365 - How to Create Landing Pages (that actually convert) with Alisha Conlin-Hurd

But I've seen the fugliest ClickFunnels pages outperform beautifully designed stuff and I've watched I don't even know if it's like hundreds or thousands of hours of user sessions , because I've been doing this for like 10 years . Right , I've watched a lot of heat maps and people get distracted by the design .

For like 10 years , right , I've watched a lot of heat maps and people get distracted by the design . Like , the purpose of the design is to be complimentary , to show people where to look and to show people where to read .

Welcome to the Web Design Business Podcast with your host , josh Hall , helping you build a web design business that gives you freedom and a lifestyle you love web design business that gives you freedom and a lifestyle you love .

Everything that we cover can be applied to landing pages for things like email signups or free lead generators , but also for sales pages as in when somebody is about to put their credit card in and pay you .

So , needless to say , very important conversation on this one and to take on this topic of conversion , I'm real excited to have a bona fide industry expert in the business . This is Alicia Collin-Herd , who is the CEO and co-founder of Persuasion Experience . You can check them out at persuasionexperiencecom .

Really enjoyed this one because we tackle a lot of really important issues when it comes to making high converting pages , like how long should sales pages be nowadays ? Should we go the like super long Apple route , or is brevity and brief working better now today ? What common elements are that are proven high converters ?

Most importantly , how to balance things like images and graphics and copy together . One thing I'm really interested is where ai is right now in the world of conversion . Is it destroying conversions or actually helping ? We discuss and things you can do to stand out from your competition , to have better conversions again , for both your landing pages and sales pages .

The show notes for this one , friends , will be at joshhallco slash 365 . So head over there after this . And again , if you want to connect with Alicia , you can go to her website , persuasionexperiencecom . She's active on Instagram and YouTube currently . Highly recommend checking those out as well . Those will be linked at joshhallco slash 365 .

Let's dive in and talk persuasion . Let's dive in and talk persuasion . Well , alicia , it's great to have you here on the show . Thank you , first of all , for getting up so early 6 am . I would never do a podcast at 6 am , so I have to applaud you . You're on the other side of the world , so thank you for taking the time to be here .

So I think living the drummer life and being up late may have forced me to become a night owl .

And there's this tap test you can do I forget what it's called and you do like these taps every hour and then you count how many taps you do and it tells you when you're most alert . And that's like , for me it's in the morning , so I just do my best highest leverageable tasks in the morning . But it's like why punish yourself ?

Just like , the outcome's the same . You don't have to like get up early to do it .

So , yeah , but I never punish myself . It's like , oh , I'm not getting up at 5 . Am in Vietnam in some random jungle . It's like I'll just wake up when I'm ready and that's it .

I imagine those when you're helping folks out with this idea of a high converting sales page . I would imagine that's probably just one aspect of an entire funnel , right , the sales page itself .

Maybe your funnel's only three steps , maybe it's like 100 steps , but when I talk about a funnel , I think of all the way from the traffic what got the click up until they become a lead , then there's up until they become a sale , and then there's all of the touch points when they work with you afterwards , right ?

So Joe Polish and Dean Jackson talk about this the before , the during and the after , and you should think I think of my funnel like that all of these touch points . So a funnel is not optional , right , you have one by default , and the problem is , each of these touch points are a potential revenue leak .

So businesses and people and freelancers and coaches doesn't matter , right ? And they're leaking all of this revenue out . So what we want to do is make sure that that's not happening . Now , within your funnel , you have landing pages and , to be a real smartass , a landing page is where somebody lands , right ?

And so for me , a sales page is typically like you want someone to purchase something off of it , maybe , whereas a landing page , you might be getting somebody to sign up for a consultation or a sales call or whatever . So that's how I differentiate them .

What other type of landing pages are common ? Would a blog post be a landing page , potentially ?

Nobody sat down at , like the great digital marketer conference and decided that we had to use all the same jargon , so this is what I use . To me , a sales page is when I work more in , like the info product space , the e-com space .

You can still call a sales page a landing page , but for today's conversation , a landing page is going to be the thing that gets you leads , that gets somebody to sign up to actually want to speak to you . Now , a homepage and a landing page are not the same thing . A homepage , I think of it like your admin person , right ?

So if we think of your website like it's your digital storefront on every corner around the world , never send your traffic to a homepage . It's like the worst thing you can do , because the point of a homepage is it just helps people to find what they're looking for in the shop , like each panel is usually a different section of your actual website .

Your landing page right In this instance is more like your salesperson . I call it your digital salesperson , your digital appointment setter . And so you can imagine you've , like spent all this time and money and energy to collect a click or to get the traffic . And then , if you send it to a homepage that's not trained to make someone take the next step .

And when we have a good landing page and I can obviously rant about this , the whole episode but when we have a good landing page all we're trying to get someone to do is to take that next micro step in the funnel . Right , not a huge knockout punch , it's just where are they in the stages of awareness ?

