Pedro Cortés' 3 psychology pillars of irresistible landing pages

Ramli John: Creating a high converting landing page is both an art and a science. Sure, you can have the best looking landing page, but understanding science behind bio psychology and behavior can take your landing page from" Huh?" to" Wow. Take my money now." And one of those people who understand landing pages and bio psychology is Pedro Cortes. He's a Sasco consultant who has worked with hundreds of SaaS companies. Today, Pedro will be sharing the three psychology pillars of irresistible landing pages. In this Marketing Power- Ups episode, you'll learn first why bad messaging could be costing you big money. Second, common landing page mistakes you should avoid right now. Third, Pedro's, three psychology pillars of irresistible landing pages. And fourth, how you can overcome limiting beliefs in your marketing career. Before we start, I've created a power cheat sheet that you can download, fill in, and apply the three psychology pillars of irresistible landing pages. Go to marketingpowerups. com to get it now, or find the link in the description. Are you ready? Let's go.

Announcer: Marketing Powerups. Ready? Go! Here's your host, Ramli John.

Ramli John: Today, we're going to be talking about messaging and how to improve that with the framework that you have. Before we jump in, on your site, you have this phrase that bad messaging is costing company big money. Can you put that into context and explain why that is? Why is messaging so important that it's costing companies money?

Pedro Cortes: Yeah, it's actually very important because if you think of your website almost like a salesman, right? It's like you're 24/7, 365 days a year a salesman, and most likely, it is not going to be fully optimized. There is a lot of competition out there. There are a lot of decisions that potential buyers have to make in order to decide which SaaS company they want to go with. And actually, buying a SaaS is a decision that is getting more and more complex. Let's say you have thousands and thousands of potential buyers going into your website every day, and then they start having these questions. How does this apply to my company? Or, can you handle the scale that I need? For example, this many team members or this much storage? Does it have all the compliance requirements I need? How long would it take to set up? What is the actual results or the ROI that I'm getting with this products? How is it better than the stuff that I'm using now? Literally, by every single question that people don't understand from the website is a reason for them to click away and go with someone else that feels that just communicates this better. Because what I'm seeing more and more when, let's say, marketers and founders hit their tipping points where they want to talk to me is when they're sick of getting people to only understand the value of their products after they try it or after they jump on a demo where their close rates and their conversion rates are actually really good afterwards, but what if every single person that goes on your website would really understand the value that you provide without having to try it? They will understand why you're better than everyone else on the market. They'll understand the amount of money that you can generate them. They'll understand how easy it is to actually set up or how much you help, right? Because people assume the weirdest things. I've had people where, one of the clients have helped, they could set up everything. They had a CRM for insurance agencies and they could set up everything in one week. They would do it for them and all that stuff and people would assume it would take three or four months to set it up and they'll have to do everything. And they never mentioned, in the previous version, that they actually did all the setup and it could have been done in one week. So even if everything else was clear, people were still thinking, yes, I understand the value that they will provide, but just by that one question, it's going to take three months to set up. Even if that's not even true, they just assume that, why would they buy? They'll keep delaying the decision to buy for no reason. And those are literally dozens of reasons why they're not setting up and dozens of reasons on how you might be losing money because of it.

Ramli John: I love that. You're totally right. I think the word that you said that really resonates with this is understanding. I think if people are confused, they walk away, they're not excited, but they come in and sometimes there's this value gap where they think it's something but it's not, and now, they're upset or disappointed with what you have to offer. I think that's a really, really good point. What are some common mistakes that you've seen in terms of messaging that just, maybe at this point, are starting to become your pet peeve. It's like, come on, man, again? What are those mistakes that you see over and over again when it comes to messaging?

