Subscribe to the Creativity ► Cashflow newsletter here to create the smarter, easier, wealthier way.

In August, I wrote a sales page for an experienced Canadian fitness trainer.

It resulted in a stellar recommendation, as well as a referral. Win-win!

Instead of giving general advice on how to write such a page, I figured it would be more useful to show you a real-life example of what I did as a sales copywriter and my thought process behind it.

Sound reasonable?

Nice one. Buckle up, because in today‘s edition you will:

🤏 Learn how to grab readers by the throat in the first few lines (in a nice way, I swear!)

½ Find out why showing the prospect how to solve their problem is only half the battle

🧩 Discover the missing piece from 90% of sales pages that makes ALL the difference

🛒 See why the dumb yet effective “BFGB” is the best way to close a sale

🤏 How to grab readers by the throat in the first few lines of a sales page (in the nicest of ways!)

Of all the sales pages I’ve read over the years, the best ones do three things well early doors:

Spark curiosity/intrigue
Name the problem
Show an understanding of the reader’s present emotional state

Get those three right as a sales page copywriter and your reader is locked in.

Here’s how I set the scene for the Canadian fitness trainer’s page (FYI, he offers online coaching to age 40+ executives and managers):

Can we check off those three items with the headline and introduction?

✅ Spark curiosity/intrigue

So, it happened.

Reader’s reaction: “Huh, what happened? I need to find out…”

✅ Name the problem

You told yourself you would never get this out of shape.

Reader’s reaction: “True, I need to do something about that.”

✅ Show an understanding of the reader’s present emotional state

No regrets. No more attacking yourself for past fitness “failures.”

Reader’s reaction: “Is this trainer a mind reader too or what? I’ve been beating myself up about this for too long…”

In a few short lines, we’ve managed to earn their attention and start to build rapport.

This stuff isn’t rocket science. But it is the most crucial piece of copy on your whole sales page.

You need to absolutely nail that intro.

Otherwise, the many hours you spend writing the rest will be a waste of time.

Before we continue, here's a previous edition you may find useful to recap:

Is This Salary For Writers Possible? 5 Years to $20k/Month

½ Why showing the prospect how to solve their problem is only half the battle

Show the reader how our product/service will solve their problem.

This is the bog-standard advice when writing sales copy.

But is that enough?

We’ve got to go the extra mile.

While I did include a section on how the online fitness coaching will help them solve their problem and also teased the benefits, comparing health to investing…

What I also recommend is showing the prospect how NOT to solve their problem.

At this stage, you can cast aside your potential competition and explain to the reader why pursuing other solutions than what you’re offering them would be a mistake.

Here’s what I went with:

Essentially, we’re telling them in a roundabout way:

Most fitness coaching programs out there don’t understand where you’re at in your life. They don’t understand your needs or motivations. So, you would frankly be a fool to choose them over us.

P.S. That “health pension pot” line? My dad came up with it.

I told him he’s gonna be the next Don Draper (we watched Mad Men together last year.)

But at age 63, maybe he’s more like the next Roger Sterling...

🧩 Discover the missing piece from 90% of sales pages that makes ALL the difference

I don’t know why most sales page copywriters fail to include this part. Because if you’ve done all your customer research and gotten this far through the sales page, it’s not hard to weave it in…

(Ideally, in the last quarter of the page)

In copywriter circles, it’s called “future pacing.”

And here’s what it looks like in practice:

See how this could work well?

Even if the reader has made up their mind at this point that they will buy (which we can never presume), it doesn’t hurt to spell out how their life will change for the better.

“Do they really need to be told?”

Yes, they do!

When there are not two, not three, but SEVEN positive outcomes listed one after another...

… it’s pretty darn hard to resist.

So don’t leave out this section, m’kay?

Get those bullets right and your sales page is the conversion equivalent of a slam dunk.

🛒 Why the dumb yet effective “BFGB” is the best way to close the deal as a sales page copywriter

Before you ask.

No, I’m not talking about the BFG…

Image credits: IMDb

(What’s the movie like, by the way? I’ve only read the books when I was a child)

Instead, I’m talking about the BFGB… a.k.a the “Big F**king Green Button.”

Hyperlinks are fine for certain types of copy like emails or social media.

But for longer copy such as sales pages, I recommend you include a BFGB as your call-to-action.

Or at least a BFBCG (Big F**king Brightly Colored Button)

Yellow, orange, pink. Take your pick.

Just make the bloody thing stand out!

Below is what we included for the fitness trainer’s sales page:

Please don’t reach the end then get all shy and hide your call-to-action.

You made it this far. You deserve that sale 🙌

Hope my sales page breakdown was helpful for you today.

Here’s the full page in case you’re curious.

And below is the LinkedIn recommendation my client gave me after we finished the project. As reviews go, it’s one of my all-time favorites for how detailed and personalized it is. Happy days.