May 16, 2018 4 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

The following excerpt is from Robert W. Bly’s book The Digital Marketing Handbook. Buy it now from Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks | IndieBound

Sales-generating landing pages, also known as sales pages, online sales letters, or microsites, are usually single-page websites dedicated to selling one product—typically a product that’s suited for ecommerce, meaning customers can directly order it from the page using their credit card or PayPal.

I have a sales page for a $19 ebook I sell on how to make money by writing, publishing, and selling PDF ebooks. This page has been very effective for me: It gets a 32 percent conversion when I drive traffic to it from my subscriber list. This means for every three people who click onto the page, one purchases the product.

One of the elements I included on this page for my ebook was a frame from a short sketch video that links out to the video. A sketch video, or white board video, is narration accompanied by a visual presentation that’s a sketch rather than videography. Video on web pages can often improve engagement and sales; when I add these short sketch videos to my product sales pages, I’ve found that conversion goes up 10 percent to 15 percent.

Both my landing page and the email I use to drive traffic to it use one of marketer Mark Ford’s copywriting techniques, which he calls “the power of one.” In the power of one, your copy focuses on a single idea, clearly expressed, with lots of proof. In the case of this promotion, the idea is simple: The easiest product to sell online is an ebook, which I’ve clearly stated in the headline and lead of my landing page. Here’s my headline: The World’s Easiest – and Most Profitable – Product to Create and Sell Online. The headline and lead are immediately followed by a list of points supporting the claim that ebooks are the best and easiest product to sell on the web.

In landing pages, it pays to build credibility early, right on the first screen. The reason? People have always been skeptical of advertising, and with the proliferation of spam and shady operators, they’re even more suspicious of what they read online. Therefore, your landing page copy must immediately overcome that doubt.

One way to do that is to make sure one or more credibility builders is clearly displayed on the first screen the visitor sees. In the banner at the top of the page, use your logo and company name if you’re well-known.

Within or immediately under the banner, put a strong testimonial or three above the headline on the first screen. Consider adding a credibility pre-head. This is a line of copy that comes before the headline. It sums up in one pithy sentence or phrase some key credibility of the seller.

Testimonials build credibility and overcome skepticism, as do case studies and white papers posted on the website. If you invite customers to a live event, ask if they would be willing to give you a brief testimonial recorded on video. Have a professional videographer tape it, get a signed release from the customer, and post the testimonial on your website as streaming video. Require the customer to click a button to hear the testimonial, rather than have the video play automatically when the visitor clicks on the page.

For written testimonials, customers may suggest that you write what you want them to say and just run it by them for approval. Politely ask that they give you their opinion of your product in their own words instead of having you do it. The reason? What they come up with will likely be more specific, believable, and detailed than your version, which might smack of puffery and promotion.

For my sales page, I reserved the domain name www.myveryfirstebook.com. I recommend picking domain names that are both relatively short and easy to remember. Each of your sales pages should have a unique domain name, making it easy for you to promote your offer online, in print, and even when giving webinars and seminars, as you’ll likely be able to recall the domains from memory because of their simplicity.