And how can I get them to take the next step with my brand Micro , yeses , not a big knockout punch and then drag them back to your cave and force them to sell , right , that's what we're trying to do .

I'm going to recommend everybody just reiterate exactly what you said right there , alicia , to clients who don't understand the difference between a homepage and a sales page and the other different type of areas where somebody is going to end up on , depending on your funnel . I'm kind of curious a landing page and a sales page .

If we can double click into each one of those , do the components ? Are there similar components that work for both , or do you recommend a pretty different strategy for a landing page versus a sales page to sell a product ? What are the differences between the two as far as components and what they're comprised of ?

I'm talking like Brazilian , but with doctors , porn addiction counselors , quit smoking , hypnotists , and then the normal stuff like billion dollar brands like Linktree and Kogan and Wayflyer . A lot of landing pages , right , because what ? What a landing page is ? It's the key to unlocking scale for my clients .

So it's like , okay , you get the click , but then what happens ? So the landing page in the funnel is the post click . Coming back to a landing page , for me there's five ingredients that need to go onto it to make a high converting landing page , because that's the whole point , right , that it actually gets the goal that you want it to achieve .

So the first and one of the most important is the target market language . So when you reframe it and you're like , okay , this page is our digital appointment center , it's a digital salesperson , well , we need to talk in the target markets language .

So how do they describe their crappy before , state their dream outcome so that we can position the business as the vehicle to go from A to B . So even if you're a web designer , right , no one wants web design , they want a dream outcome . So what is that dream outcome ?

And that's what you're really selling and what we want to be able to do in our copy , on our page , is just show I understand you , I understand you and I get you . Because as soon as you can do that in their words , like you've ripped a page out of their diary , people just assume that you have the solution right .

Like if you understand them , they assume you have the right solution . So that's the first ingredient target market language . The next is authority , marketing . So how do you be an authority ?

And effectively , in business or marketing , you can be a commodity and you can be , or you can be , an authority , right , and so guess which one gets paid more , guess which one gets the better clients . I'll let you guess .

So if you don't build that authority right , you just you're just another . You're just another . And imagine how many web designers there are on Fiverr and on Upwork , right ? And so if you don't build that authority , then you're not going to stand out from the noise , you're just another .

And you're going to have to compete for scraps like shitty clients and you're going to have to drop your prices . Now , the third one , then , is your social proof . So how can you build irrefutable proof of what you do , right ? And it's not just slapping some testimonials on there in a slider , it's how can you build that proof in all different ways .

And then your next one is your offer , and that's the most important one on the page , the most important thing , right , Change your offer , change your business , and your offer is the thing that's going to get them to take action . So what ?

I see a lot of people get wrong on pages is they'll put this like it looks pretty , it's this informational page that they put together and then that's it . How are you going to persuade and motivate someone to take action with you ? And so your offer in this context is your lead generation offer . So why should somebody talk to you ?

We have to get a lead before we can get a sale , so I'll pause the monologue there . On landing pages , I know you also wanted to know the difference between a sales page , but yeah , did you say there were five ?

But what would be the difference between what you would have as components for a sales page versus a landing page ?

So it's really like , as long as you're keeping the reframe of this is our digital salesperson . What is the purpose of this digital salesperson ? And then making sure that on that page you're saying you're not limiting copy , because I know a lot of web designers hate designing long form copy .

I know because I've worked with a lot of them but the copy is the thing that sells , right ? So if you're selling something and it's smaller , you don't need as much copy .

But sometimes , when you're selling a course like $1,000 , $2,000 , $3,000 , and you don't want to do a sales call that's kind of the difference , right , your landing page might be more story-based , it might have more information about what you actually sell , whereas a landing page might just be enough information to qualify the lead and get them on the call .

And that is the fifth ingredient of a good landing page is to qualify and to disqualify in your language and in what you have on the page .

I'm trying to think I like that terminology of like a salesperson as these different entities , because it's interesting to put like almost a persona to a landing page in a sales page where I like that idea of landing being just that a landing page , probably pretty brief , probably pretty quick , get them to the door .

And the sales page is where people , especially before putting their details in and clicking pay . They're probably going to want to know , depending on what the product is , what they're getting into . I imagine this is top of mind just because my wife and I talked about getting a new car , as I'm thinking about the godforsaken example of going to a car dealership .

I'm thinking about it like that . Now I would imagine landing page is kind of the guy who's showing you around , who's like , yeah , we have this and this and speaking , all those components , but then when we go in to actually sell , they turn you over to the person who actually does the full sale .

So yeah , I'm wondering , if it's kind of like that , do you view those kind of like that too as almost like different entities , whether it's a persona or whatever landing page for sales page ?

