In online marketing we work to create traffic to our sites through paid and organic means, but once that traffic has reached our site, our attention shifts to converting on that traffic. There are a lot of different ways to do that between good sales page copywriting, split testing, and other techniques such as preselling. Let’s talk about how do you presell.

How Do You Presell

Preselling refers to priming your reader for and getting them excited about what’s coming next: the sales page. Note that the sales page doesn’t explicitly have to refer to a page where someone makes an actual purchase. There are all kinds of conversions which exist outside of a sale such as getting someone to give you some valuable personal information like an email address, phone number, etc.

Preselling is an important aspect of online marketing and copywriting because it significantly increases the chances of a conversion if you include this step rather than hitting them blind right off the bat with your offer. You do your preselling generally before someone lands on your sales page. This can be on the same site, just a different page, or on a different site altogether.

You have to remember that when someone is browsing the internet, generally they’re not immediately interested in what you’re selling. They may become interested with the right motivation (hence the preselling) but initially they’re just someone looking for a solution to their problem. So someone isn’t looking for your eBook on diet tips initially, they just want to lose weight. You have to get them in a buying mood for your eBook even before they know it exists.

Preselling is where your real work happens. Once someone has been effectively presold, you can go ahead and put your offer right in front of them.

But how do you presell effectively?

Putting yourself in the mindset of your customer is the best way to do it. Think of what they’re looking for, think of the struggles they’ve gone through with their problem, and think of the typical problems they have had in the past trying to find a solution. A few tactics to consider:

Empathy – Telling a relatable story which puts you in your reader’s shoes is a very effective way to presell. Talk about how you long experienced your reader’s same problems which they are currently having, explain why it’s such an annoying problem, and very importantly explain why other solutions (which they may have tried) just plain don’t work. This gets them in the mindset that you and they are the same person, so whatever worked for you will definitely work for them, so bring it on via the sales page which you’ll conveniently link to from your presell page.

Testimonials – Testimonials are very effective just like telling a story because they give the reader something which they can believe in. Dozens of testimonials praising the effectiveness of the offer assuage and ease the minds of your readers and get them set to act on your offer which is precisely what good preselling does so that once they get to the offer, all that’s left is to act.

Video – A video is always a good way to presell as it caters to everyone’s laziness. People love finding video based solutions to their problems as it comes off as being simpler and more straightforward. Use the same strategies, outlining your viewer’s problem and your solution to presell in a video.

Remember to presell before sending someone to your offer page or dropping a big “purchase button” right under their eyes as it’s wasted traffic. Get them in the buying mood and the mindset of pulling the trigger, then send that now targeted traffic to see your conversions skyrocket.