Creating A Sales Letter or Ad That Works

April 10th, 2009 Posted in After Sale and Repeat Sales, Business Monitoring and Reporting, Close Sales, Creating Sales Opportunities, Getting Referrals and Testimonials, Making Sale, Offline Marketing, Testimonials

Creating A Sales
Letter or Ad That Works

There are a few things you must do before you sit down and create your
‘silent salesperson’, which is what a great sales letter is — a truly efficient and
loyal salesperson. One that never sleeps in, takes sick days or forgets to turn up
for work.

There are 3 steps you must take before you can start writing:

Step 1: Define the result you want from your letter. Is it an order or an
appointment for further follow up? Never try to do both. Either sell your
product or service or simply sell the reader on why they need to ask for more
information.

Step 2: Define you target market. Who are your hottest prospects? Yes,
that’s right. Your existing customers, people who have already bought from you!
If you are spending money on any format advertising and you aren’t mailing your
existing customers . . . you are committing a crime against your profitability.
Your cheque book should be seized and impounded until you come to your
senses.

Listen to this story:

I have a friend who mailed about 150 of his past clients . . . and promptly
made an extra $7,800 in sales. To this day he’s never mailed the other 2,850
clients on his list! It’s criminal. And yet, he says that business is up and down!

I see this happening over and over in almost every business. Everyone
wants more business, but nobody actually does anything to get it, apart from
running the odd useless ad in a newspaper or magazine.

So, lets get back to defining your target market.

If you aren’t mailing your existing customer (because you’ve already done
so) you need to find similar people, and there are 2 ways to do this.

Firstly, you buy a mailing list, but be very careful. Research the list
carefully. A great sales letter will fail miserably if your list is inappropriate. The
way you can protect yourself is to get references from people who have used the
list. Ask the list broker for the names of others who have rented the list and call
them. Check if they sold anything and if the list’s criteria matches your
customer’s profile.

You could also find out how the names were generated and how long ago,
and ask to see the letter that generated the original list. The customers you want
are people who bought a similar product or who shop in similar shops. The best
list of people to mail to are your existing customers—and everyone who’s been
in business for any length of time has an existing customer base.

Step 3: Collect as many great sales letters as you can find. You must have
a ‘sample file’ if you want to be a great letter or ad writer. You’ll find that all the
good letters follow a certain pattern. In most cases the formula to use remains the
same and could be compared to building a house, like this …

•  Concept or design.

• Sketch is made.

• Plans drawn up.

• Foundations are laid.

•  Walls put up.

• Roof.

• Ceilings.

• Internal fit out.

• Paint

• Carpets

• Curtains.

This order remains the same – no matter how big or where the house is being
built. And so it’s the same with letters. You should follow the style, layout and
format of successful letters, and never listen to your critics unless they have a proven
record of creating effective sales letters. The only way you can really tell if your
letter is going to work is to test it. Mail out a few hundred and monitor the results.

Buffer