Pedro Cortes: Yeah, I think, man, I could be here all day. You have to be the one filtering these out because I think one of the first things that they do is, let's say they want to improve their messaging, first thing they do is they jump into the page way too soon. They start thinking about headlines and what they want to talk about and all that stuff. The very first thing I do with clients is exactly the opposite. I spend probably half of the time trying to outline with clients what is the result that we're providing, why are we better and how easy it's to get started. Because if we're not really, really clear on what is the underlying result that they want and what is the one or two USPs that they have and all these little things and what are the concerns keeping them from signing up, we have zero chance of creating a page that's going to be really clear. Because when you're trying to come up with copy and you jump to it right away, you're trying to think about, what is USP? But at the same time, what am I going to say and what the image should be here and what is the order? Your brain cannot think of all that stuff at the same time. You have to break it down into several sections. And if you do outline it really well, manage, the page is going to write itself. But no SaaS company ever does that. Another mistake that they do is, they never go deep enough. For example, let's say you have a tool that provides analytics for something or some niche or whatever it might be, people hate analytics. Analytics, there are numbers, there are the dashboard, no one wants to look at them. So they're not buying analytics, they buying insights. What you need to sell them is, what are the insights that they want to track that you want to make sure that you want to cover on the website so they know I can track this, this and this and therefore, that's why I want to buy it. If you don't put that on the website, no one's going to buy it, right? Let's say you're sending analytics for e- commerce. If I don't understand the one or two metrics that e- commerce company needs to understand, which probably might be the inaudible cart rates or the average basket size or whatever it might be, then, they're not going to buy it because they don't feel like that tool is going to provide them with the insights they need or it's going to be hard to interpret the data because that's the most boring parts. No one likes to do that. The second mistake is they don't go deep enough. They miss the point completely. And there are a lot of different mistakes. They also use a lot of illustrations. They don't show the products. When it comes to social proof, they talk about things like, " Hey, it's an amazing tool. I love it. We have five stars on Trustpilot or something." Real source of proof, it comes from someone you can relate to. Let's say you have a tool for agencies. I want to see a testimonial from an agency owner talking about a result that I want or a program that they faced in the past that I currently have. For example, I worked with a client like this in the past as well. They had an email marketing tool for agencies so they can do this for clients. All the testimonials we featured, and we actually edit this and ask for permission from these customers and all that stuff, they always say yes anyway, and we actually said, " This tool enables us to do email campaigns for clients two times faster." Or, " We are able to reduce the costs per accounts by 2x or 3x," or whatever the result was. So we're talking about the results that they want to see and we're showing that other people are getting them. We're not showing that other people think it's a cool tool or it's easy to use and all that stuff. That doesn't mean anything. That's the problem. How many mistakes do you want me to cover?

Ramli John: No, that's good. No, those are good ones, not going deep enough, using illustration. I really do appreciate that. I don't want to dwell on the mistakes too much because I want to delve into the solution. I want to delve into this framework that you have shared on LinkedIn, once again, for free. Thank you for being so generous. Just walking through these three things, these three psychology principles behind an irresistible SaaS offer that applies to landing pages as well, and you shared that it's result, better and risk. Can you talk a little bit about this framework that you have that put together? How do these three things come together into making an irresistible offer for SaaS?

