| The most important part of sales letters is the headline. Unless the headline immediately attracts attention and generates interest, your prospect will stop reading right then and there. This means you have no chance--zero--to fulfill the purpose of the sales letter, which is to make a sale. Your headline should communicate the strongest customer benefit(s) of your product or service. Creating a great headline. This is entirely contrary to what many "experts" say, but it is what most experts do! Headlines are critically important and yes you can spend hours, days, even weeks if necessary, creating headlines and then testing one headline against another. You can create at least 15 to 25 and test the strongest ones. You can write as many as 200 to 250 before choosing two to four to test against each other to find the most profitable. Or you can do what most copywriters do when they critic someone's copy. They read the copy and pick out a biggest benefit and make it the headline. Then they look for one or two other big benefits and make them sub-headlines. Here's an Example: Some examples: My products are terrific. My company is wonderful. We've been in business for 15 years.
We have a long tradition of quality, blah, blah; blush’s much advertising is full of this drivel. This is all about you. No one in the world cares besides you. Your prospects want to know exactly what benefits they will get from your products. In other words, if you sell grass seed, don't dwell on what it's composed of. Instead describe how beautiful their lawn will be. Here is the fastest way to improve your copy. Review the first draft of your copy. Eliminate all these words--I, our, we, my. Substitute you and your. I promise you'll be amazed and truly gratified with the result. It's sure to blow your mind! The process, of course, starts with the headline. An excellent copywriting technique is to prepare bullet points. These should consist of all the benefits a buyer of your product will get. Your benefits should be stated in headline format. The secret of making benefits even more powerful is to describe the benefit of the benefit. Many copywriters and marketers think the more astonishing your claims are the more persuasive. This is a fallacy. If a claim is exaggerated, it seems and feels untrue. You thus lose that all-important credibility. First you should dramatize your advertising claims with the help of short emotional words. Then prove each claim.
Expert comments and testimonials can be a big help. Give a reason why. In the headline above the roofer is giving away a big screen TV because his crew usually doesn't do anything in January and February and his suppliers are slow also. He explains that in the letter. So many sales letters do not make a clear, easily understandable offer. The result is few or no orders. Reason? When consumers are confused, they don't act--they do nothing. Confusion always breeds inaction. Think through your offer very carefully and write it down before you prepare a single word of your sales letter Tell the complete story of your product. Include every benefit you can. Copy can never be too long. Some of my sales letters are as long as 56 pages. But you can be too boring. The biggest sin of any copywriter, even in a two-paragraph letter, is to bore the prospect. The secret is to tell a complete story, but in the fewest words possible. Eliminate every single unnecessary word. Write only to those who are interested in what you are selling. Do not be concerned whatsoever with those who are not interested.
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Those who are interested need enough information to take the next step. Give it to them! Lengthy paragraphs without frequent subheads make copy intimidating to read. |
