This Landing Page Blunder will Slaughter Your Sales

Yesterday I did a copy critique for a business owner named Jeff.

Jeff’s in an unusual business, at least as far as I’m concerned.

While most of my clients sell 1s and 0s in the form of software or “info products,” Jeff sells meat.

Beef raised on sweet clover and dry-aged to perfection. Savory lamb chops that are firm but tender…

Jeff’s meats are high-end, farm-raised, chemical-free.

And he charges premium prices.

Jeff wanted to get my take on a landing page he’d put together for a specific type of pork that he’s offering.

Now whenever I get asked to evaluate a piece of copy like this, people expect me to just dive right in and start critiquing the headline, nitpicking the flow or finding flaws in the page layout.

That’s not where I start, though.

Instead I asked Jeff about where the traffic for this page is coming from. He’s running a couple of Google ads, plus a display ad on a food-related blog.

And before I ever look at the landing page, I study the ads and ask myself, “When I click this ad, what am I expecting to find on the other end?”

Then I read the landing page and see how it matches up with my expectations.

In this case, the ads made a pretty straightforward offer.

In effect, Jeff was saying, “Hey, I’ve got this amazing pork. Want some?”

But the landing page didn’t pick up that thought. Instead, it started with a story about how Jeff bumped into the “Iron Chef” once at a local eatery.

The story was interesting and well-written. But the disconnect between the ads and the landing page was jarring—like slamming into a brick wall at 120 mph.

My advice to Jeff was:

Something’s gotta give here.

When you violate the reader’s expectations like this, you butcher your sales.

Either change your ads, or rework the sales page.

Each step in your sales process should flow logically into the next—keeping your customer’s mouth watering from ad to landing page to shopping cart…

And then the cash register can ring.