Video Transcript
Amisha Shrimanker:
Well, hey there. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the second video training of this month. I am Amisha Shrimanker, founder of The Copy Crew, in which we help clients launch their irresistible offers in the online space, whether it’s a digital course, a coaching program, or a membership site. And in today’s training, I want to talk about tables, and specifically speaking, comparison tables, and how you can use them in your copy and move your prospects who are on that particular page, and move them to a yes and have them click on that call to action button, whether it’s having them to purchase from you or get on a free call or even register for a brand new webinar.
Amisha Shrimanker:
So let me share my screen and bring up today’s presentation. There we go. So today’s presentation is how to use tables in your copy. So what you’re going to learn today is … Gosh, my mouse is incredibly slow. Sorry about that. Oh, there we go. We’re going to learn about comparison tables, and I’m going to show you the apples to apples method, the apples to oranges method, and how we can use comparison tables when you have multiple products. I’ll talk about some conversion boosters, and also finally end this presentation with some of the copy tips you can infuse to improve your conversions.
Amisha Shrimanker:
Okay, so first of all, what is a comparison table? A couple of ways to look at this. Number one, it’s sort of the table that compares competitor brands to your product, and you can even use a comparison table to compare multiple products on your site. So let’s look at the first type of comparison table, which is the apples to apples comparison. So again, an apples to apples comparison is when you are comparing two similar products. So that’s your digital course versus a competitor’s digital course, your membership site versus the competition’s membership sites, typically the industry standard, whatever is out there and whatever’s available. The topics of all offers, when you do this method, must be similar. So that means if you’ve got a personal finance eCourse, you must compare your content to other personal finance trainings or courses out there. So it’s a two row table. As you can see, you will talk about your course on the right and the competition courses and the training, you’re going to compare that and that’s going to be on the left hand side.
Amisha Shrimanker:
Let’s take a look at an example. Here is one example of an apples to apples comparison. This one’s from my digital course, The ROI Sales Page, and The ROI Sales Page teaches you how to write a sales page from start to finish, and it injects personality and it uses reliable copywriting framework. So it’s not so much reliant on templates. Okay, and that’s end of my shameless plug right there. So anyway, coming back to this example, I am comparing The ROI Sales Page, which is a digital course, and comparing it to other similar trainings out there in the marketplace.
Amisha Shrimanker:
So typically what you want to do is you want to talk about a feature and a benefit of your offer. Every feature and every benefit, you want to dedicate a row to every feature, and talk about it on the right, and then how the competition misses the mark when it comes to those specific features that you’re highlighting, how they miss the mark and how they’re not up to par in terms of the content. It’s basically, you’re kind of shining the light and highlighting how great your product is and how the competition misses the mark.
Amisha Shrimanker:
A couple of things to note here. Number one, you never mention the competition, the competitor product names on your table. You don’t do that. You just say other trainings or other courses, and you don’t really diss them. So be careful how you do the wording and how you write the copy here. Okay, so you will, again, like I said, you will talk about a feature on every row and that particular benefit on every row, and you compare that to the competition and what they have to offer in that similar context. I recommend you have at least a minimum of three rows when you’re using comparison tables, because otherwise there’s just no point of using comparison tables. So make sure you have at least three rows.
Amisha Shrimanker:
Moving on, how to have a comparison table when you are doing an apples to oranges comparison. So first of all, what is an apples to oranges comparison? This is where you are comparing your offer container to other offer containers. So for example, you can compare your virtual workshop to live events, seminars, online courses, masterminds, memberships. So there’s an example here on the slide that you can see. On the extreme right is your container, and you will have the name of the container in this column. And on the left are all the other kinds of offer containers that are available. And so that’s container type. And then you also talk about every feature, like what you get. You can talk about group size, and this is just an example, what you get, the group size, the price, the duration. If there’s accountability, one-on-one access to you. And I have more of these elements of comparison that you can get in the free PDF download that you can download after you watch this video. It’s going to be the link just below this video.
