Nicole Smith
Welcome to Take Control with Nicole. As business owners we experience firsthand the fine line between our personal and business lives. During our conversations, we will look at simple hints and tips to create time, reduce overwhelm, and help you to navigate through your journey to where you want to be. If you’re looking for smarter ways to work, and create space and time freedom in your day, then you’re in the right place. All right, let’s go.

Nicole Smith
Hello, Hello, and thank you for joining me again for another episode of Take Control with Nicole. Today I am speaking with the fabulous Kate Toon, all about how to sell without being a sleazy beast. Kate is a real-life human doing her best to help other humans on their merry way to business success. She is all about substance over style, and keeping it real and relatable. Kate is a misfit, a motivator, an entrepreneur and an educator. She wears many hats and sometimes roller skates in her business. Stay Tooned. And she has built a business empire or more of a cul de sac as she calls it over years of hard work, trial and error, learning and of course, doing the do. Well hello Kate, welcome to the podcast. I’m so excited to have you on here today.

Kate Toon
Fabulous to be here. Thank you very much. Thank you for that intro, which was splendid. Did I write that? I don’t know. It’s very good.

Nicole Smith
Must have done, some would say you’ve got some experience with words Kate.

Kate Toon
Anyway, yes. Thank you very much.

Nicole Smith
I love it. Well, I’d love to just start with you telling us a little bit about you, for people who may not have found you on the socials yet. And your hats, your roller skates you cal de sac. I’m also a roller skater. I used to do artistic roller skating when I was little. So hats off, love it.

Kate Toon
Oh no. When I say I’m a skater, I’m very much an aspiring roller skater.

Nicole Smith
I love it.

Kate Toon
I’m at the stage where I can let go of something and roll forward. That’s as far as I’ve got. Yes. So my business got bit further than that. So yeah, I’m about 14 years into my business now. And it’s you know, mutated and evolved over the years into something quite, quite different. And we were just talking about this before the episode. So now I run a business called Stay Tooned, which is a collection of digital education companies. I help copywriters be better copywriters. I help people rank on Google. And I help people use digital marketing to improve their e-commerce business or their small, you know, their service based business. So three kinds of distinct businesses are all very intertwined and interconnected. And I guess these days, my role in that business is more it makes me sound like a fool, but kind of creative director. So I kind of steer the ship, come up with ideas, come up with content, and then I guess, perform at events, on podcasts, whatever. And then I have a team now that manages the day to day. So very different to what it looked like five years ago. But yeah, that’s where I am today.

Nicole Smith
So fabulous. And yeah, you are definitely the go to in all of those spaces. I know whenever I see a posts going, I need to learn about SEO. I’m like Kate Toon, this is who you need.

Kate Toon
It’s like you and ClickUp, I’m just your I can’t extrapolate the two things but they are one in the same

Nicole Smith
Beautifully combined and bound together to create brilliance, real and relatability it’s just so you. I love your, following you on Instagram, your stories and your posts and all of that has that always been you or is it something that you’ve sort of grown into as you’ve your businesses evolved?

Kate Toon
Definitely something I’ve grown into. In the early years I very much tried to kind of toe the line and appear as I saw ads appearing, you know, I Googled copywriter and most copywriters had a picture of them in a polo neck jumper with a hand artfully placed above a keyboard. And you know, my posts are very much what is a colon and quotes by Ernest Hemingway and like pictures of me like looking happy and doing my job and eating salad. And you know, my one I always take the mick out of his blowing confetti or whatever, you know, and I did that for a while but it isn’t really me. I am slightly sort of sarcastic and sardonic and while I am cheerful, relatively cheerful, I’m kind of, I have a darker sense of humour. So I decided to start showing that probably about five years ago, started writing some posts for flying solo and started to be a bit more me in them and the reaction was visceral, you know, from from people not really taking any notice of me to people either loving me or hate me. There was a reaction and it was just, you know, I started to get fans, and I started to get haters, but the fans were more than the haters and I thought oh, I’m onto something here. It’s been a rocky road because obviously the more you share of yourself the more expectations people have, the more people have to dig into. But yes, definitely an evolution that has gone in direct correlation to my confidence in myself.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, yeah, I found that in my obviously I’m two years in. But when I started, I was still very corporatized. And the moment I allowed myself to step into actually be me. And as we sit here today, I’ve got another big headband on and I got the glitter nail polish and all the things that I talk about. And it’s, it’s again, it allowed me to become more confident to show up in a way that was authentic. And people actually were like, oh, cool I like her. I want to be in her space.

