Why Your Sales Pages & Webinars Aren't Converting & What To Do About It

Welcome to Million Dollar Grit, the podcast that dives deep into the world of entrepreneurship, where tenacity meets strategy and dreams meet reality. My name is Julie and I explore the raw, often overlooked truths of what it takes to succeed in business and in life. It's not just about the glossy success stories. It's about the grit it takes to get there. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Million Dollar Grit. Today I am tackling a client question she asked me. I really just want to hear a good grounded teaching and explanation on the difference between marketing arguments and sales arguments or marketing and sales. So I am going to attempt to tackle this today. And honestly, the reason why you want to hear this is because most people don't truly understand the difference and they don't understand why their sales page or their webinar isn't converting. Even if it sounds good, right? Even if you get a thumbs up from your coach or from chat GPT, for whatever reason, things aren't quite con connecting. So let's take a step back as we begin this little expose here. What is the difference between traditional advertising and direct response, which is what we use in online business? So traditional brand advertising, let's just think about a company like Coke, okay? You see an ad for Coke, maybe you see it on a billboard, you see it on a tv, it's marketing. It's meant to make you feel good. It's meant to remind you that the brand exists. It's also meant to create demand, right? That feeling of like when you're at the movie theater and you see the, you know, the Coke dropping into the cup with the crispy ice, and you know, it creates desire, if you will. But in the moment when you're driving down the highway or you're watching tv, you can't always buy Coke, right, as you watch that commercial, right? But the next time you go to the store or if you pass through a McDonald's or what have you, the packaging and the placement of the product will sell because the advertising you saw prior to that will have done the marketing. It will have created the demand. So in traditional brand advertising, there's a little bit of a gap or a separation between marketing and selling. Marketing is the billboard and selling is the grocery store aisle where the Coke is all lined up, okay? And so there's a gap. But in direct response, both of those things happen in pretty quick succession, right? So in direct response, you're off often interrupting the prospect or the lead, and you are combining the marketing and selling into one funnel or one sales page or one webinar Right. So think about this. You're on Facebook, you see an ad for something, let's say, say it's for a software. It's a marketing video. It's meant to create demand. The ad itself is marketing. You click on the ad, the sales page at the top, if it's a good sales page, is also going to have marketing on it. Marketing argument. It's going to do the heavy lifting of creating that demand and shifting belief. If you're clicking on an ad and you're going into a webinar, that, that hook and the content is going to be the marketing. It's going to be creating that demand and presenting that unique viewpoint. The second half of the webinar, which is the pitch, or the second half of a sales page, which is where it explains the offer, that is the selling. And that's more of the intellectual persuasion that, that compels you to action. Right? And so you can see in direct response, the marketing and the selling don't really have that gap the same way like in traditional brand advertising. So the one happens right after the other. And so what does that mean? Well, for Coke, they can just pummel you with subtle advertising on billboards and commercials and, you know, everywhere you go. And it just sort of, it's like a slow drip of influence over time so that when you finally get to the grocery store or you're at the McDonald's checkout, you're, you're ready to buy. And so they can kind of, because they're a big company, they, they can afford that drip, drip, drip, drip, drip. In direct response, it's happening very quickly. So on a sales page, it could happen within the course of five minutes. If it's on a webinar, it's in the course of an hour. Which means the marketing really does have to generate demand almost in a more intense way than a traditional brand advertiser would have to create demand. They can kind of slowly drip, drip, drip the influence. Well, in direct response, you can't drip, drip the influence. You have got to shift belief pretty quickly through copy or through content in a webinar so that they are ready to buy. Okay, so that is the idea. And a lot of people do not actually do marketing. They create sales pages that have zero marketing argument, and they just go right to the sales page. And in webinars, what we have is people don't realize that the content is the marketing argument. So they teach, and they teach too much, and then they think the pitch is where they're selling. And so then they end up with no marketing argument. So this might be a problem for you. So let me just give you a few clues that this may be happening. If you have a sales page and the very top of your sales page announces the offer, or you talk about the offer within the first three to seven lines, that means you've skipped the marketing argument and you're already in the sales pitch, okay? And so I see this constantly, and people get really focused on what's included in the offer and how many calls and how many modules and all those types of things. They are deep in selling and in that sales argument, and they've completely missed the marketing argument. Maybe they have one sentence about the