In this week’s case study, we’ll be looking at a landing page for a Product Management course created by Kunal where we used social proof and user psychology to better convey the benefits of the course to potential students.
This Landing page was a project based on my "MVP" plan from my services helping developers and serial entrepreneurs validate faster with better landing pages, more info here.
Things to keep in mind
- The copy is not final, it’s still missing a few tweaks in the content section, and the testimonials need to be re-written
- The concept of this course has already been validated and Kunal has taught it before to over 50 students (with hundreds more on the waiting list)
- Paid traffic will be used to collect leads and get signups for this page, so it’s really important that we foster enough trust to convert that source of cold leads. Otherwise, it will just be a waste of money.
The Theory behind using scarcity
Here are a few reasons why the principles of scarcity can be so powerful:
- People want something more if they can’t have it (or run the risk of not getting it)
- When people are afraid to miss out on an opportunity, it creates a huge amount of urgency. Loss aversion and FOMO are a huge deal in human psychology.
- When you create urgency, it drastically increases the chances of taking action.
- When used along with testimonials, it makes the offer seem much more legitimate and exclusive (in that demand far exceeds supply, thereby increasing the perceived value of the offer).
Problems with the original version
- The section at the beginning of the page wasn’t offering enough information on what the course was about. So, it would have turned off a lot of visitors, especially the cold leads (aka the more skeptical ones) that came in via a paid channel. .
- Information overload: It was hard to follow along with the content of the course and understand how it would be beneficial to a potential student.
- No CTA at the end to acquire more leads.
- No scarcity principles were being used, as the landing page wasn’t 't properly conveying that the course had very limited spots (which is very true given the high-touch nature of Kunal’s course where he works with every student to make sure they grasp the concepts and don’t get left behind with the assignments).
Scarcity in action on this Landing Page
Header
- The title is much more visible and you don't have anything else competing for your attention to distract you from understanding what Kunal’s course is offering.
- Notice how I highlighted the number of spots available for this course. Having this will not only increase the perceived value of the course, but also make it seem more "exclusive" once we start introducing all the other benefits further down on the page.
- I also added some copy about the waiting list for the previous batch (which again, is 100% true), which creates even more urgency!
Framing this (common) Problem and presenting the solution (“Don’t do it the hard way”)A common problem + Don’t do it the hard way
- In order to generate some attention, these two sections introduce what the benefits of entering this "SUPER HOT" and exciting industry are, but quickly start showing how hard it can be to do so without proper training.
- To emphasize the point even more, we explained what the visitor would have to go through to become a good product manager - such as failing at building successful products, studying too many books, falling victim to non-personalized, incorrect or irrelevant information on the internet, struggling for years by going down the conventional “experience” route (that could have been reduced to a highly focused, hands-on and actionable 10-week program), and so on...
Conveying the value (“It’s NOT just a course!”)
- Notice how this makes it seem like this is much more personal and not something that can be sold "to the masses"!
- This is were explaining this was limited to 100 people paid off as you can now explain this is so focused on providing value that he can't do this for everyone making it that much more powerful and desirable. Only 100 people will be able to get this "exclusive treatment”
Kunal's story
- To be honest, no one (and neither do you) care what his story is unless it relates to their own lives Using such a title, people will become very interested in why the person teaching this took 2 years to get the results they wanted.
- The whole point of this is to reveal the harsh realities of this field - breaking into product management is notoriously hard. This makes the course all the more valuable.
- As a result, this actually makes his story relevant and relatable now.
Hear it from the students (more testimonials)
- This shows the 1:1 interaction between the students and instructor, and justifies why the course is limited to 100 people!
- This structure plus these details matter way more than the copy below the titles that people tend to stress about that very little people end up reading, for instance, have you noticed that on all the screenshots from the interviews the students are smiling? Yeah... that’s one good example and that was on purpose ;)
Pricing
- “the price will increase with every batch” is just another good way to make people take action plus since he’s still testing out the pricing it can change regardless.
