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Articles Index >> Marketing
How to Write the Perfect Sales Letter
by Michael Cheney
If you’ve spent any amount of time on the Internet, and in particular
on website marketing sites, you will have noticed something called “The
Long Sales Letter.” A long single page sales letter is, without a doubt,
one of the most effective ways to sell products online.
There is a simple formula that people use when producing a sales letter that
generates high conversion rates and I’m going to talk you through it right
now.
The first thing you need to do with a sales letter is produce an eye-catching,
imaginative headline. This is something you place right at the top of the page
that draws people’s attention into the content below and makes them want
to read on.
A great way to do this is to ask a question. This instantly makes people want
to find out the answer and is a great headline to draw people into your copy.
Once you’ve created your headline, you then need to make sure you put
the hooks into the visitors by telling them a story. Many website owners make
the mistake of writing copy that doesn’t appeal directly to the visitor.
A quick-fire way to make sure that your website has appealing copy is to write
in the first person. So use words like: ‘you’, ‘I’,
‘me’ and ‘your’; words that speak one-to-one with the
person reading the website copy.
Once you’ve caught them and captured their imagination, start then sprinkling
images and testimonials throughout the copy. Words on their own will not keep
people interested for too long, so you’ll need to include relevant images
that demonstrate the benefits of your product.
You constantly need to be thinking about using your sales copy to either build
up trust with the visitors on your website, or show them the benefits of your
product.
Another way to break up the copy of a long sales letter is to use different
sized font. You could also put certain parts of the text in quotation marks
to make particular emphasis of certain issues.
Keep asking people questions throughout the sales copy. This will keep them
interested and wanting to read further.
I also highly recommend that you use an autoresponder so that people can opt-in
to your mailing list direct from your sales copy. This means that if they don’t
have a lot of time to read your sales letter, they can put in their name and
email address and be added to your mailing list to be sent further information.
Don’t write too long of a sales letter without including believable testimonials
from high-profile people in your industry. Whatever you do, never make up a
testimonial; it will always come back to haunt you. Once you have a new product
it is very difficult to get testimonials, so send out free copies of the product
to people you would like testimonials from.
Use bullet points in your sales letter to emphasize key issues and benefits
of your product. When possible, you should always try and use the shortest way
of saying things. Don’t simply create a long sales letter for the sake
of it. Once you have finished writing the sales letter, go back and reread it
several times and take out anything that you think is unnecessary.
Towards the bottom of the sales letter you then need to start speaking about
the reasons people should buy. You should also mention a guarantee. Finally,
finish with the order option and, if possible, a P.S. to hit home with a final
benefit.
If you're looking for a great piece of software to write your salesletters
for you check out this one called Instant
Sales Letters.
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