Pedro Cortes: After a few years of thinking about this, it's almost like, sometimes, when I'm reflecting of this is, on all these things, it's like I'm becoming a philosopher in SaaS conversions or something, looking at nothing and try to come up with these ideas. But over the last few years, I've noticed a few patterns on what is the easiest way to figure out how to create these irresistible offers so it's easier to figure out why is it not converting the best that it could be or how we come up with the right lending page or what are the things that we need to talk about? And over the last few years, I boiled down into this Venn diagram where we need to have three things at the same time, otherwise, you're just not maximizing our conversions. And you still have the variable of, you are explaining them, but you can explain each one of them even better. You can never stop optimizing the stuff. You can play with us for years to come. And the three pillars that you need is, showing them what is the result that you provide? Why are you better than other tools, so that means what they're using now and what they're considering to use, that means competitors or whatever other solutions. Sometimes, it's hiring someone else. It depends on who you're competing with. Your competition can get really complex. And then, what is the risk? The risk could be how long it takes to set up or the team not use it because they don't like it. Those things that go through people's mind that make them fear if they like the signing in the first place. If that keep them from the signing, that's not good. If you don't get them all three at once, which is a very, very tiny intersection in the Venn diagram, your message is just not good enough. Because if we can tell them what is the result and how much money that they can make and why is it 10 times better than what they're using now, but they believe it's going to take six months to implement, they have to redo the entire process, they're going to have to train their team, they're going to have to migrate their data, they're going to tell you or they're going to think, I'll check this out six months from now and that six months from now never comes. Right? And you want to think about this as a sales call because if these objections came up, these would be the answers that you would get. Very similar on the website, they just don't tell you, that's why it's harder for most size companies to do it. It's because they don't tell you there's no feedback. Only tests can give you that. If you explain why you're better than other tools and how easy it is to get started, so it's easy to train the team. They can be up to speed really fast, it's way better than what they're using now, but they don't understand how much money that they can make from this or save or whatever, they're going to think, this is nice to have, this is just a tool that I might have seen on product hunts that looks really cool, but I'm never going to pay for it because I don't think it's worth it. I don't think it's going to make me any money, so why should I pay for it? They're either not going to sign up or they're not going to be have any willingness to pay because they don't see what is the result that you provide or you're limiting the willingness to pay. Because I also try to help clients either optimize for bigger companies, attracting bigger companies, or to be able to position themselves in a way that they can increase the price. I had one of the case studies where we 5x the price or 4x the price and didn't see any hits on the conversions and it wasn't from$ 4 a month to $ 16 a month, it was from $ 75 to $ 250, something like that. It's quite a big difference in terms of KaK and all that stuff or the return on KaK and all that stuff. That's the other scenario. The last scenario is, they understand how easy it's to get started and they understand what is the result that you provide, but they don't understand why is it five to 10 times better than what they're using now? They're going to think it's just a little bit better than what they're using now and they're just going to think, I already have a solution for this. I don't need it. The product that I'm using now or this person that I'm using for this role or maybe doing nothing at all, maybe even if it's not as good as 80% there, it doesn't feel worth it. You don't overcome the resistance of changing from one product to another because it doesn't feel 10 times better, it feels 10% better and you cannot sell anyone like that.

Ramli John: I love this. Thank you for sharing that. It really needs to come all together. The results are there, it's giving them better results in what they have right now, it is better than the current solution that they have and it's easier, so it challenges all the risk. And when all this comes together, it's just, you said it, irresistible.

Pedro Cortes: Yeah.

Ramli John: It really is irresistible. Before we continue, I want to thank the sponsor for this episode, 42 Agency. When you're on scale up mode, you have to hit your KPIs. The pressure is on to deliver demos and signups. It's a lot to handle. The Imagine, ABM, email sequences, revenue ops and more. That's where 42 Agency, founded by my good friend, Camille Rexton, can help you. They're a strategic partner that's helped B2B SaaS companies like ProfitWell, teamwork, Sprout Social and Hubdoc build a predictable revenue engine. If you're looking for performance experts in creative to solve your hardest marketing problems at a fraction of the cost of in- house, look no further. Go to 42 Agency, that's number 42agency. com. Talk to a strategist and learn how you can build a high efficiency revenue engine now. Find that link in the description or show notes. Well, that's offer now. Let's jump back in to this episode. Appreciate you sharing this. Can you walk through this applied to page right now and I believe we're going to be talking about Loom's signing page and for people who are tuning on this via video, you can see it, but for people who are tuning via audio, in Loom, their signing page, it says, " Show it and say it and send it." And then, the sub- headline is, record quick videos of your screen cam, an essential tool for hybrid workplaces. And right below it, " It's instantly ready to share and watch at home in the office and a bit of both." And you shared this on, I believe LinkedIn, a video of this, on how you would improve this page. Can you walk through how, you call this the bad version, can you walk through why the bad version is bad and why your version is better?