problem. You know, if. If I'm lucky in a webinar, it's a little bit more subtle because I have clients who have amazing expertise and gifting and they do these great webinars, but they don't do a great job of converting. And that's because in even if the hook is good enough to get a lead or a prospect to stay and watch the presentation, the content is teaching and it's not marketing. And I think there's been a little bit of fear around webinars. We've all been to those webinars that are super fluffy and feel like just one long pitch. And so to kind of counteract that, we. We teach and we give value so people don't feel like they're wasting their time. But we're missing that middle ground where you want to teach and market at the same time. And it's really difficult to do. It's not the easiest thing in the world to do, but that is what creates the belief and the demand so that by the time they get to the pitch, the sales argument is kind of. It kind of sells itself. And so that is what I'm seeing over and over and over again. Right? And so what is, like, how do you know if you have a marketing argument? Right? And so what a marketing argument does is it makes a case for the desire for a problem to be solved, right? For desire for a solution, okay? And so before the offer even shows up, that is what it's doing. It's making a case. So think about, you know, making a case when it comes to, like, a lawyer, right? What do they do? They, they show precedent, and they show, you know, what happened in the past and how judges, you know, happened in the past. They might use science, they might use logic. They're looking for proof, and they're looking for values, okay? And so that's really what a marketing argument does. And it, you really need one big idea. And a lot of folks don't realize how important it is to have one big idea, because that is where people can really get an idea in their head that they can hold on to. That's like, okay, I've never heard it this way before, or I've never tried it this way before. And so when you have a big idea that is curious or possibly different than something they've heard before, you've got their attention, right? So a good marketing argument has one big idea that's easy to say and hard to ignore, and it creates one core emotion that you want to evoke. It has one. It usually, it can have more, but it has one really strong story or metaphor to root it. So it feels, you know, like believable. And then one inevitable conclusion which is, I need to do this. Okay? And so if your sales copy is not converting, if your webinar is not converting, chances are it's an argument problem. The why it matters. And this is important because people get stuck and they try to tweak their bonuses or they change their price or, you know, they do things like this. And I'm like, but you don't have a big idea, you don't have a core emotion, you don't have a core story, and you don't have this inevitable conclusion that's like, okay, yeah, I need that. Because once you do that, then they are ready to buy. And I tell my students all the time in a webinar, the hook is the reason to stay. The content is the reason to buy. And they say to me, but isn't the pitch the reason to buy? And I'm like, no, the content is the reason to buy. The pitch is the reason to take action today. So once you get to the sales argument, which we can talk about for a few minutes, that is going to be things like features and benefits and frequently asked questions and guarantee and solving objections. And, you know, so if you think about it, it's like the marketing is kind of the heart of the offer and the sales is a little bit more of the, of the mind. And it's also designed to help people take action today, like why they can't afford to sleep on this. So that's where you hear like, closing, which is something that people do on sales calls. And it, it sort of is like showing them the opportunity cost if they don't take action. And so the formula for selling in some ways is actually easier to teach. It's not the easiest thing in the world to do because energetically, you have to be really like when you're present or you're on a sales call, you have to, like, work with the energy of selling because people get a little squirrely. But in copy, the selling is actually quite, quite simple. You're going through V features, you're going through the benefits, you're going through the value, you're making sure there's some guarantee there. You're creating scarcity and urgency. You're inserting some proof. You're crushing objections with logic, and you're doing a close. It's a lot of formula. It's the marketing argument where people get so tripped up because every single offer needs to have a marketing argument. And so that comes from the good idea, the core emotion, the captivating story, the single, you know, desire, and the inevitable response which is, oh, my gosh, I need that. And so that's why the top of a sales page is so hard. That's why the content in a webinar is so hard. It's why people default to teaching in a webinar. It's why people decide to just do a simple sales page with the offer. And yet the marketing argument is where all of the actual desire to buy is, is created. And so I hope this helps. For those of you guys who have felt like, man, why does my stuff not work? Chances are you need better marketing. Talk to you soon. And there you have it, folks. Another dose of Million Dollar Grit. I hope today's episode has left you feeling inspired, equipped, and ready to face your own entrepreneur, entrepreneurial journey with resolve. Remember, until next time, embrace the struggle, harness your grit and keep pushing forward. You're stronger than any challenge you face. I'm Julie, and this has been Million Dollar Grit.