I'm selling like someone talking to a sales person and , and although there's no monetary exchange right , there's no money exchange there's still time and value from the prospect , from the lead , being exchanged for an email address , right , and in a lot of instances that's more scary I'm going to give you my phone number , my email , my information .

Are you going to harass me ? Do you have commission breath ? Are you going to be annoying ? So it's like you're always selling something , even at the ad level or on an email . You're selling the click , right . So it's like you have to persuade someone to take action . You're just selling the click and this is where those micro-yeses come in .

So your email might go to a landing page , and then that's selling the consultation , like , hey , come on this call , we're going to give you immense value , no matter what it's going to be , this awesome thing , you're going to get X , y , z plus a bonus , tangible thing , and then you go on that and then the next step might be the sales call .

So you're selling something right ? So yeah , I think of it more like that . Hopefully that makes sense .

But every time I talk with somebody who is conversion focused , there's always a good reminder for me to put more oomph into a landing page , to get an email address to make that like a sales page . So I love that idea of selling a click , whether it is a paid click or a sign up click .

And here's the thing , right , if what you do can genuinely help somebody , it is now your moral and ethical obligation to go and find as many of those people as humanly possible and persuade them to work with you . Right , like that's your job , like you have a talent . You can help people . And yeah , I think it's a good reframe .

You're always persuading someone to do something and otherwise it's like what's the intent of what you're putting out there ? What's the intent of your marketing ? It's to make you money and to help people and make impact . So you need to construct it in such a way to achieve that .

You're almost trying to , like , well , persuade somebody to purchase , but that doesn't mean , obviously , that you're coercing somebody who shouldn't buy . To your point , you have a solution for somebody who has a need and it is our job to persuade them as to why they need that .

Can you dive into that term persuasion , Like , have you found that people view that just like sales , with feeling icky sometimes ?

And if sales people stopped selling , the whole world would stop , like that's what would happen , right ? So I'm from a small country town 800 people , no traffic lights . There's a pub which is like a bar . I guess , if you don't have pubs , there's a cemetery . You go and you come out , that's it . My first jobs were in sales .

When I moved into bigger cities , I didn't even know what sales was , didn't know what that meant , whatever , right To me . When I went in there , it was like , okay , I'm just helping people , I'm asking questions . Those questions then tell me can I help you , yes or no ? If no , kiss the fish , release it back into the ocean .

If yes , that was the trigger in my brain that I have to persuade this person to work with me . I can help them . I just discovered that , right , like a doctor , I diagnosed , I prescribed , and now it's my job to persuade them . Now , why do we have to persuade people ? Because you have to snap them out of inertia , right ?

People are going to keep doing the same thing unless you can come in and stop them from doing that . And so the clients that we work with they genuinely help people , right . But if we just put out wishy-washy marketing out there like , oh you know , we do this , come and work with us , it wouldn't work .

We literally have to persuade people and shake them , saying you have this problem , I can help you , and you have to agitate that problem . And you have to persuade them because otherwise people don't take action to change their lives . And that's what ?

If you sell something good , like that's what I do , I change businesses , like I change their life , I make them money and I help them to increase their impact . So I think it's really selfish if you're too scared to persuade somebody and it means that you don't really believe in your product , in my opinion , or your service .

I've had a lot of conversations with some of my members of my community and colleagues about marketing towards either agitating the problem , like just putting it right in their face , making sure they know what the problem is , versus a more like positive start , like looking at the result , or looking at the solution .

More like positive start , like looking at the result , or looking solution , what is your take ? I'm assuming you're familiar with story brand , with Donald Miller's framework .

They , they , they know what the problem is and sometimes that can kind of push them away . What are your thoughts on when to use the agitate the problem versus like show the result or show a brighter road ahead ? Uh , is there a time for both ? Do you prefer one or the other ?

Basically , you know leading with , leading with a bright pastor or leading with a future problem . That's it right there , dr Style .

And then there's a bunch of other stuff on the page , but that's a very simple framework we'll use Now , depending on where somebody is in the stages of awareness Eugene Schwartz's stages of awareness you could also think of it as the buyer's journey depends on how much you need to agitate that problem .

Okay , so nobody wakes up one day and wants what you have . They go through these stages of awareness . And so if you're talking to somebody and basically it goes from unaware that they have a problem to most aware , and they know what you're selling . They're just looking for the right offer .

And then there's problem aware , and then there's solution aware , right , and they're walking through these stages of awareness .

So if we think of it like and I'll just double click on that in case people haven't heard of this , because in my opinion , this is one of the most important concepts in marketing to understand , because all we're trying to do is enter the conversation going on in your head , so you're correct , right .

If somebody is most aware and they're looking for , they're like I know I want this thing , I'm looking for it , and you're writing this long page and it's like oh , I bet you've got this problem , I bet you got all these things going on as well . Yeah , okay , cool . Like , have you got the solution ? So this is why this is important , right ?