Amisha Shrimanker:
So let’s take a look at an example. So this is from a program called The ROI Playbook. And if you notice on the extreme right, there’s an arrow here so you can take a look, it’s The ROI Playbook and how that compares to other offer containers out there. So again, it talks about what you get, what other container offers have, and how The ROI Playbook is obviously better. The instructor ratio, individual attention, price. So there are many ways that you can compare your offer container to other offer containers out there.
Amisha Shrimanker:
So a question I get is, “This is awesome. Where can I use comparison tables in my copy?” Gosh, all right, you can use them on sales pages, landing pages, service pages, if you’re a service provider, and even homepages. Sales pages are by far very popular when you’re talking about comparison tables, because when you use them, you are helping your prospect make a decision much more quickly. Now, in terms of when can you use this, you want to use this when a person’s at a product aware stage. When you’re in the product aware stage, that’s when the prospects know about your product and your competitors’ products, and they need to decide which offer is the best choice.
Amisha Shrimanker:
So for those of you who aren’t familiar with Eugene Schwartz, five stages of awareness, there’s unaware, problem aware, solution aware, product aware, and most aware. I am not going to go into those stages and descriptions today, because I’m going to save that for another time. But what you need to understand is when you get to the product aware stage, it’s when your prospect knows who you are, they know your offer, and they know the competition’s offer, if it’s a similar offer, and you’re comparing it to see which one makes the most sense for them.
Amisha Shrimanker:
So when they get to this point of a sales page, which is kind of closer to the bottom of the sales page, is when they see this, they can clearly see what makes your offer different compared to your competitor’s offer. So it’s very cool to use a comparison table in this case. And also, it’s a great visual pattern interrupt, right? Because when you’re reading a long form sales page, you’re reading copy and copy and copy. Of course, interesting copy. And a comparison table is a great visual disruption, so to speak, and kind of helps someone who’s a scanner and is scanning through the page to see what is jumping out at them. When you use something like a comparison table, it just makes it pop and it’s just more effective.
Amisha Shrimanker:
Okay, so moving on. What if you have multiple products of your own, and how do you organize that into a comparison table, and if you want to use that on your services page, let’s say? Okay, so let’s bring up … All right, when you have multiple products, you want to group them into twos or threes, hopefully, and that means two or three offers. If you have more than three, then that’s kind of very confusing. You can still do it, but I recommend at least having three service packages. And I’m speaking to people who are mostly service providers, tuning into this presentation. The lowest price point would be great if it’s on the left, medium pricing in the middle, and the most expensive on the far right. I don’t know why that is. I don’t have the stats, but it’s proven that the layout of the information this way just works.
Amisha Shrimanker:
So for example here, you see that there’s a life plan on the extreme left, the way you look at the screen. It’s nine dollars a month. The average, the medium priced plan, is in the middle, and the most expensive is on the far right. So when you want to use this strategy, when you’re using multiple products and you’re comparing them, you’re not comparing competitor products. That’s obvious, right? So you are not going to downplay your product features like you do that when you’re comparing it to your competitor brands. In this case, what you’re saying is, hey, we offer five features in the most cheapest plan. And these are the benefits when you opt for the most cheapest plan, when you pick option A. But when you upgrade to option B, which is slightly more expensive, you get everything that you pay for in option A and then some more.
Amisha Shrimanker:
So like in this example, the light plan has clean and easy to use app, simple widget generator. If I look at the pro plan, it’s a repeat of the first two bullets here, clean and easy, simple widget generator, and it has an extra feature in the benefit. And if I look at the most expensive plan, they are saying everything that the life plan and the pro plan are giving them and some extra things, as well. So that’s basically what it is. You’re not dissing your own products. You’re just showing how much more value and more things that you can offer when you go from lowest to the most expensive.
