One line of copy that stole 2 million in sales in 2017

Oziboomer started a great thread on here titled
"When a Farmer Sows A Seed".

Got us all debating about the value of nurturing prospects versus going after ready buyers.

I think we can all agree that part of the reason we contributre here is to help
some of the folks with less experience.

The largest hurdle we face in helping others understand how to improve their results
is just how subtle and nuanced the difference is between a strategy that flopped
and one that created millions in sales.

Truth be told we can often fall on one side or the other in a debate but in real life
you could often barely tell the difference between one strategy and the other and it
generally requires a hybrid with just the right slant at the right moment.

To that end I will share an example from one of my clients campaigns where one line
of copy made the difference in bringing in an extra 2 million in sales in 2016.


The Client: A Granite Fabrication Shop serving both public and builders.

The Sales: To consumers.

Traffic Source: Google PPC.


Relevant Background:

99% of the heavy lifting involving re-branding the client as the consultative expert.
A granite ebook, a video spokesperson, great content and everything one would expect to find
on a web site if they needed to go through an entire education and selection process for buying
granite. Mechanically a killer custom quote request engine was developed.

Each of the elements I state above where done exactly right. Tons of work and testing.
With 99% of the work done actuall sales barely moved 5%.

The entry point and qualifier to his web site like most of his competitors was Google PPC.
His competitors ran ads with these types of headlines:

"Largest Selection In Town"
"See how your kitchen will look..."
"View all our selection of slabs..."

Additionally every ad then had things like beat any price etc...

Ok, so here comes that line.
I am warning you it will be completely anti-climactic.

"Try Our Simple Online Estimator. An Estimate To Your Inbox"

Now your thinking seriously? That made a 2 million dollar shift?

Well let me share what we witnessed.

Buyers that wanted granite did a search. They saw ads that said "view our selection"
so guess what?
They took them up on their offer.
They clicked, consumer their budget and spent time on their site choosing a stone.

But this is where they magic happened.
With stone selected (they literlly wrote down the stock number)
They then took us up on our offer.
They tried our simple online estimator to get an estimate to their inbox.

A huge percentage of the estimate requests that came in actually included the stock numbers
of his competitors. It happened so much his sales staff had to print off competitors stock numbers
so they could cross reference the stone type!

Technically using that headline allowed us to "steal" folks that had been "nurtured" by a competitor.
It caught them at the exact moment they wanted to initiate price and purchase.
Sometimes they were considering stone type for months. Often they asked questions answered by the competitor.
But when they filled out our form they were basically educated and had made a choice.


Now this is where it gets really tricky for the new folks.
The headline made the difference BUT 99% of the back end system was exactly like or better than the nurture
machine of the competitor.
Hec we had the ebook not them. We had an autoresponder series. We had a great FAQ section.
We had all the credentials like BBB A+ rating etc...

But doing it 99% right only meant a 5% increase in results.
That 1 headline focused on targeting the best ready buyers only took 1% of the time but was the catalyst for 95%
of the financial results.

That is why I advise anyone new reading our threads that you look deeper at what we are saying.
We often debate each other for fun and use very black and white examples
but most of the people here are damn good at what they do and easily could debate the merits of both sides of an argument
and often use a hybrid of both methods.

P.S Don't the competitors have quote request forms? Yes but again the subtle differences make huge impact. First off they don't lead or ask or suggest to shoppers to use it in their copy upfront. Second their forms offer more resistance in how they look and are designed. I could write an entire post on the time and testing and psychology behind his quote request from but as my friend hammy hamster used to say "that's another story".