So let's think of it like you've got a cough , because everyone's had a cough , and if you're , let's just say that you're problem aware . I know I've got a cough , but I don't know why I've got a cough . You start researching it and now it's like okay , I've got bronchitis , what am I going to do ? So now I start looking for solutions .

I could go to a doctor . I could get some Chinese herbal medicine , I could get some strepsils . Like , now I'm assessing options . Okay , now I've decided I want a doctor . Now I'm assessing different doctors . Now I've chosen this doctor . I've gone to his website and he has a new patient offer .

So I'm not tell me if that doesn't make sense , cause I'm I'm free balling that explanation , but people go through this journey no matter what , right ? So your question is well , how much should we agitate their problem ? It depends where they are in that journey well , how much should we agitate ? their problem . It depends where they are in that journey .

So we always follow , problem , agitate , solve and you always want to show that you understand them . So you do have to explain the problem .

But when I'm doing a Google ads campaign for a finance client and they might do B2B loans right I'm not going to write this long sales page where it's like dear business , you've got cashflow problems and you're not very good at running Like . You're not very good at monitoring your cash , Are you ? And I bet these are the issues happening .

I would never do that because someone's like got a bleeding neck problem . They're like no , I , yeah , I know I've got cashflow problems . Can you give me money or not ? Um , so that's one component of it . The other component of it is the energetics of it . All right , and so this is maybe this might also be what you're kind of talking about .

If you go hardcore on the problem and everything's doom and gloom and you get them all worked up and then they come to you in that state for a sales call , that's not the kinds of clients you want to work with so you want to show them yeah , you want to show them that you understand the problem .

You want to agitate it a bit because you've got to make them take action or they're just going to go back to doing the same thing and not change their life . But if you get them whipped up into a frenzy where they're freaking out instead of giving them hope for a better future , what sort of business do you want to run ?

Who are you going to attract and what sort of energy will be in your business ?

I'm really excited about what lies ahead , and that's kind of what I aim for . As a web designer , I found this too . I worked a lot of people who I saw their web designers go too far on the problems and agitations . Clients were like I already know my website sucks , what's ?

And then it's neon stoic . But most people hate their website , right , and that's a great example of you don't need to dig into that . People know . People know they're getting tens of thousands of people a month or whatever , and nothing's converting . They know . Talk about the solution because that example they're further down the buyer's journey .

But I suppose sometimes agitating some of those pains , pain points may , or challenges may help to persuade them since we're in that terminology to invest If they're like oh well , yeah , I didn't think about that . It's like , for example , to make this practical , a shitty website is costing clients hundreds of thousands of dollars potentially , or maybe more .

So clients may not think about that . They may not think about , well , what actually is a bad website ? How much traffic are they getting ? They don't even know . So that's where , as I'm thinking about this okay , you're already helping me here , alicia , because I'm like I'm starting to feel a little more comfortable with how to do this in a better way .

But that's kind of how I would use agitation , but sprinkling it in , yeah , and use it in a way that feels true to yourself , right , like for me .

My goal is to see do I have to amputate your arm or give you an aspirin ? That's the goal . And can I even help you ? If I can help you , great , I'm going to show you the value I bring to you , which often means I have to agitate the problem you're having .

So a great way that I do this in what we do is I'll just say okay , so you're currently at 5 million , you're trying to get to 10 million . We've got a $5 million goal , we've got a $5 million gap to solve . Is that right ? And I've done a lot of other maths and people are like oh yeah , I'd never thought of it like that .

And it's like yeah , that's a pretty big goal . And now it's like well , whatever I tell you , I cost is going to seem pretty small now , isn't it ? So that's like for what you were saying . You can run the numbers . So your website's currently converting at 1% . It should be converting at 5% . What's the LTV of one of your customers ?

What is your sales team close at ? Okay , cool . So if this year you had have been converting at 5% , that would have been an extra 2.2 million . That's the size of the problem I want to solve for you . To me and I know you'll correct me if you don't agree that feels I know you'll correct me if you don't agree .

That feels like a nice way to agitate it , where you are just doing your due diligence to show them where they're losing money in their business and then go on . Do you want me to plug that hole up for you ? I'll fix it .

All these are the terms that it just seems like they just dwell on agitation too much . But to your point , agitation could be well . They just don't know what's going on because of their crappy website , which is the problem . So they don't know what's going on because of their crappy website , which is the problem , so they don't know those agitations .

I really like that idea of framing it as , like the conversion rate , their lifetime value of a customer , and then how much a little boost , maybe like a 1% change , could end up being for them , which showcases the value of a website , and that's how web designers can charge 10 , 20 , 30k for something they may have charged 3000 for .

So , um , yeah , that makes a lot of sense . That that P A S framework I've heard some similar ones , but I like that , that one's three . That's easy to remember .

you really selling , right ? So you're selling a dream outcome , like that's what you sell , the , the website , the design , like cool , but like what's the outcome that you actually sell ? And and what we were just talking about , josh , that's what you sell , right ? You sell like unlocking revenue from the like .