Kate Toon
I do think if you’d have started 10 years ago, I’m not sure that, I mean, that really wasn’t the go. I think marketing has evolved. It’s about our evolution or our confidence. But marketing has evolved, I think, especially dramatically in the last couple of years where people want to see real people. We really want to know what people’s values are and what they stand for and what they won’t stand for. And we can’t hide that behind this facade of corporate businesses anymore. 10 years ago, you could, you know, if I’d gone on LinkedIn and posted some of the things on post now then I think that people would have gathered their pitchforks. So I think the world has evolved in a way I’m like, I’m jealous, you’re lucky to have come in at a time where it’s a bit more acceptable to wear fantastic Bridgeton, Fluval headbands, and talk about things that have nothing to do with your business. Everything to do with you. I think that’s that’s a new world that didn’t exist 10 years ago, and it’s a much better place.

Nicole Smith
I agree it is, you can see that from just the way social media has evolved as well, and people showing up and that transition between and yeah, we are very lucky to be in this space. Because we don’t need to be wearing those two hats anymore.

Kate Toon
No, just a headband!

Nicole Smith
Just a headband. So much easier. Well, I would love to dive into sales. Now, obviously, as a business owner, it’s a pretty big important part of why we’re starting a business like as much as I love doing what I do. Clients make it a business. So how do we make it not icky?

Kate Toon
So hard, isn’t it? It’s something that even copywriters struggle with, you know, so you as a, you know, I know you do some copy and but as a professional copywriter, lots of copywriters will avoid direct sales kinds of copy, because there’s a lot of expectation in terms of, you know, return on investment, but also this challenge of trying to be sincere, authentic, engaging, and sell something. And I think it’s seems like a big challenge. So, you know, I have recently released my course on doing this. And it took me a long time to make the course because I was like, What is this? Am I capable of doing it? And then I realised that I have a sales page. The ones are the Recipe for SEO Success, which has made me and my business over $2 million. So I have my own case study, I have something that shows I know what I’m doing. And so I use that as my template for creating the course and for what I talk about now, because I do think that that page is very sincere, explains the offer, explains who it’s for. It uses some marketing and sales tactics. We’ll talk about these in a minute scarcity and pricing models. But it doesn’t pretend to be anything other than it is. It doesn’t hide anything. And I think that kind of transparent sales is fine. And that’s what we need to think about when we want to remove the ick. Yeah, people like buying stuff. Big shock, right? People, by the time someone gets to their sales page, they’re probably pretty much there. They have a few pain points or a few objections or a few worries that you’re going to try and help them overcome. You’re not gonna lie to them. You’re going to explain things in a way that makes them go ah, okay, I was worried about that. Now I understand, cool I’m ready to buy or I didn’t realise it included that as well. Okay, right now I’m ready to buy. Oh, okay. It’s for these types of people. I’m not that type of person. Okay, I’m not ready to buy. That’s all you’re doing. You know, the line that we always use in sales copywriting is if someone had a disease and you had the cure, you would have no qualms about explaining that cure. They have a problem, you have the solution. You should have no qualms about explaining your solution.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, because it can be, I know when I first started and I’m obviously service based one to one I’ve got now the Members Lounge, which is my my group offering. Looking at the sales page, it was seemed a bit daunting, because like I looked around and saw all the things and there’s so much information on there. How, like it was just a bit like I don’t even know where to start.

Kate Toon
Yes, that’s it. I think we look at other people’s sales. Like first thing you do when you’re putting together the sales pages usually go and look at your competitors. I’m doing our fingers because there is no such thing as competition. Because we also centred in line with our customers. But you go and you look at other people’s sales pages and unfortunately just because they have so sales page doesn’t mean they know what they’re doing. And also, you don’t know how much they’re selling. They could be saying, oh look my course sold out, but like, maybe they only have seven spots, maybe it took them six months to sell out, maybe their price is awful. There’s a lot of rubbish charts online about people going, oh, look at me, I’m doing so well. And then you actually talk to them is like, I’m not really I’m just trying to put on a good face. So you look at other people’s sales pages, and you follow that model. And it’s often a broken model. So you know, the way I approach sales pages is to break them down into chunks. And that makes it much easier. Like if you start thinking of this big long scrolly beast, and you break it down into chunks. And most people will read it in chunks, chunk by chunk as they scroll on their mobiles, then it makes it much more manageable, and much more doable. So if you like me call, I can tell you about my chunk.

Nicole Smith
Let’s talk chunks. I love it.