Pedro Cortes: Essentially, what they're doing here is, Loom obviously has a really simple products, it's easy to understand that they just record videos with it and it can replace some of the meetings. They can take reports, record a video and say, " This is what I want," or, " This is what we need to improve," or, " This what we need to improve this metric, reduce that one," whatever. It's easy to understand that. The things that Loom are totally missing out on and other big companies like Canva and all that stuff are missing out on is, because they don't focus on all the use cases that they can provide and how deep they can go and how many places they can share these Loom videos, people come in to the website just thinking, " I'm going to use Loom from time to time," or, " I'm going to use Loom to onboard new employees or to record some trainings from time to time." They come in with one use case. We want them to come into the page and come in with one use case that they had in mind and leave with five other ideas on how they can use Loom every single day and how multiple people in their team could use Loom. Because the biggest opportunity for Loom right now is to not get one person in the team to use it, to get every single person in the team to use it, right? Because they already have a bunch of people inside a company using it. Now, they need to sell it to everyone in the team. They want everyone to do asynchronous communication or as much of it as possible and that's what we need to sell them on because the more videos they'll use, the more they'll edit, the more they'll pay, the more users they'll have. It literally means that they can 3x to 5x or however much they can increase their volume per accounts, that's where their goldmine is. And that's how I optimize this page because the purpose of their product is already pretty obvious. The first thing that we did in this case, as an example, is they didn't talk about the problem. I actually kept the same headline because it was okay, the part of what the product is is pretty okay. And the first thing that I've changed besides saying how many users they have and how many companies use it and all that stuff is, I wanted to talk about the problem of not using videos. For example, what I'm seeing here is you speak two to five times faster than you can type. And I made this up. We can replace it with the actual stats. I made this up because this was an example. We just replace it with an actual stat, maybe it's two times faster or three times or whatever. Why not send a video instead? So you speak two to five times faster than you type, why not send a video instead? What this does, it implants a seed in their head of, whenever they start writing something that's really long, why not send a video instead? So every time that they do that throughout the day, they're going to think about how many times they could be using Loom. That means they're going to be sending way more of them. What I did is, I showed an image of a really long email and it took 20 minutes to write and hours of back and forth, whereas we could have just recorded a video in three minutes and that was it. And I faced this issue myself because when I give feedback to clients, I can spend 40 minutes writing everything out so I can record a five minute Loom video to tell them what to fix and they can literally fix it and 10 minutes and change it and everything is clear. We are quantifying the problem.

Ramli John: And it also speaks to getting people to invite other team members because now, you're creating that thing you mentioned earlier where if I send this Loom video to you, you're going to be like, " What is this? Maybe I should sign up for this." And this creates this whole almost team effect that you were talking about earlier, so that's an awesome way to put this.

Pedro Cortes: Yeah. And not only we get more people to see the value, we get the people that are probably already using it to find even more use cases for it and imagine the compound effect or the vial loop they already have if people that are already using it just figure out ways that they can use it more. The viral loop where people find out what Loom is just happens 10 times more often. That's the goal. That's what we want to do. We want to quantify that. Then, what I said is, we can embed Looms everywhere because in the bad version, they had a video. In this case, it's not a video because you cannot see it in Figma, but they had a video where you copy the link, you embed it in an email and maybe you embed it on your website and all that stuff. Actually, we want to show all the use cases where you can embed a Loom video in an email, on LinkedIn, as a post, in Slack to send it to the team, in Notion, maybe as a company wiki, in Webflow for your website and Discord, probably same thing or however many integrations that people want to use. Again, I'm focusing most of the page just showing how many ways that you can use it so when people do sign up, they just use it way more often than what they would've if they would come in to the tool, which is one idea on how to use it. Now, they're coming into the tool with four, five, six, 10 ideas on how they're going to use it every day. That's the difference, setting the expectation completely differently. Then, what we did differently is that when they try to explain each feature, when they try to explain that they want to reduce meetings, and then, they essentially had one where it says, " Nothing to schedule, nothing to type," so it's about reducing meetings. Then, they have one where it says, " Be yourself," which doesn't mean anything, right?

Ramli John: Be yourself.