This is the website is your , your digital storefront on every corner around the world . People are going to walk into it and if it's confusing , they're not going to buy anything .

And I always liken it to , because I've done a bunch of websites right and I do funnels , so it's like I always find it really funny that businesses will spend hundreds of thousands or millions on their physical store . Fit out that might have 50 people walk into it a month . And how many people walk into your digital store ?

Hundreds of thousands , right , tens of thousands of thousands , it doesn't matter , but it's way more , and then they scrimp and they'll do some sort of $100 Fiverr deal and they'll never invest in it . It's a sales enablement tool . It's an investment in your business .

Anyway , hopefully that will help some people with their proposals , because that's how I sell $40,000 websites and more in my time .

I mean , I think about this a lot of times as a podcast host now , like with downloads , I have to remember every tick of a number on a download is an actual person listening in their car , or Ross in the dishes or mowing the lawn or whatever they're doing , and it's easy , I think , sometimes to see web traffic and numbers is just data , but those are actual

people . So I love that idea too , that remembrance especially . I mean clients need to hear this the most . But even for web designers , traffic on a website even if you're getting 50 page views on a service like that's 50 people who looked at that . So great reminder on the importance of a website .

So there's sales tip for everybody , as a web designer to relate to clients right there .

So what I was doing in that example because I want to just show people how I was thinking about it so they can take it is it's like what Russell Brunson talks about . It's an epiphany bridge , a like bridge , right , it's like this for this . So if you liken something back to something they already understand , store , fit out , website , right .

So if you can make it make sense in that way , I find that that's really good for people , especially when they're not sophisticated in marketing or web design .

I don't think we were recording yet when you said like you talked to a lot of people who are focused on tools and platforms , but it's just the time tested strategies that hold true for sales in general and persuasion . But I would love to dive into , like , some of the specifics . For example , I'm wondering how big should some of these pages be ?

How much video should we include ? What are some of the trends you're seeing that work well on these pages ? Is it text heavy or more brevity ? All of the above I'm kind of curious to dive into on this . So let's start with just time tested persuasion .

What are some of those things that don't matter whether you're using WordPress or ClickFunnels or whatever you're using . What are some of the time-tested things that work ?

Like I'll tell you , but can you answer this question who is your target market and why do they buy from you ? What is the language that they use ? And that's the psychology component , right , we sort of spoke about that .

So a lot of people get obsessed with hacks and tricks and silver bullets , but if you can master this one thing , this is what's going to make the difference in your business , in your marketing and in your sales , right ? And it's the thing that hasn't changed for hundreds of years and it's not going to change for hundreds more . It's the psychology .

And so all of those questions you were just listing off how long should the page be , what needs to be on there , how much video ? It depends and what does it depend on your target market . What do they want ? Who are they ? Most people don't have an insanely in-depth understanding of who they're trying to work with , and that's crazy , right ?

Because , as business owners or as freelancers , we exist to serve people . We exist to solve their problems and if you don't understand that person , it's very hard to do well in business and to extract their money . And I say that in the most positive way possible because people like you know that's what needs to happen , right ?

So we have this equation To answer all of those questions . You need to understand your target market and you need to understand questions like where are they in that stage of awareness ? What's their crappy before state ? How do they articulate that ? What's that dream outcome ? Et cetera .

And then the way that you would like , um , or like the foundational part of like , building the page or doing any marketing right Is marketing is just inputs and outputs , garbage in , garbage out . So a lot of people don't get their target market avatar right . That's the number one input , and then garbage trickles in throughout the rest of it .

And so it's funny , right ? Like everybody asks me , like , oh , how long should a landing page be ? Like that copy's too long . No , there's no such thing as copy that's too long , just too boring . And the copy needs to be the length that it needs to be right , because , with that reframe , this is our digital appointment setup . This is our digital salesperson .

You're not going to ever tell a salesperson , hey , keep that headline a bit , more creative things . It's like , no , just have a conversation with the person and and move it down . So I'll pause there . But , um , I like to try and teach people how to think and not just how to do , because the reality is there's no silver hacks or silver bullets for stuff .

Right , like you do have to think a little bit , um , and and you need you need these core programming into your brain . So , no matter what happens , when COVID hits or there's a recession or whatever , right , if you've built your skill set based on tactics , you can't deal with that . You need to base it on strategy and psychology .

I mean , maybe there's fairness and trends , but , um , we had a conversation recently about Apple and their sales pages , about conversions , and it's almost like I'm trying to remember who I was talking to about this , but it was a good point about .

You don't necessarily want to take the same strategy that a company like Apple would use for a sales page for , like , a Ma and Paul local company , where that needs a totally different strategy and I don't even know what conversion looks like for Apple on their sales page .

