While the goal of marketing copy, like a blog post, is to inform or provide value, the goal for your sales copy is to persuade your audience to part with their hard-earned cash in exchange for the transformation you're promising. Even if you've never written a sales page before, I'll teach you four best practices you can use to write sales copy that converts prospects into excited customers.

First up, you need to define your audience. If you haven't already, you can define your audience in crystal clear detail in our Teachable Academy course "Choose Your Course Topic." Here's why this matters. No course is a perfect fit for everyone, and you shouldn't advertise that it is. Think about this example. Let's say you saw an ad for an allergist that reads, "Have allergies? Call this number." Even if you do have allergies, this might not register as important to you. But now imagine instead reading a sign that says, "Do you break out in hives every time you visit your in-laws and their cats?" This targets far fewer customers than the first ad, but in this case, the pain you feel is so specific that if it applies to you, you'll pick up the phone immediately. That's the effect you want to have on your prospects, the need to buy immediately. It might also help to define who this course isn't for. Filtering out the wrong customers is as important as attracting the right ones.

The next best practice you'll use to write sales copy is storytelling. When you tell a story, you're creating a visual picture for your audience, and hopefully they'll see a little bit of themselves in the story you tell. There are three kinds of stories you can use, the personal, the historical, and the expert. In the personal story, you'll share something about yourself. Maybe it's the story of how you picked up this skill, or the story of how your own difficult journey with something led you to teach this course. This is what you'll see on Karla's sales page, where she talks about how she learned how to decorate cookies herself, and how much joy she now gets from teaching others. The next story type is the historical story, which means you'd do some research to find a story relevant to your teachings. Last up is the expert's story, where you've consulted with an expert and are now sharing your findings. As an example, this might be appropriate if you were teaching in the health and wellness space, and you consulted with a nutritionist and a personal trainer to learn exactly what they'd recommend to clients just like you.

Next up, you'll need to overcome your audience's objections. Your course is an investment, and your subscribers will naturally try to talk themselves out of making this purchase. What you'll want to do is address those objections outright. Imagine what your subscribers might use to rationalize their way out of purchasing your course. For example, some common objections include, "This course is too expensive." "I could learn how to do this on my own." or "How do I know I can trust you?" Concerns might get more specific for your topic, so it might include things like, "What if I have no tech experience?" or "Does this work on a mac or a PC?" If you openly address these objections, your audience will feel more comfortable trusting you.

And lastly, you'll want to use benefit-driven language to frame your course as a solution to someone's problems. When you sell your online course, you're actually selling the benefits of your course, or the final transformation. We often talk about how your course is a shortcut to an outcome, so the way you frame your course should be less about you and more about your students and how their lives can change after taking your course. Think about it this way. People don't want to buy a vacuum cleaner. They want a clean floor. We don't want a college degree, we want a great job. When Apple first sold an iPod, they didn't advertise storage for 16 gigabytes for mp3s. They advertised "1000 songs in your pocket." Think about how you can lead with the benefits your students will get. That's what you're really selling, not the PDFs and hours of video content.

These four best practices - define your audience, tell a story, overcome objections, and use benefit driven language - will help you convince customers that you have the magical solution they've been looking for. And importantly, you won't be selling in a gimmicky way. These best practices will be particularly helpful as we move into our next lesson, where I'll teach you about the major elements, or building blocks, that you'll use on your course sales page.