In the battle for online attention, traditional text-heavy marketing is becoming obsolete. With today's audiences having shorter attention spans than goldfish, high-quality videos are increasingly the only format that can truly engage and convert prospective customers better than text.
This applies to both ad creatives and landing pages.
Many affiliates are already accustomed to using video ads in their campaign funnels, but it's on the landing pages where videos work their magic. It has long been known that Video Sales Letters (VSLs) convert better on landing pages. However, many affiliates reserve them for high-ticket offers. But we are here to tell you that VSLs work even when promoting low-ticket offers and even on Shopify stores.
In this article, we will analyze why VSLs perform better compared to text-only landing pages and why they are worth testing in your campaigns. Whether you run Facebook ads, or Google Ads, for affiliate marketing campaigns, e-commerce, online courses or SaaS, applying VSLs to your landing or sales pages can supercharge and multiply your campaign results.
Why traditional text-heavy landing pages are failing affiliate marketers
The digital marketing space is changing rapidly, and in 2020, we saw unprecedented disruptions. Updates to platform algorithms, like Apple's iOS 14, completely changed the game almost overnight. Marketers needed to adapt quickly and come up with new strategies to stay ahead of the curve and optimize their performance.
Unfortunately, many marketers are still heavily reliant on static text-based landing pages that were designed with outdated expectations and assumptions. But nowadays, users have shorter attention spans than goldfish. While text used to effectively convey value in the past, today's customers want interactive and emotionally engaging experiences that inspire them to make quick purchase decisions.
Long paragraphs of text no longer resonate in an era where visuals, videos, and social sharing have a more powerful impact. Text can feel boring and instructional instead of exciting and inspiring. It describes the benefits intellectually instead of immersing viewers in a compelling story. As a result, conversion rates of text-based funnels either level off or decline over time.
Why VSLs (Video Sales Letters) are the solution
VSLs provide the answer to the problem of text-heavy landing pages that feel stale and unengaging. Instead of overwhelming visitors with lots of text, VSLs use storytelling that appeals to multiple senses. They replace long blocks of text with narrated videos that take viewers on a personal journey, showing them heartfelt solutions to their problems. VSLs have 3 main advantages:
- Credibility: When viewers hear directly from experts, customers, or founders in the videos, it creates a stronger sense of trust and authority than just reading plain text.
- Empathy: VSLs use relatable stories that tap into the emotions of the audience. They address the challenges and struggles that people face, making the viewers feel a deeper connection.
- Motivation: The dynamic nature of multimedia in VSLs fully engages the audience. It helps them understand, relate to, and desire the solution in a way that plain text alone can't achieve.
Well-made VSLs make prospects feel understood and motivated to take action. They include strategic elements like chapter timestamps that encourage exploration without creating any barriers or obstacles. Overall, VSLs guide prospects further along the buying process with less resistance. When properly tested and optimized over time, VSLs consistently outperform plain text landing experiences.
Expert opinions from Alex Fetodoff
Q: You are one of the first marketers to preach the idea of using VSLs to promote e-commerce products on Shopify stores. How effective are they?
A: A video sales letter (VSL) is effective in selling products, whether it's a long or short form. Personally, I like anything from short one-minute pitches to more extensive 20-25 minute educational presentations. It depends on what you're selling, your niche, and the products you offer.
Q: What conversion strategy do you find most effective, especially when focusing on Facebook Ads? How do you integrate VSLs in the funnel?
A: Here's my breakdown. So, it starts with a Video Sales Letter (VSL) ad. Typically, it's a longer one because you want to educate your customers. Education is key. Take, for example, selling a wallet. It's not solving a problem per se, and I prefer products that address specific issues because they're easier to sell. When there's a problem, like wanting better skin, you can explain why previous solutions failed and why your product is better. Differentiation is important in marketing, and it begins with the VSL, giving ample space to educate customers.
These VSLs are excellent because you can justify why other products failed. For instance, you might show why most collagen products don't work, presenting facts to support your point. Then, introduce your product as the game-changer, explaining its unique features. You assure the customer there's no risk by emphasizing a refund policy.
The VSL's purpose is to ensure the clicks you get are of high quality. Ads with clickbaity images may attract attention, but the real question is, will they convert? That's where longer-format VSLs come in.
After the click, there's an advertorial landing page, either story-based or centered around innovation or a key product ingredient. This builds on the education from the VSL. Following that, a second pre-sell page offers more proof and explanations, often featuring an authority figure, like a doctor, to reinforce the product's credibility.
Then comes the sales page, with 2 or 3 order bumps to increase the Average Order Value (AOV). This could include shipping or extra items bundled with the main product. The goal is to maximize the AOV.
Post-purchase, one-click upsells, or one-time offers continue the sales process. Each of these stages, including upsells, involves VSLs of 5-15 minutes. This strategy turns a $100 product into a $200 AOV.