Pedro Cortes: And then, he has one that says, " More than words," which also doesn't mean anything, right? What I did instead is, I talked about how we can make these videos insanely useful. What I said is, instead of saying that you can reduce meetings, which might sound over promising, is that you're improving communication while you're reducing meetings because you can use these videos. And then, I also use the testimonial from someone that is pretty well known where we said we're shocked at the amount of monthly and weekly meetings a few Loom videos can replace. We love it even more since we can watch it as many times as we want. This is the advantage of Loom videos over meetings. We're just planting the seed that a few meetings can be replaced with that. So we're quantifying it, we're just not saying it. It's not a claim. As we're showing it, we're getting people to realize that by themselves, which is way more powerful. Then, instead of saying just, " Be yourself," what I said instead is an objection that people have around creating videos because a lot of people are camera shy. I called that out and I said, " Camera shy? You can easily record as many takes as you want with or without the camera." So it could be as fun or formal as you want, as many takes as you need. You can take as many takes as you want, especially as easy as clicking the restart button. You can do it with or without camera, and that's it. That's how we record Loom videos and they're not afraid of it because people are really camera shy, especially in corporate world or companies that would have a lot of users and be the companies that would pay the most for this. So it'd be need to be pay attention to that. Lastly, instead of saying what they said here, More than words," also doesn't mean anything.

Ramli John: inaudible. It doesn't mean... More than words.

Pedro Cortes: Yeah. They definitely need better words, not more than words. What I did is, I actually did a cheeky headline just because, if I write it as a formula, it grabs people's attention because it's not grammatically correct. What we said is that video plus replies equals perfect communication because that grabs their attention. And then, the image on the side shows reactions, people adding comments. So instead of just saying, " More than words," we're showing that every single video can have a video reply. You can reply back with a video. You can add comments on each video with timestamps. You can record a reply with just one click. This is how you really achieve a perfect as async communication just by sending videos. We're showing how people can collaborate within each video. It's not just a video, it's a way where you can comment, where you can give feedback, where you can react, where you can reply back. It's just much more than a video. Then, after that, we just show a few more use cases. They actually had a few use cases there. I would just probably show a little bit more because what they're doing well here is, they're showing different members of the team. We can use this for team alignments, maybe a manager would do that. Design where it can provide feedback on the design or sales, maybe you'll send a video before a demo or something. So just providing more use cases for the exact same reason, so they want to...

Ramli John: I love this. Thank you for sharing this. You really did talk about the multiple things that you mentioned. You're showing a result, you're showing how it could be better than what it is right now, which is writing, sending an email or an essay or something like that that could be multiple hundred words. You're also destroying and trying to address risk that they would face with this. It all comes in, your version now makes it even more of a irresistible offer than what they currently have is what I'm hearing. Thank you for sharing this. I appreciate that.

Pedro Cortes: Yeah, no worries at all. With a bias of getting more users per accounts, because that would make a huge difference in revenue.

Ramli John: More user per account.

Pedro Cortes: Because instead of me getting five people on the team that know how to use Loom, now, we're finding use cases for 10 people in the team to use it. Imagine how big of a difference that would be for Loom. That's literally their best way to grow revenue at this point because they're so big right now. Probably everyone or every company has heard of it or a good chunk of the world has heard of it before. They just need more people in the company to use it and pay for it.

Ramli John: I want to shift gears now and talk about career. You've been in marketing for many years now, and I wonder, is there something that you can share in terms of a power- up that's helped you progress through your... I know before we recorded, you were sharing your 2023 goals for your own consultancy and business, but looking back, was there something that helped you progress in your career, in your role, in becoming even more of an expert in terms of SaaS?

Pedro Cortes: Yeah. There are a couple things, maybe not the most comfortable ones, but like I was sharing with you before. I always put myself in a situation where I'm forced to become better. Like I was saying, for example, in terms of how I'm going to expend my work with clients, I always want to expend it in a way where the support gets better with a win for everyone, but it has to force myself to streamline everything that I'm doing and find even more patterns than the ones that we're talking about now, so always putting myself in those situations. And then the second thing is probably the who, not how. I spent, I'm not sure how much, but definitely more than 100K just getting people to tell me how I can go to my next step. I figure out whoever is doing something really well, whoever has the results that I want to have for myself, and that's just paying them for them to tell me how I can get there with different areas, whatever I needed at the time.

Ramli John: Oh, that's so true. I think pushing yourself, that's something that I also, I've applied in my own life, pushing myself outside of my comfort zone, and you're right, paying to get a mentor, essentially, to get somebody who knows who's been there and done that and guiding you along. That's pretty much a shortcut, giving you advice and a path towards what you want.

