Effective Copywriting 10 Rules

The Ten Basic Rules Of Writing A Good Sales Letter

 

For many small enterprises, a sales letter is the only marketing tool. They might not have a budget for anything else. But a carefully mapped out sales letter can create magic for your top line and bottom line. Just follow a few guidelines as mentioned below and see your profits soar.

 

• You must always target the wants, needs, and desires of your prospective clients.  Walk a mile in the prospect’s shoes before writing any sales letter. Remember what they are looking for in the letter is “What exactly is in it for me?” So tell them what is there for them.

• Avoid the crowd mentality. Write to specific people. You should write to a real and living person. Write the letter as if you’re writing to one friend, not to 1000’s of people.

• People buy benefits and not features. You should begin by distinguishing the benefits from the features. The sales letter should be able to influence your reader to buy your stuff based on the grounds of what benefit the product/ service derives and not based on its features. It is the benefit the buyers buy and not just the feature in isolation.

• Hook your readers with the first line itself. You have to compete with several unsolicited mails at any given time. So your letter should be crisp and catchy. The headline should make the reader read the first line, the first line should make him read the second, and so on.

• Provide the reader with specific and relevant information. Do not go on and on about a product or service. Do not go around in circles. List specific benefits and tell them how their life would be easier with the benefits that are being offered.

• Your sales letter must sell. The basic aim of your sales letter is to sell, isn’t it? It must sell. And for it to sell, it must be written in a conversational tone. Talk to your prospect in a lucid and friendly manner. Chuck the ornamental language and think of basic grammar rules as optional.

• Test your sales letter. Try and ask yourself, if someone was writing the same letter to you, would you get convinced enough to spend your hard-earned dollars on it?

• Make the sales letter as lengthy as it has to be. There is nothing called too long or too short. The basic thing that matters is the interest factor. The sales letter should be interesting and appealing.

• Focus on the aesthetics. Use user-friendly fonts and templates that will make it visually appealing. You can use bullets and highlighters to break the clutter. Try not to end any page except the last page in a complete sentence. Most newspapers apply this tactic. If you do not end the page in a complete sentence, the reader will automatically navigate to the next page for completion.

• Tell the reader precisely what to do. What do you want the reader to do next? Does he have to send in a reply card? Or does he have to place an order? Or call for more information? Schedule an appointment? Notify him accordingly. Do not presume he would know. It is amazing how many sales letters fail to inform the reader about the subsequent step. They consider that the reader to be a mind reader. But sadly enough, this is not the case.