Sales Letter How To Guide

Advice from a professional copywriter, for when you can’t afford to hire a professional.

1. The tendency within a business is to get sort of too involved in the product or service to look at it from a consumer’s perspective. That’s understandable and probably helpful for a wide range of reasons having to do with running a business, where it does not help is in marketing and advertising, which is why the vast majority of the most successful marketing in history was outsourced to agencies or individuals not so invested in the business. And often those creative types had to fight to get their idea approved by the business despite the eventual success of the ad campaign or marketing just because from within the bubble of that business, it seemed very different compared to what they were used to. Be aware of that and do your best to take an outside perspective. It might take some effort but that is usually where the really good ideas lie, against the company grain.
2. Clearly define a problem for your customer. Once you know the problem make the solution as broad as your imagination can get while remaining relevant and grounded. Let’s take plumbing since we use that a lot. So the problem is clogged pipes let’s say. But what’s the real problem? Inconvenience? Okay. Smell? Hopefully not, but maybe… how about embarrassment? Go beyond the simple product and get to the emotion underneath it, but keep it realistic. If you fix pipes don’t start thinking world peace or eternal happiness, but do get to the immediate emotional trigger.
3. Prioritize benefits, or problems solved. Keep them separate in content. Don’t try to say everything at once, take it step by step from most important to least.
4.  Once you have one main problem that you are going to solve, put it in words and make it the headline. Here’s an example of a headline that worked really well, “We have the cure for over 60% of all disease.” Sounds crazy right? There can’t be one thing that cures 60% of disease right? Well there isn’t if you are thinking pills or potions, but there is something and it is exercise. It was the headline for a gym that targeted baby boomers (if it was for a younger audience they would have wanted to focus on body and sex, not health per se, that’s thinking like a copywriter).
5. In the next paragraph or two or three, use data to backup the existence of this problem, “By 2030 over 80% of Americans will be obese” etc. Chances are you have a lot of data about the problem your product or service solves, time to get it out and reword it in a concise manner. Keep sentences short. Focus on the most impressive stats. Use just enough to backup your main point because there is a thin line between convincing someone and boring them.
6. Get personal. Use your own words to highlight a specific case. “Fitness is a passion of mine ever since my mother died of heart disease brought on by obesity. I promised myself that if I could save someone’s mother, someone’s father, someone’s child, that I would do it.” You don’t have to talk about you; you can talk about someone else. You need to make a human connection here though.
7.  Next re-state the solution to the problems listed, in order of priority. Bullet points work great here.
8. Have a call to action. You always need to tell them what you want them to do. In this example it’s obvious you want them to get a gym membership right? But don’t make that assumption. The exact same content converts almost 60% better when a call to action is added to the end.