Rachel Mazza – Advertorial 101 course

A few years ago, I was approached by a client who had a big problem. They had a fantastic offer that sold like hot cakes to their existing audience, but struggled to scale the offer to cold traffic. 

They knew they had a product that people wanted…And they knew their copy and landing pages were proven to convert….

But they were spending an obscene amount of money on ads, and barely breaking even. 

After losing money week after week, they were ready to give up…Until we decided to test a simple “in between” part of their sales funnel that we hoped would finally crack cold traffic. 

As soon as we tested this “missing link,” their cold traffic conversions increased by 80%. 

It worked so well, I decided to test it with other clients. 

By changing this one simple thing about their sales funnels, all of them saw dramatic increases in click-through rates, conversions, and sales. 

One client even increased engagement by 162% across our 12-day test campaign! 

All from adding in this simple “in between” step in their funnel. 

What was this missing link that finally made cold traffic “work”? These powerful pieces of copy go by many names, including driver pages, customer activation pages, and more. 

I call them Advertorial Pre-Sale Pages. They’re so successful at converting cold traffic, that I was able to build a successful copy agency with a team of 15 writers who exclusively wrote advertorials for our clients. Now I’d like to show you how to use these “in between” pages to lower your traffic costs, and dramatically increase conversions to cold or skeptical audiences. 

The hardest part about converting cold traffic is gaining their trust and attention. That’s because people are over marketed to, which means they’re inherently skeptical 

We see 20 times more advertising today than we did 50 years ago. In fact, the average American sees between 4,000 – 10,000 ads EVERY SINGLE DAY. 

This rapid shift means that people are constantly bombarded with sales messages – making them skeptical and desensitized to most advertising. That’s why it’s not always enough to get that first cold click and send prospects straight to your sales page.

The fact is, converting cold traffic is hard. 

So hard that most businesses lose their shirt trying everything to finally get a cold traffic funnel to “work.” But what if you didn’t have to? The great thing about Advertorial Pre-Sale Pages are that you NEVER have to convert cold traffic.
Instead, you use this powerful “in between” step to build trust and familiarity that warms up your traffic BEFORE they hit your sales page. 

This means your sales page is speaking to warmer leads – giving you higher conversion rates, and helping you pay less to bring in cold traffic that converts. 

Here’s how it works…

These “in between” pre-sale landing pages – called advertorials – cleverly disguise sales copy as content the reader actually wants to read and share.

They sit between the initial touch point – where you first interact with your new prospects – and the point where you ask for the sale.

Like this:

If you can figure out how to create and use these pages correctly, not only will this increase your cold traffic conversions, but will also lower your traffic costs if you run paid ads…

… reducing your cost per acquisition (CPA) and putting more money in your pocket.

And if you’re a copywriter who works with clients? Advertorial presale pages are a perfect addition to your copywriting arsenal.

They’re more approachable than a massive sales page, and easy to sell to clients since they make cold traffic funnels extremely profitable.

In fact, I’ve had clients pay upwards of $2,500 for a SINGLE advertorial page that I wrote in just a few hours.
The thing is, to make this work…

You’ve GOT to know how to get readers in the right mindset to buy BEFORE showing them your sales message.

Otherwise you’ll trigger your prospect’s ‘salesman alarm’ and lose them before they ever land on your sales page. You see, most marketers struggle to create these presale pages without coming across as “spammy” or “salesy.”

And if you don’t get that balance between editorial and ad just right…

… your new prospect will click away before you get the chance to build enough trust and familiarity to transform them into warm leads.