{"id":1716,"date":"2016-08-16T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-08-16T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/creativethirst.com\/blog\/?p=1716"},"modified":"2023-11-13T10:59:24","modified_gmt":"2023-11-13T14:59:24","slug":"the-three-act-approach-to-selling-natural-health-supplements-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/creativethirst.com\/blog\/the-three-act-approach-to-selling-natural-health-supplements-online\/","title":{"rendered":"The Three Act Approach To Selling Natural Health Supplements Online"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Selling natural health supplements online requires a very unique and sophisticated approach. There are lots of Federal Trade Commission (FTC) restrictions on what you can and can\u2019t say and often times it feels like the FTC does not want you to sell at all if you read through their dietary supplements advertising guide. As if the only statement they would be okay with is simply \u201chere\u2019s my supplement product\u201d with no call to action or salesmanship at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That may be 100% compliant but you won\u2019t sell any bottles that way. These pitfalls don\u2019t exist in other industries. And conversely the salesmanship required to sell supplements is vastly different than any other sale because selling supplements comes down to knowing how to leverage trust and belief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But sometimes that salesmanship can easily get the better of health marketers and the legal team squashes all the beautiful hooks, headlines and intensity out of the sales page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This results in many health marketers taking an overly conservative approach, weather they like it or not, leaning on the side of not selling at all. Because of this, many health entrepreneurs are leaving money on the table, and not selling as much as they can and thus not making as big of an impact on the world. Some, but very few are taking an opposite approach and pushing the boundaries too far, hoping not to get caught.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The root cause of this problem is not the FTC or the legal department, but rather the midst of selling health supplements online. Most marketers think of marketing and selling as the same thing and thats where the trouble lies of the online supplement industry, resulting in an over the top sales page with claims that will make a lawyers skin crawl and light a fire under the FTC or the exact opposite, just the bare minimum with not enough salesmanship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there is a better way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The key is to separate the marketing from the selling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But you must first understand the difference between them. The simplest way to think about marketing is that it is oriented towards helping people buy, think of it as the education, whereas the selling concept is more orientated towards helping the seller.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This goes back to the other parties self interest in our accelerated trust formula:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Accelerated Trust Online = (Logic + Belief) +
(Anxiety x Credibility) – The Other Party\u2019s Self Interest<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Self interest can be defined with the question, how much interest does the party that is trying to influence you have in the selling message? This is the only element that is negatively weighted in the accelerated trust formula. If the self interest is too heavy handed in the sales pitch this could shift all of the elements on the left side of the equation, logic, belief and credibility down and trust can be easily lost along with the sale. We can\u2019t eliminate all of self interest, if we do we eliminate the sale completely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So separating marketing and selling is not only good for building accelerated trust, which closes the sale but it\u2019s also good to keep the FTC at bay and your legal team happy. It\u2019s a win – win – win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So how do you do it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One way to separate marketing and selling is with a bridge page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A bridge page is a web page that goes right before your sales page in your funnel. In the case of health marketing this is usually in the form of an advertorial page where all of the marketing and educating can be done on it\u2019s own, devoid of selling, which happens on the next page, which is the sales page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This separates the goals of your two web pages as well. Before your sales page had to do all the heavy lifting, now your bridge page bears the sole weight of getting your visitor to the next step in your funnel, the sales page. Leaving your sales page to focus on closing the sale after the education has been done on the marketing bridge page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Often times lumping both of these functions together results in a really, really, really long sales page, causing the visitor to have information fatigue. Visitors literally bail out of the page when they are feeling overwhelmed from length. Although this usually is a symptom of a copy and design problem, not really one of length. Or the visitor skims the page frantically looking for the offer, or for you to get to the point. In either case, the marketer never knows if the visitor really absorbed the education \/ marketing portion of the page or simply didn\u2019t read it because of friction due to the length.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Granted there are a few exceptions where you do want to combine the marketing\/education and selling in one go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One is where the visitor is highly motivated to solve their problem. In situations like these, the prospects desire and self story usually always outweighs the challenges they need to surmount.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If motivation is high enough, and they are desperate for a solution, a visitor will be more willing to overcome the friction of length in a long form sales letter and or a video sales letter. In such a case, you\u2019ll likely have a sale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another exception is when a visitor leaves a video sales letter (VSL) page early and is presented with a \u201cwait don\u2019t go\u201d exit pop offer that takes them to the long form sales letter with the marketing and selling combined in one long page. In that case, the visitor is usually suspicious about some alternative agenda, i.e. an offer for sale, or is feeling trapped and or has the impression that the other parties self interest seems like it might be too high, as outlined in our accelerated trust formula.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Accelerated Trust Online = (Logic + Belief) +
(Anxiety x Credibility) <\/i>– The Other Party\u2019s Self Interest<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Or the visitor has fallen victim to friction due to the length of the VSL, in any case you want to at least try to get them to stick around a bit longer and at least present your offer. Heck the reason they could be leaving the VSL page is because they just don\u2019t like those sort of videos, in which case they could be readers rather than viewers, so a long form sales letter might just be the preferred medium for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But regardless of the method you\u2019re using, video sales letter or long form sales letter the approach of separating the marketing from the selling is the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s examine one way of doing this using the three act play as our guide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where the education marketing is to be done in acts one and two, leaving the critical role of selling to come in at act three.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next, we\u2019re going to break down what goes into each act of our three part structure\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First You Want To Set The Stage <\/b><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First you want to set the stage in act one. This is the marketing \/ education part where you talk about anything and everything related to the problem. This is firmly planted in the (Logic + Belief) portion of the accelerated trust formula.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s take arthritis as an example. In this first section, or act one, you can discuss things like:<\/p>\n\n\n\n