Kate Toon
Okay, so I think there are really four core elements to a sales page, yeah. First of all, you have to kind of explain to people what the problem is. So part one is solving the problem. Yeah. So that’s generally I mean, you’re going to have your navigation at the top and your logo. But that’s generally that big image at the top that says, This is your problem. This is what’s going to happen if you don’t solve that problem. Look at me, I’m the solution. And in copywriting world, we have a formula for that we call it PAS. P A S – problem, agitate, solution. So the example I often use is itchy feet. Do you have itchy feet? Yeah, 90% of people walk past and say, no, I don’t because and then great sales page isn’t for them. And it never can be for them. You can’t make somebody who doesn’t have itchy feet think they do, if you do then your misleading. So do you have itchy feet? Someone’s gonna be like, yes, I do. Okay, and then you go, well, look, if you don’t resolve that, it’s gonna be embarrassing. You’ll never be able to wear sandals, you’re gonna get rashes. You’re out in public itching your feet, it’s so embarrassing. That’s the agitate. And then you have the solution in our itchy feet powder, relieves itchiness, soothes your feet and makes you fall in love with your feet again. Boom. Yeah, so problem, agitate, solution. So that’s the first part of the sales pitch. And that’s the part that most people get wrong. Does that make sense?

Nicole Smith
I love it. I love simplicity, right? And being able to have a formula like that, where you can be like dah dah dah. This is it. And obviously we’ll take time to find our ways of words and explaining that. But that is yeah, thank you for sharing that.

Kate Toon
Yeah, and this is it in its most basic form, because often what people lead with is the name of their product or the you know, but you really need to get people’s attention. So there’s another copywriting formula that we use called AIDA, attention, interest, desire, action. And attention is really, really important. So if you say this is the ultimate guide to dah dah dah dah, it’s like whatever. But if you ask a question, if you pose my pain point directly to me, and I immediately start nodding, as soon as I start nodding, you’ve got me, you’ve got me, and I’m engaged in the page. So getting that right, and then a nice clear call to action. And then in that first chunk, you also try and have a video, a video of you, especially if your selling a service, or even a cause, or whatever. A video of you saying exactly what the copy says, pretty much. Hi, I’m Nicole, and I help people who are disorganised get to grips with duh duh duh or do you feel like everything’s stressful? Do you feel like you’re, you know, yes. And people going, yes, yes, I do Nicole! And then you present you, your membership as the solution. And that creates that human connection. And that’s really all that needs to be in that first chunk. Because if people don’t engage with that first chunk, they ain’t scrolling. They’re going nowhere. So you’ve got to get them. There’s a line from David Ogilvy, who’s a big advertising guru that says, ‘Once people read that headline, they’ve spent 80 cents of their dollar’. Yeah, what does that mean? 80. You know, and 80% of people will read that only 20% of people will keep on going. So you’ve really got to get that first bit right. And that can be challenging, and you may have to try it a few alternatives. I’ve changed the top of my recipe sales page course, about 10 times until I got just the right pain point combination thing.

Nicole Smith
Yeah. Yeah, that’s so true, isn’t it? Because I think about how I absorb or you know, digest information. And it’s, if it’s not engaging me, and we can easily scroll to the next thing. It’s so easy now. So,

Kate Toon
Or click away to someone else? Yeah. Yeah. So that’s chunk one.

Nicole Smith
Wonderful.

Kate Toon
Let’s talk about chunk two.

Nicole Smith
Yes.

Kate Toon
Chunk two is where you literally explain your product. That sounds really obvious, but there are different ways you can kind of come into that, right. So what I like to do is sum up my product in four key features. So if you could only say four things about your product or your service, what four would they be? So for my course it might be like, there are 10 coaching calls, there’s a VIP Facebook group, there are 100 videos, there is one on one support. Whatever the best for things you can say, those should be the next things you mentioned. And usually it’s great to do these with icons, you know, like icon, icon, icon. That really is gonna make people go, oh, you know, the four sexiest things to say, and then again, that leads them down, and then you can dig into how it works. So literally what’s included, a list of everything you get, then you can maybe pick out one particular aspect of your thing, the thing that maybe gets people most excited. So say, with SEO, one of the things I know is a big pain point is people are like, there’s lots of other SEO courses, what’s special about yours, and for me, it’s the support. So I pull that out and do a whole paragraph about that. So rather than just saying you get 12 weeks support, I do a whole paragraph talking about the reviews and this and that and I flesh it out. And then another part of this section is what’s the you know, explaining the product is to say, who it’s for who it’s not for. And that’s a fun, that’s an area where you can have a little bit of fun, because it’s for you and say, for your services, business owners, you know, entrepreneurs, whatever. And then in the who it’s not for, you can have be a bit playful. So this is not for you, if you’re super organised. And you, you know, you don’t need any help. This is not for you, if you’re not willing to use clickup. This is, I’m joking, this is where you can have some playfulness. And then after that, another part of explaining the product is your story. So you use yourself at this stage it’s not a testimonial, it’s not proof, it’s explanation. You say I was here with this problem, the same problem you have, I did this, and this is the transformation I had. So you know, I was a new copywriter starting out there were loads of competition, I learned about SEO. And now I am here. And that shows people wow, if you can do it, I can do it. So that’s it features, who it’s for, what’s included, and your story. That’s all in the next chunk.

