A business owner who lives by conventional wisdom in the area of advertising and marketing, stands a high likelihood of getting lousy results. Conventional wisdom says to advertise and market by using big ticket media like radio and tv and to keep your written advertisements short and clever. In other words, entertain and they'll remember you. So why is this all wrong? Because it doesn't have work in most cases. Dan Kennedy, an internationally sought after business consultant calls good sales copy writing; "writing your own check". Yet most entrepreneurs are clueless about sales letters and definitely have no clue about what makes a good one.
Basically, a sales letter done right gives you a salesman that does the job around the clock and never asks for time and a half. You can tell good advertising copy because it is copy that creates money for your business. Too bad most business owners never employ a sales letter in any form.
Failure to make use of the power of good advertising copy and it is noticeable in lost profits. Just so it is clear, there is no set "format" for a sales letter to work to create customers. No reason to worry. Take the attitude that even bad copy is close to your goal because there are very specific things you can do to make it good, fast.
To get started: Go to the nearest library and pick up a pile of magazines from the popular genres. The areas you are most interested in are sports, fitness, health, fashion, and entertainment. Pick a specific category within the genre and then a more general one. In the area of health and fitness, pick up Men's Health and then more specifically one dealing only with getting bulky through weightlifting. Read through them and focus on the ads.
The sales letters are often full or half page. They sometimes can be half page. Many times they offer a free written or audio material when you get in touch with them. You'll notice that the sales letter focuses heavily on the service or product offered and not at all on the company name. It is an unfortunate false perception that the big corporations are masters of advertising. In reality, most have not clue about how to draft or use a good sales letter.
How do you find really good sales copy? It finds you actually. It stands out and sucks you in and makes you interested enough to maybe spend money on the product offered.. Mark the page in the magazine and immediately go get a couple of recent back issues. Browse those for the same or similar ad. A repeat means the ad is probably successful. The more back issues it appears in, the better indicator of being successful.
What the big companies do is promote a brand with entertaining ads with dancing lizards or whatever. Before you begin to think that sort of thing is real world advertising, remember that advertising must be readily measurable. Did it work or didn't it. Often, these companies can't measure the return on the millions spent. This is not for you. You have to get the benefit of your product to the average potential customer right now.
Strategy #2 is to provide your unique benefit to your customer. You want to answer the question: "Why should I be doing business with you and not others offering the same product or service. What is it can you do for them? Always keep that question in mind in creating winning advertising copy.
It has been written many times over about the power that a simple USP (unique selling proposition) can have for a business. Tom Monaghan, founder of Domino's pizza took a fledgling pizza joint in a college town (he lived in the back room at the beginning) by carving out special turf in the brutal market of pizza with: "Fresh Hot Pizza delivered in 30 Minutes or Less, Guaranteed".
That simple USP frankly brought the big boys to their knees and had them playing catch up.
So you might be wondering where Rule #1 is?
Well, the order is backwards in the article because rule #1 is to have a good headline. But learning how to do a sales letter means understanding what one is and that means a commitment to learn. Headlines are a topic for a future article.
About the Author:
Scott Nelson is an entrepreneur with "Texas" style. Building over 20 new Businesses in his lifetime, he has had quite a few Top Successes with just as many hard "Life Lessons". With some ingenuity and good copywriting training he will help you avoid some hard lessons.
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