This approach allows for spending more on the front end to acquire more customers, guided by numbers. People often make the mistake of following personal preferences rather than focusing on what the numbers show. It's about analyzing click-through rates, conversion rates, and making data-driven decisions. If the numbers aren't favorable, it's either time to tweak the approach or move on to a new product or strategy.
A Record-Breaking VSL Case Study as shared by Marisha Lakhiani Chief Growth Officer, Mindvalley
Marisha Lakhiani, the Chief Growth Officer at Mindvalley
Mindvalley, faced a major challenge when their campaign metrics declined by 60%. Determined to turn things around, she spearheaded an intensive testing and optimization process for VSLs. Mindvalley had previously relied on traditional text and long educational webinars in their sales funnels. However, they made a strategic shift towards targeted VSL campaigns that focused on addressing the specific problems that customers were desperately seeking solutions for.
The results were mind blowing. Just one optimized Founder VSL generated more total revenue than all their previous efforts combined. Engagement levels soared as VSL-led funnels streamlined interactions and significantly increased same-day conversions compared to the longer text-based journeys. Mindvalley's continuous A/B testing of VSLs led to exponential gains through pricing adjustments, improved offers, and other optimizations.
Mindvalley's annual revenue skyrocketed from $30 million to $150 million—a remarkable tenfold increase. Additionally, customer lifetime values and retention rates indicated that customers acquired through VSLs brought in more lifetime value. Within a few months, the company not only recovered lost ground but also achieved unprecedented levels of success.
Marisha explained the strategy as follows:
Q: What kind of results did Mind Valley achieve by replacing its webinar-based sales funnel with a VSL funnel?
A: We saw amazing results when we switched from using webinars to VSLs for their sales. The old webinar method took about a week to make sales and wasn't doing as well anymore. But after we started using VSLs, we were able to make sales much faster, sometimes even on the same day. Just one VSL campaign ended up bringing in more revenue than all of our webinars combined. This change helped us grow our annual revenue from $30 million to $150 million, which is a huge increase.
Q: How did optimizing the mobile experience of their VSL funnel impact Mind Valley's metrics?
A: Recognizing that mobile traffic makes up a huge portion of total traffic, we ran extensive tests to optimize the mobile experience of their VSL pages. Rather than just using a responsive version of their desktop page, we created mobile-specific designs and tested them head-to-head against the standard mobile page. The mobile-optimized page resulted in a 31% increase in value per click, while the optimized desktop page saw a 39% increase. This shows that creating a good experience for mobile users can really improve important metrics.
Q: What did you learn from testing different video hooks and intro styles for your VSLs?
A: We achieved great results by testing various creative hooks to grab attention at the beginning of our VSL videos. Two top performers were videos that featured the presenter on stage delivering the content as a talk, and videos that told a "dream story" painting a picture of the life that the target customer aspires to. The on-stage videos established credibility and authority out of the gate, while the dream story hooked and created an instantly relatable emotional connection. The dream story hook increased return on ad spend to over 150% and lowered cost per acquisition by 20% compared to other hooks.
Q: How did adjusting the speed of the VSL videos affect Mind Valley's conversion rates?
A: One surprising tactic that we found effective was speeding up our sales videos by 1.3x. While many affiliates and video editors might think this is strange, it actually worked for us. We saw drastic improvements in click-through rates, view duration, and ultimately our ROAS I think this is because people are used to watching shorter, faster videos on platforms like TikTok and Instagram. By matching the pacing of their videos to what people are used to, we got much better results. This shows that it's important to test new ideas, even if they seem unusual.
Implementing Marisha's VSL framework for 10X results
To replicate Mindvalley's success through VSL landing page optimization, Marisha recommended the following best practices validated through her experience:
- Tell stories narrated by the founder/expert: Instead of just using plain text, use stories told by a relatable founder or expert. This helps build trust and makes it more personal.
- Focus on problem-solution structure: Start by talking about the problems your audience faces, and then show how your solutions can help. This makes your message resonate with them.
- Use relevant visuals: Add visuals like screen shares, edited videos, and images to make your stories more engaging and interesting.
- Break it into digestible segments: Divide your VSL into shorter segments of 2-5 minutes each. This makes it easier for viewers to watch and keeps them engaged.
- Test different CTAs: Try out different prompts after the video to encourage viewers to take action. See which ones work best for converting your engaged audience.
- Offer additional resources: Provide extra materials like secondary VSLs, eBooks, or other helpful resources to support your audience's optimization journey.
- Analyze important metrics: Look beyond basic conversion rates and dig into the metrics that truly matter to understand your customers' paths and motivations.
- Always keep testing: Always be willing to test new ideas and improve. Treat VSL optimization as an ongoing process to gain a competitive edge in your marketing.
By following Marisha's VSL best practices, you can use a practical approach backed by Mindvalley's successful case study. This blueprint can help you achieve faster and more sustainable growth in all your digital marketing campaigns.