Nicole Smith
That’s, that’s cool, because I think we do. there’s, you can give too much. I know I was always an over giver, bit of an oversharer. And trying to pull that back. So the initial they don’t get so overwhelmed by all the words coming at them from the page. And if it’s, spark those four points. Oh, I want to know more. Oh, wow, that, oh, okay. So that’s the most thing I’m gonna get. Kate’s done it. She’s been there, you’ve done it. You’ve done it. This is what her journey is. She can do it. Yeah, let’s do it.

Kate Toon
That really resonates. I mean, people ask me, you know, how long should a sales page be? And why are sales pages so long? And the idea is, is that the lower the cost of the product, the less emotional involvement the product has, the shorter the copy can be. But you know, my cost is $2,000. Yeah, I need to give the justification. But again, the big thing you mentioned, there’s people overwrite these pages. Like once you’ve told me what’s in it, don’t tell me what’s in it again. You know, you’ve told me your story, don’t have another section about you. Just one section each, you know, when, I’ve got a little checklist in my closet, you end up with that 14, you’ve got the four chunks, and within them, like maybe 14 elements spread out. That’s enough, then put it live and see what sections people interact with, get some feedback. If people are calling you and saying, yeah, I’ve seen your sales page, but I don’t understand this. Great. Now you can add that to your sales page. But don’t add it all in. Because then you’ll be in the position where I am where I’ve been with recipe where I’m actually cutting stuff out again, because it’s just too big. It’s overwhelming.

Nicole Smith
Yeah. Yeah, because we don’t know what we don’t know. But we also can only consume a certain amount, especially as part of that decision making process. So some of my clients arrive to me with spreadsheets full of applications. And they’re like, I don’t know which one to choose. I’m like, no one, of course you don’t.

Kate Toon
They’re overwhelmed.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, let’s cut it back. I normally like select three, dive in, find the one you feel good with that’s the right price point, you know, it’s gonna feel good for you and your team as you grow. And then that’s what we’re gonna go with. And we’re gonna dive in there and really learn about it. But yeah, some of the spreadsheets, I’m like, oh, we’re not even gonna go there. We’re gonna just say over here.

Kate Toon
We are overwhelmed. And people respond to content in different ways. So I always include a mini navigation at the top of my sales page. That’s for people who want to cut to the chase, they want to see the price, they want to see the FAQ, or it’s for repeat visitors. So I can see when people sign up to my recipe page, because I leave my sales pages open all year round, I don’t do this hidden sales page thing, I’m not a fan of it. And there are fooling around with the pricing on all year round. So people can come, they can understand and they can plan so people will say to me, I am saving to do your cause and whatever. And they know what the price is going to be there’s no surprises. And so repeat visitors will jump to the section that they want. And even people who are fully engaged will scroll down the page looking for headlines and sub headers and images that no one reads every word. But the physical length of it shows that there’s some substance to what you’re selling. You know, if I had a sales page for my $2,000 course, and it was 400 words long people would be like, really, you know, is this all there is? So there’s there’s that it’s a fine balance between too much and too little?

Nicole Smith
Yeah, absolutely. What’s chunk three?

Kate Toon
Chunk three, we’re nearly there. We’ve got two chunks left. So chunk three is proof. It’s really important that we haven’t done any proof yet. So don’t go whacking testimonials right at the start and logos, right at the start, we’re not ready for that. I don’t, I don’t care about how good this until I actually understand what it is. But at this point, I understand what it is, I’ve identified that it could possibly be for me. And now I need affirmation that it works. So proof comes in a number of different formats. Yeah, the one we all think of is testimonials greatest. So if you’re brand new, you might not have any, right. So it can be different things. So other elements that can be proof are awards that you’ve won that show you are an industry expert, as featured in, is a really great proof point, other people have featured you on their podcast or on their whatever that means that they put trust in you and therefore I can put trust in you. Testimonials are great, they should be short and sweet. One sentence, no paragraphs, not in a rolling accordion weird thing that I have to click on. Video testimonials are obviously the jam, people love them, logos of previous people who worked with you. And then also as part of this proof section, you can have a guarantee, that proves that you have confidence in the service that you’re offering. So you know, for my course I have a 14 day money back guarantee, you’re gonna have something similar, and also results. So if you can have results, people love seeing a chart going up. Yeah, that’s one type of result we will understand. But results don’t just have to be financial, or traffic or whatever. They could just be how you transformed someone’s feelings. I took this person from here to there, you know, and testimonials don’t always have to be written, I often like to take little Facebook comments and just have them on the page as well. And then the final part of proof is kind of it taking a bit further is having case studies. So maybe you have some little short case studies there link off to a separate page. And in those, you know how we talked about our story I was here. I did this I got there. You have previous customers, previous clients, and you show their transformation. So people don’t think oh, well, it’s fine for Nicole, whose Nicole, oh, well done, Kate, you managed to do it, but I’m not going to be able to. You want to be able to show people have done it. So all of that proof goes together in a section and that will often get a lot of eyeballs. The average time I’m I have a separate testimonial page, I have eight on my sales page, my best eight. I have a separate page, people spend up to 15, 20 minutes on my testimonial page. That is reading a lot of content, you can read about 3000, 4000 words in that time. And people are on there all that time wanting proof after proof after proof. So proof is huge.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, I know that when I’m looking again, looking to buy something I want to know who’s worked with you before and what results are they, well it’s not even results, it’s the experience that they’ve been for me, like, I know, whenever I’m going into learn something, if I walk away with one or two key points, then I’ve really am successful in that thing. You know, and I was talking to people who have done it and been there and had that want, like the actual feedback and in a format like that, that you know hasn’t been like adopted. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I love the video testimonial thing, I think is something that I’m going to start to do with my people as well. Is there something a lot of people are happy to do that or is that something that,

