The magic sales letter, the secret weapon of business profits

by: ScottNelson
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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.

By definition a sales letter is something in print that is meant to influence someone to buy your product. Without getting caught up in formality, a sales letter just has to work to earn the title of good sales letter. Most businesses never get around to even writing a bad one.

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.

A sales letter aka advertising copy most often offers a free report or gift, (although sometimes you can buy direct) and is advertising for a non major corporate entity. The sad truth is that most of your big operation corporate advertising, like the guys who drop $1,000,000 for 30 seconds during the Oscars or the Super Bowl, don't have the foggiest idea about basic advertising principles and even less about effective sales copy.

Trust me, you'll know really good sales copy right away. It is interesting to read and makes you interested in the product or service being sold. Put a book placeholder and go get two or three past issues. If you see the same or very similar ad in those back issues, the ad is very likely a successful ad.

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.

Rule #2 is to convey a unique benefit to your customer. The question to answer is: "Why should I be doing business with you and not others offering the same product or service?" What can you do for them? The ultimate question.

It is widely documented that a simple USP can have a powerful impact on a business. When Tom Monaghan started Domino's Pizza, he basically took a fledgling mom and pop and turned it into an empire based on the USP: "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.

Strategy #1 was skipped intentionally? So what is it?

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. Starting over 20 new Businesses in his career, 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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