But so many people use Apple and are diehard Apple people that they're just going to buy it In some cases . I've found longer pages are good for the folks who At least this is my rule of thumb , that's worked for me at least . If I make a longer sales page to make it so somebody could skim quickly and then move forward .

Or if somebody wants more information , they still have the option to go further if they want to , but I don't make everyone go down the whole page to finally reach the destination . That's my rule of thumb . Do you think I'm on track , or would you advise against that ? Or or is there a time for both ?

So if I'm working with a coaching client and and their market doesn't , like hasn't decided , like they don't know that a coach is for them . They don't know what a coach is , but they know their problem , that's going to be a much longer page because my digital salesperson needs to have a much longer conversation .

When I have a client in the finance space that does payday loans and there's a mom who can't feed her kids because her shift was cut , I don't need a long page , I just need a . This is what we do , this is what's in it for you . Here's some proof that you can trust us , right ? So it always comes back to that target market and and psychology .

It always comes back to that target market and and psychology and yeah , I'll leave it there .

It's a one page site right now . It's basically a big landing slash sales page . It's a sales page . So , uh , but I give the option at any point on the page that you can join . Now if somebody hears the podcast and they're like , yep , I'm ready to join , they go there , they can join immediately without having to go through everything . Um video .

I mean , I've really tried to to to encourage my students to go with video , especially as a service provider , like a web designer , because it builds so much trust and authority even just having any sort of video on there .

Have you seen and maybe that's a depends question , but have you seen video more help with conversions across certain industries versus those who don't utilize video , whether it's like the founder or whether it's the person who's a super service provider .

But right now you get my tonality , you get my body language , you get to hear the words . So it's a different way to communicate and it can come back to well , how does your market like to consume information ? But typically yes , and then it's like okay , well , what are the types of videos ? You can have a VSL , a video sales letter .

You can have a webinar . You can have an about us . You can have video testimonials .

But my caveat is not all video content is created the same and merely ticking the box and putting a video on your page doesn't mean that you've executed it correctly , right , and it comes back to like research , strategy , execution and that's how like , and then optimize and learn and adjust .

So if you don't research , you don't like actually understand your market , you don't understand why you're making the video If you don't plan out well , what's the purpose of this video , what's the intent , what's going to be the storyline ? How am I going to execute on it ?

And then , if you like my first YouTube videos , if you look like you're in a content cupboard with a gun off to the side and the camera's really like poor quality , which like don't get hung up on that stuff and we can unpack that and the sounds crap , and you're like hey , like come and buy my stuff , like yeah , you've done video , but you've you've cooked

the execution , so it's like it's . It's not a of a like should you have video on there ? Well , yeah , but only if you do it with intent and you execute it properly , right ? So that that's my answer .

So , um , and it just makes sense to , as you mentioned , there is another level of sensory with a video versus just words that you're , you're seeing and you can .

You can , you can make a feeling and get a vibe going for somebody with words and good copy for sure , and design visually , but there is something about hearing something and all those working together . You can't hear copy .

Often Some people can if they know the author or the other person writing , but when I put myself in the shoes of a client , they may see something that might look nice , they may get a feeling , they may understand it , but hearing , I think , is just video . Truly is kind of the trifecta of all those senses . All that to say , I'm a big opponent for sure .

A lot of people they feel hold back because you're very polished . You have this beautiful , cool mic that I'm jealous of . You have great lighting . You're very charismatic . You don't say , um , like , you're very good at what you do , but I'm sure you didn't start there , right , like what have you done ? Like 400 episodes on this podcast or something ? I'm ?

I didn't start . I mean , I'm very extroverted . I love talking , but I only got better at framing my ideas and being able to articulate a coherent sentence by doing so .

have them meet you on the website before they even meet you . Because it builds authority , builds trust , builds likability , and I totally agree , like no one needs to have my setup to start , but , uh , any chance of getting a video , even if it's a screen recording and you're not on camera yet , that's a great way to go to .

I often tell people to start with , just like a PowerPoint presentation type deal , just guide somebody through , like that before they even get to you . Just to start off . And yes , alicia , you're totally correct , my first foray into videos .

I have a business course and one thing I show in there is I was invited to our local chamber of commerce and they had a swivel chair and I was kicked back in the entire video .

Brevity is something I'd love to chat about real quick because , uh , are you familiar with Derek Sivers , the author ? No , so , um , very no . One of the things he's known for is is brevity . In fact , one of the books I recommend to everybody I work with is a hell yeah or no super fun book and it's super brief , like super brief . You could .

I'm a slow reader and I could bust through this in a day .

So I had him on the podcast a while back and we were chatting about brevity and about how , um , a lot , I think , I think a lot of people in the age of just overwhelm of information , how much power there can be with a stripped down , super brief message , particularly on a landing page or a sales page .

Um , I still fall on a sales page of like having plenty of info there for people who want to dive into it , but for a landing page specifically since we're kind of hitting on that for , like , a lead generator to grow traffic . My thought would still be to have it be pretty brief .