Kate Toon
You know, I’d say, you know, my very rough rule of thumb is one out of every 10 people give you a testimonial, it’s not the other nine weren’t happy. It’s just, it takes time and people are busy or whatever. And then out of those 10 written testimonials, maybe one will take the time to make a video, you have to make it super easy for them. So I always say I send a little email, I’ve got instructions in my site and an email that goes out and says, you know, just use your iPhone, put it landscape, record one minute, only one minute. Say who you are, what your problem was before you started working with me what your experience was, and what your recommendation is. And that’s it, it’s really short because no one will watch longer ones anyway. And then I take it on and edit it and get rid of their ums and ahs. And I assure them that I will do that. I will make you look professional and great, don’t worry. And that relieves the stress because most people want to give a testimonial, they just don’t want to look like a fool. And that’s what holds them back. So if you can make that easy for them, then you will get them. And again, do you need 100 videos? No, if you’ve managed to get three or four, it’s just some human contacts on the page and people going, because what people are looking for is someone like them. And I don’t mean age, gender, colour. I need someone who had the same problem that you solved. Yeah. So it’s a problem based testimonial.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, yeah. Cool. Well, that sounds like you’ve got a process a beautiful process there. That’s working immaculately. Well, I think I’ll have to put that on my to-do list in ClickUp to build out my process a bit more on that. So thank you for that.

Kate Toon
Are we ready for the final chunk.

Nicole Smith
Yes, please.

Nicole Smith
Just interrupting this episode for one little message, if you have been listening and love what you hear and want to come in connect, we have a Take Control with Nicole Facebook community right over there on Facebook that I would love to invite you to come and join us. We are a supportive community, we are looking to really take action in our businesses and change the way or evolve the way we’re working right now. So I invite you to come on over and join our community and connect with us all. Community is the essence of everything in business. Being able to really build those relationships that you can nurture, and grow and support and celebrate each other. Oh, how fabulous, I hope to see you over there. pop on over to Facebook, Take Control with Nicole, see you soon.

Kate Toon
Final chunk, final Countdown. Okay, so this is action to buy the product. So I’m not saying you can’t have call to actions throughout the page, you definitely should, each chunk probably should have a call to action. Remember people reading your content in little snippets. So if they have to scroll up or scroll down to find a call to action button, you’ve lost them. Obviously,

Nicole Smith
I’ve been on those pages. And I’m like, it’s too hard. I just want to know the thing.

Kate Toon
You know, and obviously, all those call to actions lead to the bottom of the page, they anchor down to the bottom of the page. So this is where you’re going to have your pricing panel. I would also suggest you have card icons that show the multiple way people can pay because that’s a big trigger. Also, there’s something about having like American Express, Visa, MasterCard icons on your site that show that you have, you’re professional and they associate you with those brands. I have a currency converter, because I have people from all over the world signing up, my prices are in Australian because that’s where my primary audiences, but this is also where you can have other elements. So it’s not just about pricing. This is where you can mention your bonuses. I mentioned them anywhere else, we weren’t ready for them. We just want the bonuses now, you can have some kind of permission statement. So this is a real copywriting tactic. You know something around the idea of, for mine it’s like you could pay an SEO consultant $2,000 a month to do your SEO for you or you can pay $2,000 for this course and be able to DIY your SEO for the rest of your life. That’s a permission statement. It’s a comparison statement. This is where you have your FAQs. So you’ve probably answered all the objections in the long copy. Now you answer it nice and short. How long does it take? When does it start? How does it work? Really short and sweet. Then you have the pricing again, then you have any fine print, any terms conditions, any things that you don’t hide those in terms of conditions. So like for my you know, it’s like you get for my membership for example, if you sign up monthly, you have to pay for a year, that’s the deal. And I make that very clear. So I don’t hide anything. And then you have the pricing again, you can have it three times because you separate them as well. And then you have what I call a last chance call to action, which is something you know, like so if you’re ready to take step and do this, make this change today, boom, and off you go. And those are all parts of pricing. So you see what I’ve what we’re doing is we’re keeping it clean, we’ve got problem, we’ve got explanation, we’ve got proof, we’ve got sales, and then we don’t repeat. And we don’t shove testimonials everywhere. I have the price right at the top. Everything belongs where it belongs. It’s a simple process. And what having a checklist, as you know, miss checklists Queen, takes the emotion out of this, we need to save the emotion for our words, not for the structure of the page. So makes it much more rational. When you’re coming up sales page.

