Today in my Meantime program (a 30 day challenge for cash strapped entrepreneurs) one of the participants (a brilliant herbalist from the Kootenays named Garliq) share a sales page he’d come up with and asked for feedback. We made a few changes to the first chunk which I thought made it so much better and warmer that I had to share it (with his permission). For more on this you can read my blog post Nine Thoughts on Copywriting for Hippies and more about my thoughts on sales letters in general here.  

The sales page is for a workshop he’s running about making your own skin care creams from natural ingredients. You’ll read my comments interspersed throughout. 

 

Before Version:

 

Would you like to be able to make your own luscious face cream that’s totally free of any petro-chemicals?

This headline felt pretty clear but felt like it could be said with a bit more punch.

(Do you flip-flop between what you can afford and what you really want to put on your skin and into your body?)

Not bad. Names a struggle people really have. Though not sure this is the core struggle to which we wanted to be speaking.

You care a lot about what you put Into Your Body – the food you eat and feed to your kids. You’re conscious of the environmental and health impacts of pre-packaged and/or conventionally grown foods, so you buy organic whenever you can.

You work hard to keep petroleum products off of and out of your food.

But then you check the price of the organic face cream at the food co-op or health food store. Yikes!

The above was clear, but read a bit like an infomercial. It’s something I’ve noticed can happen with the approach of speaking ‘directly to the reader’. It can feel incredibly leading. The questions can land as rhetorical, guiding and insincere designed only to get agreement to a premise which will end in them buying from us.

It’s easy for the price take priority over the ideals. It certainly happens me. You buy the one that you can afford even though it contains a few things that you’d rather not be rubbing into your body.

But what if you didn’t need to choose? What if your budget could afford the body care products you’d really like to have?

Again. This feels clear but a little bit leading.

The answer is simple. Make Your Own Face and Body Creams.

 

After Version:

 

 

How you can make enough of your own luscious, natural, petrochemical free face creams to last you months… in just one hour and for 10% of the price.

This was a new headline I suggested to him. I felt like the savings of time and money needed to be woven in here. And that the results could be made more specific bases on what I learned in the rest of his sales letter. 

Most of the people I know in the Kootenays care a lot about what they put into their bodies – the foods they eat and feed their kids. They’re conscious of the environmental and health impacts of pre-packaged and/or conventionally grown foods, so they buy organic whenever possible. You work hard to keep petroleum products off of and out of your food, right?

Somehow the above paragraph, while saying almost exactly the same thing as a the before version, has me relax more. He’s telling me a story and inviting me in.

But then there’s body care products. And lots of us put these into a slightly different category… the Flip-Flop category.

On one level most people understand that ‘what goes onto your skin goes into your body.’ (That’s why we’re putting it on, so it’ll absorb in and do its thing moisturizing or toning or relieving the itch.) And just like with food, we’d like to keep petroleum off our skin and out of our bodies.

Again, he’s expressing a lived reality that many of his readers will be able to connect with. He’s expressing the symptoms people experience with a bit more clarity. But not doing it in a pushy way.

So, you check the price of the organic face cream at the food co-op or health food store. Yikes!

And that’s the flip-flop: price vs. your health and your values. It certainly happens me.

I like that he also admits it happens to him. That he feels the same thing I do.

What do you do? Truth be told, we usually buy the one that we can afford even though it contains a few things that we rather not be rubbing into our body.

But what if you didn’t need to choose? What if your budget could afford the body care products you’d really like to have?

The answer is simple. Make Your Own Face and Body Creams.

* 

Overall, the above feels simultaneously more direct but also warmer. I think it could still be trimmed and reworked. But, with a few small changes, I noticed I felt much better about it.