Amisha Shrimanker:
Okay, so before I get into the next slide, just a quick recap of what we’ve covered. We’ve talked about comparison tables and what they are. We talked about the apples to apples and the apples to oranges methods. We saw that you could use comparison tables on sales pages, landing pages, homepages, answers pages, most popular being the sales page. And at what point should you have a comparison table in your copy is if you’re doing a long form sales page, it should be somewhere near the end, at the bottom, if you will, because you’ve moved the prospect to making a decision at that point, and they are product aware and they’re ready to push the trigger.
Amisha Shrimanker:
Okay, so moving on to how do you boost conversions when comparing your products versus the competitors? These are some of the things that you can do. All right, you can shade the column, shade your column, where you talk about your offer. You can bold some of the key benefits. You can use graphics, like a squiggly arrow, to call out an important message. And here’s an example of what that looks like. So this source is from the Ad Profit Maximizer. This is work that we did for a client. And on the right, the column is shaded and it also has product name, great product, great digital course. It’s called the Ad Profit Maximizer, and we’re comparing it to other trainings. Obviously, you don’t want to take name of other training products out there. And his offer column is shaded, and there’s a squiggly arrow where we want to point out something which we think his prospect needs to know. And there’s a hashtag truth and there’s a squiggly arrow. It’s just an additional graphic just to grab someone’s attention.
Amisha Shrimanker:
Okay, how to boost conversions when you’re comparing multiple products of your own with each other, so products with different prices. All right, again, shade the most popular column and put it in the center, the mid tier price. You can make it a little larger, and you can add a most popular or best seller or similar icon next to the column, and you can make the call to action button color pop from the other options. So let’s take a look at an example.
Amisha Shrimanker:
So for over here, you’ve got the light plan, the plus, the professional, and then there’s the most expensive plan. You see here, it’s got a different color of the call to action button, which says sign up now, because it’s also the most popular plan. There’s a graphic here on that column that says most popular, and it’s kind of highlighted, as well. The professional, the header is highlighted in blue so it stands out. It’s a little larger compared to the other columns. So it’s really drawing someone’s attention and saying like, hey, the professional plan is the most popular one that there is, a lot of people are signing up for this one, and you should get it. So this is one of the ways to boost conversions and help your prospect make a decision faster.
Amisha Shrimanker:
This is another example. If you have packages, like coaching packages, so over here, there’s the growth package and then there’s the VIP package. Again, same thing, everything that you see on the growth package on the left, it’s a lower price tier. It’s been repeated on the VIP package, but the additional benefits or features or things that you get are in yellow, so it stands out visually. The VIP package has been shaded. It’s a higher price tier. Same bullets as the package on the left, additional features and benefits in a different color. The most popular graphic is right up there to draw attention and tell the visitor what others have chosen. So kind of leveraging the bandwagon effect.
Amisha Shrimanker:
All right, last but not the least, copy tips. So what can you do when you are creating comparison tables? How can you make the copy work? So short and punchy sentences, if you can, so that it’s not long, drawn out, run on sentences that kind of keep going on. Less paragraphs, more short and punchy sentences, kind of explaining what the benefit and what the feature is succinctly. Can’t say that word. You want to talk in active voice, use sensory words, paint a picture, if you’re describing a benefit. Highlight or bold the text for key outcomes and benefits. So if there’s things like numbers and key results, you want to highlight that in bold, or highlight or bold the text. Use numbers and symbols to break up the text and make it more interesting, to enhance readability and keep the prospect reading for a little longer.
Amisha Shrimanker:
So that is it. That brings us to the end of our training today. And before you go, do not forget to download the PDF underneath this video. I have some extra notes in there that can help you create your own comparison table. And there are two blank comparison tables for you to fill out if you’d like to use them for your own offers in your own sales page copy. So until we meet next time, good luck. And yeah, let me know how the information in this video is jiving with you. And if you’ve got any questions, send me an email to amisha@thecopycrew.com. Until next time, bye.ettings.