Pedro Cortes: It's definitely a shortcut, but it requires you to let go of your ego and to really see all the stuff as an investment. A lot of people when it comes to that, they may say they want to do it, but when it comes to actually investing, they probably don't put their money where their mouth is, and then, that's where they don't move forward.

Ramli John: Is there one that you found the best in terms of... For you, specifically for you, which one has helped you the most in terms of, you said you invested a lot of money in terms of either coaches or courses? Is there a specific one that's helped you the most? Or your favorite one, it could be also.

Pedro Cortes: It wasn't really courses because courses, they lack a lot of one-on- one feedback.

Ramli John: That's true.

Pedro Cortes: So courses wasn't definitely the case. It was more actually working with people, and then telling me how to do it and have long- term support for them. So definitely, one that I could recommend to you was from a guy called Quasi. Basically, what he does, he is insanely smart on how you can find the limitations that you have in your mind that is limiting you. I'll give you an example, and this is one that might apply to you or something that we were actually talking about before. I had these beliefs that hiring was really hard. I had these beliefs that selling something long term was really hard for no reason and that would prevent me from doing that. That would prevent me from working with clients long term. That would prevent me becoming better at my crafts. Not hiring would prevent me from getting more clients, providing better supports. This is the stupidest thing ever. And he helped me find those things. I also found, recently, that I have rules for everything, that I shouldn't have rules for everything. I need to say, " I need to make this much money before... " I have a stupid goal where I'm only going to buy, I'm a huge car guy and I have the stupid rule that I created unconsciously that I'm only going to buy a car if I can pay it off in a month. I have these stupid rules that I make up for myself. He's definitely a genius of identifying those and taking a 10 year vision and breaking it down into something that it can do every day because that was my problem. I had this big vision, and then how do I get there and how do I feel that I'm getting there? Because otherwise, it's just going to, in this entrepreneurial world, you're just going to drive yourself nuts if you don't see any sort of progress somehow.

Ramli John: One final question before we wrap up. If you could give your younger self piece of advice, it can be one or two pieces of advice, what advice would you give? Maybe you just shared it right there, make up those rules. Well, what advice would you give a younger version of Pedro when you were just starting out in marketing?

Pedro Cortes: The advice I would give is, I would probably hire way faster. Man, I had this huge limiting belief about it and looking back, if you don't look back at yourself, I don't think you're a complete idiot, you probably haven't grown enough. I'm just thinking about that instead of actually thinking about the lessons, but that's probably what I would do. I would probably work with clients long term faster as well, because I don't know, myself, a few years back, I also saw these things as quick wins and I needed to force myself to see, how can we literally tweak these for years to come. Now, I look at a SaaS company and now, look, we have our opportunities for two or three years where we can keep doubling the business if we want to. And that's something that, I don't know, maybe I was afraid that I wasn't good enough or something. I'm not sure.

Ramli John: I love how you put it. You're right. If you don't look back at yourself and like, " Oh, man, what was I doing?", then you haven't grown enough. I really love that. That's a good piece of advice on his own. I hope you learned a lot about how to improve your landing page from Pedro Cortes. Follow Pedro on LinkedIn and Twitter and you can learn more about his work at cortes. design. Find those links in the show notes and description. Thank you to Pedro for being on the show. If you enjoyed this episode, you'd love the Marketing Power- Ups newsletter. Share the actionable takeaways and break down the frameworks of world- class marketers. You can go to marketingpowerups.com to subscribe, and you'll instantly unlock the three best frameworks that top marketers use to hit their KPIs consistently and wow their colleagues. I want to say thank you to you for listening and please like and follow Marketing Powerups on YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Spotify. If you feel like extra generous, leave a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave a comment on YouTube. It goes a long way in others finding out about Marketing Power- Ups. Thanks to Mary Sullivan for creating the artwork and design. And thank you to Feisel Kaigel for editing the intro video. And of course, thank you for listening. It's all for now. Have a Powered- Up day.

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