These five questions will improve your sales letters
In this article, I’m going to go over some questions that you should ask when you’re writing a sales letter.
If you ask these questions, then chances are you’ll greatly increase your chances of getting through to more people, because you’ll understand how to write for their motivations.
This will lead to more people reading your stuff all the way through, and higher conversion rates.
The five questions are Who, Why, What, How and What If?
(Side note: I got this from a book somewhere that wasn’t about writing copy. I can’t remember for the life of me what it was about or what it was called. I’ve added two of the questions, as it was Why, What and How. If anyone recognises this, let me know in the comments.)
Improve Your Sales Letters Question One: Who?
The Internet is awash with a billion different “authorities.” Hundreds of anonymous writers blog every single day, and their knowledge varies from absolute authority who produces never-before-seen insight, to people who’ve gone on Google, clicked the first result and are simply re-writing the article they’ve found.
The first question that a reader subconsciously asks themselves (and you want to answer) is “Who is writing this?”
If you open up a review of a weight-loss supplement and you’re confronted with a picture of someone who is a hundred pounds overweight, chances are that person has lost your sale forever.
If you write an article about a place you’ve never been to and write about a Cathedral in the city centre that simply doesn’t exist… you’re losing your reader.
You need to demonstrate who you are, and why you’re a reliable voice in the crowd. In sales letters, it tends to be statistics, company values or something along those lines.
Improve Your Sales Letters Question Two: Why?
Some people are hugely self-motivated and will bite your hand off the minute you offer a product that is suitable for their needs with no questions.
(It’s arguable how effective sales copy is on these folks, but that’s a topic for another day.)
For everyone else, you need to address the why.
Why get your product when there are a million others?
What are they going to learn in your product that they won’t learn elsewhere?
What is it about your product that sets it apart from your competitors?
What exactly is in your product that makes it great? This leads on to the next point.
Improve Your Sales Letters Question Three: What?
You need to address where the idea/product/whatever came from.
There’s a reason that when you see an advert on TV for food, it goes through the history of the brand, and tells you about how every potato is hand-scrubbed by a local farmer who picked it right near your back-yard.
Nothing is born in a vacuum, and if you don’t go into this, even briefly, some people will get lost.
Say you are selling some protein supplement. You’re not like the overweight guy above, you’ve followed the points above, and you get to this point.
Some readers will think that you came across this supplement when you were looking up affiliate programs that pay out. Some readers think that protein powders are steroids. Some think that protein powders are going to destroy their stomach, make them fat or give them muscles like Arnold Schwarzenegger overnight.
Ridiculous or not, that’s what some people think. You need to say something like this:
“I lifted weights for five years. I tried loads of different brands and they always gave me a bloated stomach. I met the head of Protein company X at an expo and they told me that their process was clean and uses natural ingredients – and is rigorously tested. It works just as advertised.”
If you don’t do this, then you will lose readers.
Improve Your Sales Letter Question Four: How?
There are no magic bullets.
Your product has to work. Hopefully, your product does work.
How does it work? What does a person have to do?
Some writers are afraid to walk people step-by-step through something. This loses readers.
For instance, if you were to see a program about doubling your investment portfolio in a year, you’d probably want to get some idea of what was involved before you purchased.
Are you more likely to go with a sales letter that said, “When you buy, we’ll show you one trick which will blow your mind and double your money!”
Or one which said, “In this course, we’ll talk you through the steps needed to double your investment. We’ll take you through setting up your account, transferring your funds, analysing opportunities and knowing when to cash out. We’ll also help you with X, X and X.”
Improve Your Sales Letters Question Five: What if?
This is where the magic car salesman enters everyone’s head. At the end of every sales letter, you’re going to have a call to action.
You need to use the “What If?” section before you ask them to give you their money. Otherwise, you get put in the same bracket as Bob from Slightly Dodgy Motors.
You need to tell them what happens if they click the button. What happens when they commit to your program?
Here’s an example: You have an exercise program. In the sales letter, you tell them that they’ll magically lose weight and they’ll look like a glamour model overnight.
You rush them to click that buy button.
You deliver the program to them.
Chapter One, Day One: Gruelling exercise and a blueberry smoothie.
…Some people are going to ask for a refund.
Or, in most scenarios, people just simply aren’t going to act.
Your exercise program could get a one-star review on some website somewhere because someone didn’t actually do the program.
Or, you’ll get people who want refunds because they thought it was a video course and it’s actually a book course.
What If? Is a section which actually allows you to get into your customer’s head.
You say to them,
“You’re going to read this PDF which I’ll deliver to your email. Then, you’re going to read through it tonight. Tomorrow, you’re going to wake up and do a simple set of exercises which will make you feel great. You’ll follow our simple diet plan full of delicious meals. You’ll feel better… but you might not be satisfied.
After one week, you will be. You’ll step on the scales and you might have lost one pound, five pounds and an inch off your waistline. Then you’ll smile because you know this program is a sixteen week program, and you’re already feeling better.”
Then you can lead into your call to action.
Closing Thoughts
These questions aren’t arbitrary. You don’t have to actually ask them in your sales letter. You don’t have to do them in separate sections, and you don’t have to even write whole sections. But if you give even a slight sentence or two to each section, you’re covering all the bases for why people are probably reading your letter.
You’ve given them credibility with your credentials, you’ve given them why they should buy your product, you’ve given them how it works, what it is and where it’s come from, and what’ll happen when they follow your call to action.
That’s pretty comprehensive.
It’ll also take you a few minutes at maximum to plan or rewrite an already written sales letter to cover your bases.