Do you want to get some insight about how to write a perfect sales letter or ad copy? Without a great sales letter, your chance of success to promote your product or service will be very slim. Powerful ad copy is what you need to help you with conversion.
In order to write powerful sales letter or ad copy, you must first identify your target market that you’re trying to reach whether online or offline. Among your target market is a person with the problems, desires, wants and needs that you have to fully understand.
By understanding the problems and the pains they cause, you’ll be in a position to describe it in great detail. The more accurately you can describe your prospect’s problems in terms they relate to, the more they feel that you must have an answer to that problem.
You must expose the problem you are helping to solve. You must describe the problem using the very words your prospect use to be able to make the connection. This means you have to feel the pain your prospect is experiencing and the excitement that come from the solution backed by facts and figures, and the consequence of not solving the problem.
While you want to show your prospects how their life can look when they receive the benefits of your offer, they first have to believe they have a problem and the consequence of not solving this problem immediately. Help your prospect see and feel the real long-term consequences of ignoring their problem.
People generally don’t want to buy another product or service. But many want the real benefits and the end results if you can make them an irresistible offer they would be fool to refuse. You still need to describe the features of your product, but 80%-90% of your sales talk should be about the benefits. Describe exactly what you are offering for sale, focusing on benefits.
Next, you have to ask for action and be very specific with step-by-step instructions. You should tell your prospect exactly what to do to get your product and why it’s important to do it today.
Pre-headline is a short sentence designed to grab reader’s attention by giving the big promise to your target audience.
Headline is designed to set the tone for the rest of the ad. It should contain the biggest benefit of your offer and get your target audience to read the first paragraph.
Here is an example of a good headline of a sales copy:
Some sales letters include subhead, which comes right underneath the headline in order to reinforce and expand on the idea proposed in the headline and arouse more curiosity and interest.
The first paragraph should continue the main benefit introduced in the headline. The job of first paragraph is to make your readers to read the second paragraph and draw your readers to read the bulk of your sales letter. The first paragraph is a place to talk about the problems you intend to solve through your offer.
Body copy is the bulk of your text copy. It contains all the benefits in your offer, starting with the biggest benefits of what your market is looking for.
Remember that people generally don’t believe anything at first. It is the job a good copywriter to overcome their skepticism by providing facts, figures, reviews and testimonials from satisfied customers, and try to present and overcome any objection.
You must build credibility with your prospects in order for them to believe in your abilities and your offer. How do you build credibility? By your past accomplishments, the facts that you present to them and through testimonials from satisfied customers if available. Testimonial should be as specific as possible to have any impact.
You also have to build rapport to build your friendly relationships with your readers to show through your words that you truly understand them and know their pain. You may have some common experiences that you want to share that prove you understand their pain. People like those who are like themselves and those who like them back.
You should always include bullet points within the bulk of your text. A bullet point is a brief statement that identifies a single benefit by your product or service. Bullets are easy to scan because they are short, punchy, and there’s lots of white space around them. All successful sales copy usually have a lot of bullets. Bullets can be in numbers (1, 2, 3, etc.) or bullet point fashion:
Perceived value is very important. Your goal should be to demonstrate the value to the buyer of at least 10 times the price. For example, if you offer a course showing through the facts and figures on how your prospect can make at least $10,000 per year in stock market, and reveal the price of your course being $300, it will be viewed favorably. Who wouldn’t want to spend $300 to make $10.000 in a year? However, your copy must be believable and convincing in order to sell your course. Good testimonials from people play a big role in believability and convincing others.
Can you make a guarantee of satisfaction? You have to provide some type of money-back guarantee to overcome the fear and any sense of risk-taking that your prospects may be felling. A small percentage of people will rip you off and ask for the refund, but most people are honest and may even give your product or service a positive review.
Offering a bonus at the end of your copy enhances the value of your offer. Your bonus should have a value and it should be related to your primary offer. A bonus is always free if they order today or tied to an expiration date to make your offer urgent. Bonuses always work because it makes your offer urgent, otherwise most people tend to delay ordering and many forget about your offer. So your gifts plays an important role in getting your prospects to act while they have just read your sales letter, and are hot and ready to act.
Finally, you have to ask for order in a direct way, such as “Order your copy now,” or “Download this e-book now.” You have to ask for the sale in order to get it.
Almost all great sales letters contain 1-3 P.S. Readers usually start at the top, scroll and scan all the way to the bottom to check everything out in the least amount of time. If everything is what they are looking for, then they go back and read the entire or most parts of a sales letter.
P.S. is at the bottom and is used to restate the entire proposition in one sentence to sum up the top benefits that your product or service offers. This is where you should ask for order again and the loss to your readers for delaying.
P.S. are very important for any print sales copy. For electronic sales letter or ad copy, you may just want to sum up the benefits, state what the loss will be if delayed, and emphasize the urgency for ordering now without trying to oversell.
Remember that most people hesitate to order the moment they feel insincerity when reading your ad copy or hear your sales pitch. If you want to be a successful copywriter, honesty should be your top priority whenever you plan to write or type a sales letter or ad copy.
By Paul Ziglar – 2019 – Update 2020
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For additional articles written by Paul Ziglar, see alliedpublishing.com/copywriting. Paul Ziglar is the author of How to Write Successful Advertising Copy That Make Money published in 2019.