What's your thoughts on brevity and about taking something that may be a thousand words and condensing it to a hundred of ? It could be or maybe you know 500 or something .

The landing page length is as long as it needs to be , and so I will never cut down a page to try and hit like , like , the philosophy of what you're saying , agreed , because a lot of people are very long winded and their messaging gets very lost , right , like they just the words , spew a bunch of stuff and then it gets very lost .

And so where people fall into the trap of is they want everything to be short and sharp and then it kind of can suck the soul out of it as well , right , and when you're writing your copy and the two most important things are your offer and your copy and I know everyone listening is a web designer and it's important to have good design , very important , right

. But I've seen the fugliest click funnel pages outperform beautifully designed stuff and I've watched I don't even know if it's like hundreds or thousands of hours of user sessions , because I've been doing this for like 10 years .

Right , I've watched a lot of heat maps and people get distracted by the design , like the purpose of the design is to be complimentary , to show people where to look and to show people where to read .

And , going back to your Apple example , I've done a lot of websites , as in like , I'm not the designer , but like the strategy and the project management and that and the amount of people that have said I want Apple's website , like , do you have a million dollars ?

Number one , number two , apple's brand is really big Right , so it can like it can be short and sharp , like they've been around for since like 75 . When have they been around since like a long , long time .

I want you to read it and feel like we're sitting together and I can get my tonality into it and I don't want to make it short and sharp and and take out the soul .

I have a newsletter and this is timely too , because more recently I had one . I forget what the topic was , but it was about um , I sprinkled in about our , our regional tax income agency .

It's called rita and every time I get something from rita I just want to burn it and find their headquarters and , you know , go off , cause it's just extra taxes basically . But in the newsletter I had a fairly professional newsletter and then I was like a freaking idiot .

Rita showed up in my mailbox again and I just talked about how it was a regional income tax agency and I had a couple of replies going like that . They loved the the me , the conversational tone of how I would talk in real life , just calling them an idiot and stuff , and I'm reminded of how like that stuff does stand out .

That was the soul of that was my agitation towards this freaking income tax regional agency that's extra taxes . So that's what resonated , was me saying idiot Rita in that entire newsletter of like really good business advice . But idiot Rita is what I got back .

And so the closer that I can capture how I talk and I'm not very I'm not good at the writing , right , I'm good at the talky talk so even when I'm writing copy so , for example , when I was doing Linktree's page like billion dollar tech brand , I was like , okay , this is going to be my digital appointment setter , what needs to do ?

And then I would record myself being a salesperson , like walking someone through . Well , this is what Linktree does . This is why we exist . Here's what you need to know . And then I take that copy and I put it onto the page , right , and it's funny you say that so I've got this sales guy in my team and he's he's so cool , he's got like like bleach bond .

Hey , he's like a semi-pro boxer , he lives in Bali , and when you talk to him he's insanely charismatic , right , and that's why he's a sales guy on my team , like he's great to talk to .

And when he writes an email this is something that we're working on it's like he's this like buttoned up , full on crazy corporate professional version of him using these words and we literally were talking about this yesterday why it's fresh and I was like dude , like who you are in person is not how you write and like your written communication Like , and I was

like I don't want you to like and you're professional , so it's like I don't want you to like , tone it down and be calling them like buddy and pal and I don't know whatever else .

But get that like , get , when you can like master , getting your personality onto pen and paper , your like , your numbers will start to change because it's there's friction in your own personal brand . It feels like I'm talking to two different people .

And , yeah , a big thing is like if you're B2B right , people think you have to be super professional , and professional means sounding like some sort of stuffy accountant and that's not it .

Like I would say I'm very professional but I'm very myself Like how I am on this call is how I'm going to be when I shut the computer and go and chat to somebody , and I try and emulate that in all of our copy and everything that we do . It's brand consistency , but people can feel that energy coming through as well . So it's , yeah , really interesting .

Now do you , do you call people idiots more in your newsletter , or what are you doing ? Uh , all the time , yeah it resonates well , it just depends on if I'm really , you know fired up about something , but I have definitely learned over .

And actually it's one reason I recommend doing video for folks is because if you talk on a video , that could be your transcript that you use for a sales page or for a landing page . That doesn't make it so stuffy if you're worried about you know the LinkedIn profile version of you . So , um , yeah , no , I totally agree . Human all the way .

Yeah , ai , I mean I don't know how far you want to go into this , but uh , as somebody who works on high converting sales pages and funnels and stuff , I mean , what's , what's your take on AI as a whole right now , whether it's just a light language model or like there's full on AI builders and stuff .

Now are you-AI excited about it or are you like this is just ripping off ? Yeah , what are your thoughts on AI ?

