Pretend for a second that your product can help people manage their diabetes.

Imagine that you’re trying to sell it now…

Do you think you would make a successful sale to someone who doesn’t even know what diabetes is?

Probably not!

The first step of getting someone interested in what you have to say, whether that’s online or in person, is making sure they understand exactly the problem you’re talking about.

Well someone who’s been diagnosed with diabetes probably knows what it is… What if they don’t understand how your product or service actually works to help their diabetes? Do you think you will make a successful sale then?

Maybe… But the majority of people aren’t going to buy something when they don’t understand how it works, regardless of what kinds of promises you make them.

Be sure to spend time detailing the problem you solve and how your solution works in your landing page.

How do you know if your landing page isn’t converting because prospects don’t understand?

You can try using an on-page chat feature to ask your viewers “Is there any information you’re looking for on this page that isn’t covered?”

You might notice multiple people asking about the same topic, and find a gap in what you’ve covered on your landing page through that.

We humans are weird.

We can understand the downsides and risks of an activity, but still believe we’re “outside” of the negative consequences of that thing.

For example, many people who smoke can list off the negative side effects of smoking but in a study out of the European Lung Cancer Conference only ½ of smokers consider themselves at a higher risk of lung cancer compared to the non-smoking population.

“It seems that people are aware about the dangers of tobacco for health, but might consider that the risks are not for themselves, but only for other people” — Dr. Laurent Greillier

You can’t expect people to value you service if they don’t understand how it relates to them, and don’t believe that they have any problem (or that they would benefit from the results).

How can you tell if your landing page is ineffective because prospects don’t BELIEVE in your solution?

Back to the on-page chat feature, if you ask page viewers “Is there any information you’re looking for on this page that isn’t covered?” and get A LOT of questions back about “Does this apply to XYZ situation?” then they don’t believe that your product won’t work for them.

This old psychology joke is the juice behind Key #3.

At the end of the day, matching your offers to the right people is the true secret of great marketers.

This value key doesn’t come into play on the landing page case studies we’re about to look at, but knowing who your right people are is an incredibly important part of writing a landing page that converts.

It’s very important to do the legwork to develop customer profiles and understand why people come to YOU before ever starting to write your landing page.

(Wanting is mostly in play during your audience targeting. On landing pages you’ll mostly see Understanding and Believing elements in play.)

For the sake of brevity, here are 3 guides that will jumpstart you if you’re stuck finding out what makes your customers tick:

Why rattling off a bunch of features doesn’t work…

This next psychological concept is going to be really important in 2 of the case studies we’re going to look at.

Sometimes when we’re really excited about what we do we are SO ready to tell people what the exact modules in our course are, that it comes in blue, that it comes with this free thing…

But is that what your would-be customers care about?

No.

Customers don’t care about your product. They care about themselves.

The difference between listing off a bunch of features versus listing off a bunch of benefits is who the focus is on.

When you spend time on your page telling your prospects that your body butter is made with organic cocoa oil and uses natural scents, that’s about your product. Those are features.

When you spend time on your landing page telling your prospects that your body butter is made with organic cocoa oil so that they can stop struggling with ashy skin, and your product uses natural scents so that they can smell good without putting harmful toxins on their bodies — that’s about them.

Those are benefits.

How do you turn features into benefits?

Well, first make a list of all of the features you’re excited to tell prospects about…

The size is X, the walls a super thick, made with organic ingredients, and so on…

Make a list going vertically on a piece of paper, then draw a line down the middle to divide that side from the blank side.

Next, use the phrase “So that…” and fill in the blank.

So if one of your features was “This body butter is made with natural scents”, you could write “SO THAT you can smell great all day long without any creepy chemicals.”

DON’T just write “cruelty free product”.

That’s just a feature…

DO write “This is a cruelty free product SO THAT you can feel good about what you wear.”

Another tactic is to take one feature and write a little story about how that feature can help someone.

In another marketing psychology article, I used the example of a Swiss Army Knife.

One feature of the Swiss Army Knife is that it’s pocket-sized… Here’s how you can turn that feature into a benefit with a story about how it helped someone:

“Bob was on a camping trip with his children one day. Just him, and his two sons Luke and Trey enjoying some crisp clear water and the great outdoors. After not too long, they got their first carp on the line! It was the BIGGEST carp that Luke had ever caught, and that beast really put up a fight. It took all 3 of them to reel that bad boy in! Luke and Trey get a hold on the wriggling monster, and are trying to hold it still while their dad searches for something to pull the hook out. While Bob is frantically searching their car and their gear bags for the pliers, he has the sinking feeling in his stomach that he must have forgot them at home…. Right as he’s fretting he’ll have to tell his sons that they won’t be able to eat the carp just yet, Bob REMEMBERS something… He threw his Swiss Army knife in his pocket on the way out the door! Because it was so easy to grab his Swiss Army knife without a second thought, Bob’s fishing day with his sons was saved! And they had a happy time for the rest of the day.”

Read more about this exercise here:

Here’s more free information on how to sell with benefits, instead of just rattling off boring features…

Now let’s look at some high-converting landing page case studies to see these psychological principles in action.