Nicole Smith
It feels easy.

Kate Toon
And it is

Nicole Smith
It’s you know, I obviously love a process and I love, love structure around things like this, you know, even all the things that I do with my clients, it’s about building the foundational structure so then they can come in and customise it. So they make it for their business and the way that they operate. Having a structure like that is really clear. It removes that, yeah, that emotional oh, what do we put here? And I’ve got to have ten hundre things over here and give all the information. No, actually you don’t. You’ve got this checklist, you do the things. And then shebang. She’s up and running and going.

Kate Toon
Yeah. And you put it out there. Yeah. And it evolves over time and your offering evolves, you evolve, your customers evolve, you get more testimonials, you swap those out, you clarify your offer, you realise that although you were going to include this, now maybe it’s not working for you. So it’s an evolving beast. You don’t write your sales page and leave it there. Which is why I think there’s a lot of benefit to trying to learn to do it yourself. Because what you don’t want to do is every time you want to make a change feel that you have to go back to a copywriter and pay more money because it’s expensive, you know, a good copywriter will be charging you 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 $12,000 To write sales page. Then it has to be designed by somebody who understands great IA and responsiveness and themes and then it has to be coded. And that, you know, a good sales page can cost 15, $20,000. But the return on investment is going to be there forever just making you money. And this is what this is really important thing, my recipe sales page, which has been there for a while, five years now, I think I’m up to my 23rd launch of the course. In all that time. I’ve had three people want to talk to me before they buy. Yeah. So no one’s rang me up. No email. And if I get an email that says something like, Oh, what’s that? How long does it take each week? I’m like, it’s in the FAQs. But to have a sales page that can make that much money with zero human intervention. That is the dream, right? Helping singing you to sleep each night. This is what it gives you. A great sales page takes away cold calling, takes away difficult client calls, takes away client calls where the expectations are all out of whack. You may still have client calls, but it’s going to be to just iron out the final creases, not to understand fundamentals about the product or service you offer.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, I’m excited. I love how my podcast conversations perfectly aligned with where I am right now. The Members Lounge sales page is on my radar to be looking at and doing and all of that now. So now I’m gonna go back and go, right? Look at this, let’s do this, let’s do that

Kate Toon
Let’s send you a little discount to do my little course.

Nicole Smith
Fun. Thank you. Yay, I love it. Because I’m always I love learning how to do the thing. It’s not saying that I need to do it all forever in a day. But as long as I know how to do it that way, then when I do decide to delegate it, or if I want to keep it because I love it. We’ve got that choice, then.

Kate Toon
Yeah, exactly. I’m the same like knowing how to do stuff and then deciding which of those things you’re not going to do because it doesn’t serve you. I think it’s very empowering. Nothing worse than outsourcing something and not truly understand what you’ve outsourced or what they’re doing. Because then you’re always worrying if you’re paying too much, or if they’re doing a good job and that’s icky. So a little bit of knowledge is sometimes all you need to take the next step.

Nicole Smith
Absolutely. I have a question. So, love a question. So I obviously have a members lounge and I’m just going to apply it to me because I’m here. I could talk about me, I never do anyway. But I’m also got my services, do you need an in depth sales page like that for my one to one offerings? Because mine are quite short and precise, is that kind of different?

Kate Toon
No, I don’t think it is. I think you do need them. I mean, would it be as extensive? Probably, maybe, I mean, think about money. Like your membership costs x amount a month. Memberships are harder to sell not because of the price, but because of the commitment. People hate commitment causes a hard sell, because it’s a big cost up front. Yeah. Services are hard to sell because there’s so much fear around being let down and trust and not understanding how it works. So yes, maybe you wouldn’t go to town in quite as much detail. But yeah, I mean, each service page, you know, I’m an SEO person as well. These are your power pages from a Google point of view and a money point of view. So you really need to at least on that page, explain what the service is, what you get, what you don’t get, who it’s for, some testimonials of previous people who’ve used the service, maybe some indicative pricing, even if it’s just from x, or ideally, package pricing, because the biggest objection most people have to using service providers is fear of cost blowout. So if you can say to them that you get this, this and this and it’s from $1,000, it just gives them a range, it goes okay, well, I get that you’re not gonna get this for $50 and it’s not gonna cost me 50,000. Great. I know I live in a world. And then yeah, strong call to action. You want a picture of you and a bit about you because what if I’ve never been to your homepage? What if I came directly to this page, you want a call to action, you want testimonials on that page because what if I never go to the testimonial page?

