Three Solid Ways to Start a Sales Letter

This post is an authorized reprint of a COPYWRITER’S ROUNDTABLE article published and sent to me on July 3, 2012. Copywriter’s Roundtable is owned and managed by John Forde. The article’s author is a colleague of John Forde and fellow copywriter, Jason Strachen who has done a masterful in job delivering such a powerful piece.

On this eve of our nation’s independence, what could be a better celebration than a discourse on honing your own entrepreneurial skills, strategies and business acumen? It is my opinion that the Sales Letter is singly THE most important tool a Web Marketing Entrepreneur can have in his/her toolkit; And a superbly composed sales letter puts you heads and shoulders above your competition. So here we go!

Introduction

Copywriters and article writers are often pre-occupied with the best ways to start an article or sales letter, so it’s not uncommon for questions lke, ‘what’s the perfect opening line?’ to recur frequently. While the answer is not “Call me Ishmael”, and the opening thought is hardly, “Was your Dad a baker? ‘Cause you’ve got a nice set of buns”, the true answer to such a question is, there isn’t one. At least not one that’s perfect for every situation.

There are some, however, that work a lot more reliably than others. And we’re fortunate to have copywriter Jason Strachan show us three of the best ways to start a sales letter. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this free lesson in sales letter writing, titled…

THREE SUREFIRE WAYS TO START ANY SALES LETTER

by Jason Strachan

So…

Why is the start of the direct mail letter so important? Here is the answer in a nutshell: Because when reading begins your target customer will be glaring point-blank into the loaded barrel of your promotion. You are NEVER going to get such a great chance to get her interest again.

So what are you waiting for? When you start your letter or email, or video, go ahead and fire the most powerful, single most seductive message you possibly can! Because the cold truth is, as corny as it may sound, if you don’t get her (or him) at hello’ you wont get her at all.

Now In this article I’ve selected my 3 most tried and tested letter openings that I’ve used with a lot of success in my career. You could call them my ‘old faithfuls.’ Because if my life was on the line, and I was in a position where I had to write a letter that worked, or I’d be executed by firing squad, I would use one of these three openings, every time. So here’s the first one…

First favorite

If you’re like me – i.e. If you’re like me, you spend way too much time in front of your computer…

Now there are two distinct reasons why I like this opening. First: because it is an approach that works for practically ANY market place. And second: because it establishes immediate rapport.

The whole tone of “If you’re like me” immediately conjures up the feeling of a trusted friend wrapping her arm around your shoulder to give you a bit of counsel. And it causes your prospect to just drop her guard a little, while she starts to read what you have to say.

Now even though a LOT of marketers have discovered how powerful this opening is and have started using it a lot. It’s STILL very effective in the marketplace today. Just as long as its expressed with sincerity. So in other words, don’t attempt to write an “If you’re like me” opening if you’re actually nothing like your customer.

*TIP: Remember what David Ogilvy famously said: ‘The customer is NOT a moron – she’s your wife’

Second favorite

Ask a provocative question
– Okay, here’s where we step into some dangerous territory…

You see, a lot of people who attempt to write sales copy understand how to write a question. It’s the qualifier ‘provocative’, that they do not seem to get a handle on. However if you get it right, it works like a charm!

First let me show you how most marketing agencies mess it up.

The way they get it wrong is by opening the letter with a question that has no relevance to your prospect, so they dismiss it straight away. For example: If I open a letter with, ‘Do you know the name of the ancient Greek God of sunshine?’

Your response will likely be: A) Are you nuts?’ B) ‘Who cares?” or worse C) Something’s wrong with you, and If I did know the ancient Greek God of sunshine there’d be something wrong with ME.”

A provocative question is a question that really triggers some type of dominant emotion inside your target customers. Here are some examples…

Continue reading “Three Solid Ways to Start a Sales Letter”

Techniques that Drive Traffic To Your Site

Traffic-boosting techniques

So you’ve finally set up a website packed with very useful information which you think will benefit your visitors. Day to day you update your website with the most recent information by publishing articles, while hoping people will visit it and find your content useful.

But day in day and day out you check your website traffic stats just to find there are no comments and very low impressions. One reason for this and maybe the main reason is, nobody knows about your website.

You see, there are millions of website on the World Wide Web, so when you put your website up on Web, no one will know about it if you do not announce it. By this I mean that you need to drive traffic to your website. That having been said, the next question becomes…HOW? The answer to that question is the topic of this post.

The following website traffic techniques are in no particular order of importance, but each one is an important cog in your “drive traffic to my website” machine, and you can start using them now to get traffic moving to your website.

Search engine submissions to audio postcards

Submitting or Adding Your Site to Major Search Engines – Search engines submission will increase your Page Ranking position, such that when your web page is ranked in a high position on the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages), your website will be easily searched and seen by Internet users as long as your pages contain the user’s search term.
Focus on the major search engines such as Google , Yahoo and MSN. Just don’t use the free submission service or fee submission which will submit to many search engines because those services might hurt your page ranking as many of them have been banned by the major search engines.

Pay-per-click (PPC) Marketing – If you have set up a sufficient enough marketing budget, you could use Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing service provided by Google (Google Adwords) & Yahoo. PPC is one of more effective ways to drive traffic to your website, as long as you have the budget for it.

Audio Postcard for email marketing – The Web has been around for only a short time, comparatively speaking, but it has gone through a number of revolutions, so to speak. The once silent web can now talk in the form of videos, audio tools and integrated human voice audio clips, all of whch are now being used to help you to promote your website.

Because the human voice has the power to influence, motivate, and persuade prospects to click “Order Now” buttons faster and with less resistance, AudioGenerator.com is a very powerful tool you can use to help you drive significant traffic to your website.

Press releases to link trading

Press Announcements/Releases – A Press Announcement/Release can be one of the most effective methods of creating backlinks to your website and it really help in your page rank positions. Websites like prweb.com will provide FREE press release/announcement service, and you can utilize it to drive traffic to your website.

Article Submissions – Articles submission to article banks and directories is one of the best ways to expose your website to the public. There are many visitors that frequent these sites to look for related information and your articles could be among their search results … if you submit them.

Trade Link Request and One Way Incoming Links – One search engine optimization technique is to have as many incoming links to your website as possible. You could request to trade links or link exchanges with other webmaster, but be mindful of “Best Practices” when performing such activities.

One way incoming link occurs when another website links to yours without the need of you to link back to it. If your website has useful information to other websites, they probably will add a link to their website and link to yours. There are many websites that provide one-way links service, but almost all of them require a monthly or yearly subscription fee.

RSS feeds to viral marketing, blogs and forums

RSS Feed – Make sure you have an RSS feed URL that people can subscribe to. The acronym RSS means Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. It is a document type that lists updates of websites or blogs available for syndication.

Viral Marketing – Viral marketing is another way to say “word-of-mouth”. On the Web, “word-of-mouth” spread very fast thru email. The key to successful viral marketing is to send out something that people want to share. That can be anything from a joke, funny story or link to a home-made video and put your website link in it.

Blogs and Forums – Blogs & forums invite comments from readers and most of them will allow you to leave a link in your signature line. This is another way to create back-links and drive traffic to your website.