Final CTA
- This is the most obvious one so far, but it wouldn't work NEARLY as well if it didn't have the rest of the website working hard to build trust and perceived value beforehand.
- After seeing all of the value they can get, visitors will be reminded of the course being limited to 100 people, and that previously there had been a waiting list of 300+ people.
- The timer is used to make the urgency more tangible.
- All of these ideas above work in synchrony to increase the likelihood that people would enroll in the course or join the waiting list (which is the desired goal for this page).
Great stuff to include in the future
Here are just a couple of things that Kunal can take advantage of to acquire more leads in the future:
- A lead magnet to keep be able to capture leads that were indecisive about joining the waitlist. These leads can be kept engaged with a good email course and be warmed up to convert into paying students long-term.
- A dynamic counter for the number of spots remaining, to make the urgency of the waiting list ever more powerful!
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Testimonial
Here's what Kunal had to say about getting a better landing page to validate and scale his ideas and course better and faster:
"I needed a landing page for KeenBrain that would convey the benefits of my Product Management course to potential students and accurately reflect the value that my past students have already realized.
Capturing all my ideas and boiling it down into one landing page was a bit of a challenge! Pedro was a great resource and sounding board and came up with a design that was just what I needed. He brings a great attitude, has good attention to detail, understands your goals and listens and responds well to feedback (while still having his own ideas and opinions).
Thanks Pedro!"
-Kunal Punjabi
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Pedro strikes again! Going to put some of these suggestions to work right away. Thank you!
Awesome man, let me know how it goes ;)
Great article, thanks Pedro!
Thanks Grant :)
So if I have a “launching soon” landing page for a product, could I use something like “first 20 to register get $20 off their order”?
Hey Caitlin, thanks for the comment :)
It could, but it's limited to only 20 people so it's not as replicable/scalable.
But...let's make a VERY important distinction first:
In your case, the offer is limited to 20 people but they can still order something from you, which is much weaker.
Did the explanation make sense?
Cheers :)
Ah, that does make sense. Thank you for the explanation!
Hi Pedro, I have been following your posts for some time now. I see this landing page is much larger than your norm. What is your thought process when it comes to a having a single large landing page rather than breaking it up into smaller subsection/pages? For example
-Main landing page which links to the following:
-Pricing
-The course
-Hear from the student
-etc
Hey JJ, thanks for the comment ;)
That's a great question, tho hard to answer because it depends on a lot of factors.
Usually, I use some sections of the landing page to link to other pages in case people want to learn more about that particular thing, that way, I am can control and divide people into different groups + pages depending on the objections they need to get answered before buying or signing up.
This is also very subtle when someone is trying to break down how the page works, tho very effective for the target customers who are paying attention to the product and not the design.
My Landing pages are supposed to qualify and warm up the visitors so I can capture some leads near the end of the page so in this case it made sense to show everything in one page to keep it simple and to be easier to test using Facebook ads (that's what Kunal will try very soon).
I would say you should break down into several pages if you have people with the same goal but very different objections.
For example, if a SaaS company is targeting people from personal accounts to big or enterprise companies, they need the same thing but in different ways and applications.
Again this depends a lot on the situation so I would suggest you sign up for my free email course to get the full guide, hopefully this will all make more sense:
http://www.cortes.design/email-course
Cheers!
Amazing answer!
That makes so much sense in regards to the different buyer type(s) reaching your landing page.
Great post, Pedro. I like it a lot.
Thanks Jeroen! Glad you liked it :)
Thanks @pedrocortes! Love what you've done here.
@csallen
You are welcome :)
How better did the new page peform? Are there some stats from the before and after?
No stats yet since the old version wasn't being clear at all and the founder was having a ton of trouble explaining this properly.
He will be using paid traffic to get some leads so the old version wouldn't work, it would be a total waste of money.
Hopefully, I'll have some stats in the future but for some context...I have this case study on my website and 2 people signed up for the waiting list even without finished copy.
Also, it was my audience, not his, so the page is doing great :P