Nicole Smith
I’ve thought about that before.

Kate Toon
So Imagine like, this is the only thing they’re gonna see. Yeah, they’re not gonna look at a single other page. Is there enough on there to sell you, who you are, what other people think of you, why you’re awesome on that one page. And you know, maybe you can’t do that for every single service. So for me, in my, when I was a copywriter, back in the day, I had one really killer service page for my small business websites and I had packages and had all that. That page drove a lot of business and then maybe after time, a couple of years, I did a video page the same and then I did one more, but not every single service page was fleshed out to that degree. I focused on the services that were making me the most money or had the potential to. But if I had time to do it again, I would create killer services pages for everything. Yeah, why not? What harm is it going to do? You knew the answer to that before you asked it.

Nicole Smith
Yeah. Again, it’s in the back of the mind. Like I’m pretty happy with where they are right now. But I know that I can evolve them. And I love what you said, because businesses and websites in particular, it’s not like you just do it and leave it. Because we’re evolving. The business is evolving, our people are evolving, you know, the language evolves, like, we’ve got to keep up and you know, updating, I think,

Kate Toon
And your prices change, right? Like services pages served you when you weren’t charging very much because your price was low. But if you wanted, one of the big things that we all struggle with, as business owners is wanting to charge what how can you charge more you show more value. You know, and value is shown through proof, inclusions, whatever. So, you know, if you wanted to double your prices, you might need to double the comprehensiveness of that page, so that people go, wow, this is really worth paying for. You know, so I think that’s what I was talking about, about how long does sales copy need to be as long as it needs to be to overcome objections? And the higher the price of your object that you’re selling, the more objections people have, the longer the product copy needs to be. So yeah, I think you might need to revisit them at some point. But yeah, it’s a big job.

Nicole Smith
It’s on the radar, absolutely. I just, she just done some work with Kathy Rast, who you know as well, about my business voice. And so now I have some words that truly connect with me and the business. And so I’m going to next stage, get them on there.

Kate Toon
We’re all so, everyone knows everyone.

Nicole Smith
So fun. Oh, goodness gracious. We talked a little bit about copy and SEO, is there anything that you could, you want to share that’s really, I guess, impactful on service pages, or it’s probably just impactful all over the place with,

Kate Toon
When it comes to SEO, people often think that sales copy and SEO are two separate things. You know, you can’t write good conversion copy, good engagement, copy and things, Google. But most of the people who think that just fundamentally don’t understand how Google works, the days of having to shove keywords here, there and everywhere. Well, they never really existed, but they definitely don’t exist now. So you know, if you have a one on one service, where maybe you you know, you look at everyone’s processes, and you organise them, and introduce them to clickup and get all their businesses on it. You know, what are you going to talk about on that page? You’re going to use words like clickup, organisation, small business, blah blah blah. You need to think about, what would someone type into this page, into Google to find this page? And they might not be typing clickup, because they may not even be aware of what clickup is. There not, there’ll be people who are looking for clickup, there’ll be people who are above that, who are looking for who have a problem but don’t know that clickup is the solution. You need to write copy that appeals to people who have a problem but don’t know the solution, people who know there’s a solution and a comparing. Maybe they’re thinking maybe Asana is better, not saying anything. And you want to, you want to deal with that argument on the page and explain why you love ClickUp. And then you want to deal with people who know Nicole Smith, who’ve listened to your podcast, they don’t their past problem, their past solution, they’re ready to buy from you because they already know, like and trust you? And then really, what do you need to tell them to get them over the line? So I think it’s thinking about searcher intents and writing naturally, but just starting, before you start a page thinking what would someone type into Google to find a page like this? And it probably isn’t what you think it is because you’re in your business? So it’s a great question to ask your audience, what would you type into Google to find someone like me, and you might think, clickup expert. Other people might be like, I don’t know, emotional support for small businesses, or how to get organised or whatever, you know. So I think that’s the most important thing to think about from an SEO point of view.

