of Conversion” detailing the basics of sales page split testing and conversions. This is the “down and dirty” version. I expect to have somewhat more polished version shortly.
Well I can’t figure how to get the “pretty” player to work here either so here’s a link to it.
I had to snicker a bit when Mike confessed he didn’t know what Gary meant! Of course he’s at the Strategic Profits Conference and I’m sitting home so I guess I shouldn’t let my head get too big here.
Actually you can’t “buy” real expert opinions on copywriting. Why not? Because (IMHO) real expert opinions come from the marketplace not so-called “experts”. That includes myself even though I feel I have a lot more to learn about copywriting than I know.
Here’s the thing…
Go to any forum where copywriting is discussed and you’re likely to find a bunch of posts wanting a critique on their copy. I participated on one such post recently. My favorite comments included (paraphrased):
“Your headline doesn’t grab me”
“Try a headline like this…”
“Your headline is just fine”
and so on.
Who was right? There’s only one way to find out for sure - test the headlines. And then test some more. Same goes for every chunk of copy. Only the people looking for a certain product can offer votes that count. The vote is buy or not buy.
Even there a huge majority of the people looking at your sales page (generally 95% or more) will vote with their feet. They will leave without buying.
For squeeze pages, where visitors give you their email address or something before getting a report, access to your site or the like, conversions generally run higher because they aren’t parting with any money. But for a money page - convincing more than 5% of your audience to buy is considered very good.
Of course I hope to change all that with Sales Page Makeovers. Keep in mind nobody can guarantee a specific result but I think the science is getting to the point where very accurate estimates will become common. I don’t mean just for my service but also for testers in general.
Testing is really the most exciting area of marketing and copywriting because you can actually see the results you’re getting. Few things are more satisfying online than changing a few words here and there and watching your sales take off.
Okay, I’ll step off the soapbox for now. By now I hope you realize if you are not testing - you should be. By this I don’t mean you should be using my service. Yes, please, conisder it, but more importatntly find a way to test. There have never been more excellent options available!
God bless,
Andy
P.S. If you DO happen to want to know more about salespagemakeovers.com - why not head over there now?
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you should at the very least make sure you save your old page just in case those spiffy new changes make things worse.
