"Cool Branded" vs "Internet Marketing" look for low-ticket cold-traffic website?

[_Will_Taylor]

Hi Fastlane Forum,

I'm putting together the website for a low ticket ($27) online course aimed at 18 - 25 year old gamers. I'll be driving traffic to the site from Facebook adverts. People with low attention span, who are in "entertainment mode", who just want to look around, want a few quick dopamine hits, or they move back to their facebook feed.

I don't know whether I should have a cool brand, or go with the "internet marketing" cliches that so many facebook advert funnels.

I want this to be a long-standing business. I'm not interested in these "pump and dump" product launches where entrepreneurs seem to release a new product every couple of months. I really want to aim for a Productocracy - a business so good that people love it, share it, are proud to tell friends about it. At the same time, I need it to convert and make sales.

My initial thoughts were to create a cool, well-branded website. Something you would be happy to say you're a part of, and to share with other people.

But I'm looking at other products online that are being sold by marketers, and often these are more "attention-grabbing" and way less cool. Capitals all over the place, bright colours, fonts that are massive and take up the whole screen. Crappy screenshots with big red circles on them. The normal "clickfunnels" / "internet marketing" look. As stupid as these sites look, the fact is they are entertaining to read, they keep the audience's very very short attention, and they get the sale done. The downside is they associate your brand with this tone - the equivalent of hawking your products in the local market.

I have no interest in being cool for cool's sake - if getting my sales page written on my butt drove long term cashflows, I'd be the first to drop my pants.

Am I deluding myself thinking that a cool brand website will work with cold traffic on Facebook? Or can it work, provided underlying the "cool" I follow the tried and tested marketing tactics?

 

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[MitchC]

Test it

make it cool but focus on readability, clarity and the conversion path and you should be fine. The issue people usually have with good design and looking cool is that it takes away from the readability and makes the conversion path unclear. Ie making the add to cart button blend in nicely with everything else instead of standing out, and writing the copy in a font and color that’s hard to read.

you could model the landing page off some good dtc brands as they tend to mix cool with conversions.

 

[_Will_Taylor]

make it cool but focus on readability, clarity and the conversion path and you should be fine. The issue people usually have with good design and looking cool is that it takes away from the readability and makes the conversion path unclear. Ie making the add to cart button blend in nicely with everything else instead of standing out, and writing the copy in a font and color that’s hard to read.

Cool, yeah that makes a lot of sense. Thanks

 

[Kid]

"Internet marketing" sites are scams in my dictionary (along with Amways and Herbalifes).
Route from there is just to moral decline.

There is also option you didn't mention- toned down design/copy.
Bring value and let testimonials do the rest.

I'm not sure if selling low ticket product with cool looking design would play together nicely.

 

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[Kung Fu Steve]

Hi Fastlane Forum,

I'm putting together the website for a low ticket ($27) online course aimed at 18 - 25 year old gamers. I'll be driving traffic to the site from Facebook adverts. People with low attention span, who are in "entertainment mode", who just want to look around, want a few quick dopamine hits, or they move back to their facebook feed.

I don't know whether I should have a cool brand, or go with the "internet marketing" cliches that so many facebook advert funnels.

I want this to be a long-standing business. I'm not interested in these "pump and dump" product launches where entrepreneurs seem to release a new product every couple of months. I really want to aim for a Productocracy - a business so good that people love it, share it, are proud to tell friends about it. At the same time, I need it to convert and make sales.

My initial thoughts were to create a cool, well-branded website. Something you would be happy to say you're a part of, and to share with other people.

But I'm looking at other products online that are being sold by marketers, and often these are more "attention-grabbing" and way less cool. Capitals all over the place, bright colours, fonts that are massive and take up the whole screen. Crappy screenshots with big red circles on them. The normal "clickfunnels" / "internet marketing" look. As stupid as these sites look, the fact is they are entertaining to read, they keep the audience's very very short attention, and they get the sale done. The downside is they associate your brand with this tone - the equivalent of hawking your products in the local market.

I have no interest in being cool for cool's sake - if getting my sales page written on my butt drove long term cashflows, I'd be the first to drop my pants.

Am I deluding myself thinking that a cool brand website will work with cold traffic on Facebook? Or can it work, provided underlying the "cool" I follow the tried and tested marketing tactics?

There's a lot to try to translate here.

1.) Your mindset needs updating. To generalize every ad on Facebook as ... well... everything you described is naive. I don't mean that as a dig but I do want you to start separating professional marketers and cheap knock-offs.

How do you know the difference? Go to the Facebook pages of your competition, look at the 'page transparency' and dig into their current ads that are running. If the ads they run are short lived, it's probably because they aren't working. If they ARE running consistently and for a long time -- it's an indication that ad is bringing in money (that's not the only factor of course, but it provides a hint).

Yes, there are a LOT of people with this mindset who see what others are doing and say "yeah I can just make a click-baitey title and I'll be rich!" -- it don't work that way.

2.) So what DOES work? Well, I've taught full classes on these things but let me give you the first bit and you can look at these websites and tell me if I'm right or I'm full of shit.

When someone hits a webpage for the first time the first question that pops into their mind is "am I in the right place?"

The reason people use big bold headlines and draw attention to specific words is because they want to reassure the potential customer "yes, you are in the right place"

"Hey bald guys, finally there's a way to get a full head of hair even if you've lost it all!" (that's admittedly obnoxious but I'm just using it as an example)

If I'm bald and see an ad promising help with my baldness, I click on that ad, and the first thing that pops up is something about skincare... I'm confused and feel like "oh this is dumb, this isn't right"

The second thing people ask is "what's in it for me?"

This is why headlines are so important. It has to clearly state the benefit of staying on that page and looking at what you have to offer. Sometimes when you see short, blunt, and to the point headlines like "hey bald guys..." you might say "I can't believe that would ever work" .... because you're not their target audience.

The best marketing messages has a great message-to-market match. You've probably heard the phrase "join the conversation already happening in their head" -- but that's it.

If I've got a headache, I don't want a big a$$ story. I want a solution. "Here's how to fix your headache in the next 15 minutes without aspirin"

It gets right to the problem.

3.) The designs end up being so similar because they've been tested over and over again. Some of the guys I've worked with have literally spent millions of dollars sending people to a landing page and tested every piece of it. Colors, words, positioning, videos, scripts, buttons -- I mean freaking everything.

Don't confuse "those damn internet marketing assholes" with best practices.

The best part about using a clickfunnels or leadpages or whatever is that they provide landing pages that have been tested over and over again.

4.) Stop worrying about how you look in the marketplace and start helping people. If your heart is really in the right place and you really want to help people -- you'll do what it takes to get in front of them and convince them you have a solution... but if you're just doing this to make $27 from random strangers on the internet... there's something off.

Oh...

And one last thing... Gamers probably haven't seen best-practices from marketers. It's all new to them. So a proper opt-in and deadline sequence is probably something they've never seen before.

Sorry I'm in a bit of a rush today but thought I'd throw in my 2 cents.