Nicole Smith
I love you say emotional support for small businesses, because it’s such an element like I know, everyone, I’ve worked with you, you’re in their world, and helping them to really identify the most efficient way of working, you know, clickup is one thing I work in, but it’s not the be all and end all. It’s a so many options for you. But what’s right for you and helping you through that journey is

Kate Toon
And just having someone who’s on your side, like, you know, I have a OBM soon to be my business manager. And we you know, I say we’re like Thelma and Louise, I don’t know which ones worked, or Batman and Robin, like it’s having someone in your business that genuinely cares about your business other than you that you can talk to about really stupid, boring things like reconciling Xero and organising that spreadsheet and there as excited about it as you are. That’s what it’s about. It’s about having a buddy as well as a helper as well as a mentor and a project manager. It’s everything wrapped up in one.

Nicole Smith
Absolutely. Your business sidekick. Love it. Well, the thing that I normally end my podcast with I have three questions. You’re ready to rock and roll. Okay, what is your go-to app that creates ease in your everyday?

Kate Toon
I would probably say slack. Slack is my most used so we don’t really email each other as a team and we, everything goes through slack so that the first app I open every morning.

Nicole Smith
I love that. Yeah. Glad to hear that. And that’s something everybody should listen to email has its purpose, but day to day conversation is not one of those things. Online or paper to do lists lover?

Kate Toon
Definitely onli, both can I say both?

Nicole Smith
Yeah, hybrid love hybrid,

Kate Toon
I must say I’m much more into online than I used to, it took me a long time to get over to do this. And now we use, I use asana and slack and we have to do lists within those. Sometimes I transfer it to a pad like maybe pick my top three things, just as the physical action of writing them down is helpful, but I’m actually getting better at just doing it via slack and Asana.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, fabulous. Yeah, I probably everyone’s heard on the, if you listen all the time. I’m a hybrid as well. I have my notebooks but I have clickup and you know this serves purposes both which is so important. Okay, so final question, what would you do if you created more space in your world?

Kate Toon
Well I’m, that’s exactly what I’m trying to do at the moment I’ve just hired two permanent part time humans to take over two core roles in my business and that’s to a, free me up to have a more healthy life for myself from a mental point of view, physical to find to always have time to have a good breakfast go to the gym spend time with my son. But also to free me up to do some more expansive things within my business you know, write books make more courses, turn up more for my members and not get so ground down by the day to day nitty gritty. And the take a more expansive view take a, I think helicopter view is bit cheesy, but I want to instead of being in the field battling I want to be up on the hillside on my horse looking at the entire campaign you know, so that’s that’s what I’m trying to do.

Nicole Smith
I’m just flashing back to where watching Game of Thrones.

Kate Toon
I don’t know if battle is quite the right analogy. I started so I had to finish it.

Nicole Smith
Did it Denise oh how do you say it, Denae whatever her name is, on the dragon

Kate Toon
I want to know, before she went crazy the last episode for no reason.

Nicole Smith
Yes. Yeah. Well, we’ll cut that one out. Where are the fun, the first fly on the dragon that’s amazing.

Kate Toon
And more business dragon. There we go

Nicole Smith
Oh, love that. That’s a quote if

Kate Toon
We need to mean that Nicole hashtag business dragon.

Nicole Smith
Oh, looking forward to seeing that in your socials. Yes. So love it. Well, thanks so much for joining me today. Is there anything else you want to share or chat about before?

Kate Toon
I’ve really enjoyed being on your podcast. Anyone listening, go back and listen to some previous episodes full of gems, and I’ve got an awful lot of time for what Nicole does. And hopefully she’s gonna share a screen grab of her in this fantastic headbands.

Nicole Smith
I will pop it on to, oh well, I’ve actually already on Instagram, but I will do it on the day this comes out as well. Lastly, but not leastly where can we find you because I think everybody needs to come and say hi and your Facebook group but you can tell us about I’m sure is just a daily love of mine. So

Kate Toon
It’s crazy sometimes, but like all website it’s katetoon.com. I’ll send Nicole a link and a little offer for the listeners for the sales page course if you want to and have a look at that. And my group on Facebook is called The Misfit Entrepreneurs. It’s a bit of a wacky, slightly businessy business group. And yes, you’re more than welcome to join us there too.

Nicole Smith
Beautiful full of genuine amazing humans in there. And I just love it. Love it. Love it. Love it. All of those links are going to pop them in the show notes as always. But thank you again, Kate, for joining us.

Kate Toon
Thank you so much.

Nicole Smith
My pleasure. And for everybody who’s listening, have a wonderful rest of your day and enjoy creating space and time freedom bye now.

Nicole Smith
Well, there we go. Thank you so much for joining me today. It’s been such a pleasure having you on board. Have we connected on social yet? If not, please come on over say hi, I’m on all the platforms @theartisanssolution. So I’d really look forward to seeing you over there. And if you enjoy today’s episode, don’t forget to tag me and I’d love it if you could leave a review. And of course share this with others so others can come and join us next time. All right, then everyone have a fabulous rest of the week and until next time, see you then.