And so , going back to that equation I spoke about earlier psychology plus economics times , technology Technology is an accelerator . What's the point of having a shiny sports car if you don't know how to drive it ? So AI is really important .

But there's going to become this big divide where you have to have good inputs , inputs , outputs right , garbage in , garbage out . You as an expert , have to have good inputs right and then the AI at the moment can do , let's say , 60 to 80% .

Now the difference comes in you being an expert , being able to take what the AI gives you , knowing if it's good or not right , like is this even good , and then polishing it that extra 20% . So , to be honest , when I'm hiring now , I ask people about their AI systems . If they don't know how to use AI yet , they're not coming into my team .

They need to know how to use AI and how to accelerate their job . So AI to me is like efficiency . As an expert because I am an expert and so is everyone watching this I figure out how to use AI to speed me up , to do a better job , to have to hire less people , but I'm not using it to replace critical thinking , creativity , even .

There's some things in our onboarding experience that there's people like why don't you automate that ? And I'm like no , I like the human touch , like we'll make a custom GIF , a WWE GIF , for everyone who we close , and it's like their competitor's name . And it's like John Cena getting Hulk Hogan and like jumping him down .

And it's like I do that manually and it takes five minutes , right , and it's like but that's like a human touch and the problem with AI ? You opened up this can of worms .

It's your fault , but the problem with AI is everyone's trying to like efficiencies , automate , and it's like no , like I think it's going to skew so hard that the businesses who can figure out how to use AI and still have that really good community human connection . And I train my team on client experience .

I love this book called Unreasonable Hospitality , one of the best books I read this year . So AI will speed you up . You have to be an expert . You have to be able to put good inputs in . You have to be able to discern when it spits out an output whether it's good or not . Most people are going to be lazy .

I've already seen studies where people were like we replaced our whole sales team with AI . Look how good we are , we've saved all this money . And now they've come out and said , yeah , so what happened was it wasn't good , right . So , yeah , that's my opinion .

Uh , I I've really more so been challenged and this is encouraging me to to really go back to my personal experience on what I learned as a web designer and agency owner and um utilizing story more and more and more lived real world experience , because that's the one thing that AI cannot do it cannot live a real world experience in the flesh .

So , no , I totally agree . I love that frame of using AI as more of an accelerant towards something that's much bigger and much more important . Yeah , love that , alicia , we're well past an hour . I can't believe this has been . Has this been fast ? This has been super fast .

Um , yeah , it actually has like we're just getting started again early for you , so I really want to thank you for getting up so early and for your time . Uh , one final question here for you , but before we get there , where would you like people to go to connect more with you ? And I think you've got a little something for folks too , right ?

I'm very passionate about talking about landing pages and funnels and showing what we're doing in our business , so I'm always launching those things to help people out .

But as a free gift , to make sure I'm giving value back , I have got something called an endless leads gift , effectively , and so if you go to persuasionexperiencecom forward slash Josh , that will have pretty much like all these things that we've spoken about in a really easy to follow format .

So you can just go through , get the templates , get the videos , get more resources and trainings that you can take some of these preliminary things that we spoke about and then go and build on that and create your landing page and create your offer to get more leads .

So I know you have some like tactile , practical , you know practical things to follow along with , so I'll make sure we have all that linked up and definitely your YouTube and everything . I love what you have going on . I love your style , I love how real it is . So , um , yeah , I really appreciate it . Alicia .

I'm kind of curious for those who specifically have . They would like to just do something like today to get a little bit , a little bit of boost of conversions on their sales page or landing page . What would be like a quick win as a , as a tip for for a landing page , for example ?

When we got our offers right and finally ate our own dog food , like that took us from a couple of freelancers to keep tape together to a seven figure business , now on the way to eight figure business .

If you can nail that offer right , like that's how everybody builds a business on the back of a strong , strong offer , that is what will change the game for you .

I really hope this helps you as you are putting your sales pages or landing pages together , and the cool thing about , I think , anytime I've talked with a conversion rate specialist or anyone who does conversion is that there are just a lot of proven things and it ain't rocket science .

Some of this stuff is very simple , but I think it's easier to overcomplicate things when if things were a little more simple not simplistic , but if they were a little more straightforward Sometimes I personally feel like those help conversions and persuasion can be done in a very ethical and honest way .

So for all that and more , I hope you enjoyed this conversation . I really would love to hear from you . You can jump over to the show notes for this one at joshhallco slash 365 to leave a comment . Again , check out Alicia at persuasionexperiencecom or via her Insta and YouTube , and I'm sure she would love to hear from you .

So if you enjoyed this conversation , zip on over there and let her know that it rocked your world , or any thoughts you want to share with her , feel free . All right , friends , stay subscribed because we got some big ones , including some big guests and some awesome topics ahead .

So subscribe if you're not subscribed already , so you don't miss the next one and awesome topics ahead . So subscribe if you're not subscribed already , so you don't miss the next one , and I will see you on the next episode .