A sales letter is a great way to induce visitors to your website to buy your products or services. It can also function as a way to “seal the deal” after someone has shown an interest in your offerings.
Sales letters are a great marketing tool that cost little, if any money, but what they say and how they are laid out on the page can have a direct impact on their effectiveness and your conversion rate.
Not everyone is comfortable with writing, but by reviewing these tips for your online Sales Letter Design, you will be well on your way to utilising this marketing tool to its full potential.
Sales Letter Content
Just like the other pages on your website, content in a sales letter is king.
Start by deciding on what you want to say. The focus should be on your company’s strengths, whether it be your personalised customer service, the quality of your products, or the unique niche market your offerings fill. Keep your sentences short and use simple with easily understandable terms.
Always include how your products or services can help someone. You may want to begin the first paragraph with a question that you answer, something like “Have you ever wondered how to solve the problem of having a widget handy when you really need it? XYZ Company’s widget holder is the perfect solution.” You can then go on to describe how your widget holder solves this problem, its qualities and benefits, and how to place an order.
Convince the reader that buying your product is better than going to the competition. Only after this is written should you include the price of the item (usually towards the end) and it’s a popular and proven technique to to demonstrate a discount with an overstrike on the price as people will often respond to a ‘sales price’.
Including testimonials from satisfied customers is always a good idea. This gives your product higher credibility by showing that someone else, just like the person reading the sales letter, has used it and found it beneficial.
Marketing yourself as being credible is just about as important as marketing a product!
Sales Letter Design Components
Your Sales Letter Design is extremely important. Every sales letter needs a headline at the top, centred on the page. It can be your company’s tag line, or a description of what the rest of the letter is about. Whichever you choose, make sure it grabs the attention of the reader right away and gives them a reason to continue reading. Make the headline bold and use an easy-to-read font, preferably a common sans serif.
End the sales letter with a summary of the content, and a specific call to action. This may or may not contain a special offer if they make a purchase before a certain deadline. Include a clickable link that will direct the reader to the buy page. Include your contact information in case the reader is more comfortable calling you on the phone or sending you an email query.
Layout Tips
One of the most common mistakes made in Sales Letter Design is creating a busy page. When a person reads, his or her eyes are naturally drawn to the emphasized portions. That is why your headline is important.
You should also make other key pieces of content and your call to action bold, highlighted, or in a bright colour. But too much of this on one page and the reader can become too distracted to fully get your entire message. Mix it up so that there is some unbroken text in between these highlighted sections.
• Don’t mix more than two fonts on the same page. This is a basic tenet of good design.
• Always leaves some white space on the page. If there are too many long paragraphs with too much text, people naturally assume it’s going to take them too long to read it.
• Try emulating some sales letter techniques that you find to be convincing.
Create an easy-to-read sales letter that does an effective job of marketing you and your company and you’re going to have more of a chance of selling online if people believe in you as well as your product.
See you at the top of Google!
Sean Rasmussen
SEO Australia Pacific
AussieSEO.com © 2007 - 2010
Hi Sean,
Thanks for the great tips on designing a sales letter. This is one of those times you really need to be able to write an attention grabbing headline. I’m starting to realise how powerful the title can be. For instance, I don’t open emails I know are sales letters if the title doesn’t get my attention.
Thanks for laying out what should be included in the content area. When I go to write my first sales letters, I’m sure I’ll be back to refer to this post. You make everything so easy to understand and apply.
.-= Jazz Salinger´s last blog ..Learn and Earn Competition – This is It =-.
Hi Sean
‘Content in a sales letter is king’, this is an absolute when it comes to sales letters from people selling online because if the title or the opening sentence doesn’t grab attention then, most times these letters are deleted.
Writing sales letters is a special skill, and the pointers you have given are excellent guidelines for people like myself who would have probably relied on a template or outsourced it to be written professionally.
I like the idea of seeking out sales letters that I feel are good examples to emulate.
.-= Elly´s last blog .. =-.
I strongly agree that the headline has to be one to immediately catch the readers attention. If you don’t get them in the first couple seconds then you’ve likely lost them. And you’ll have a bounce rate to show it.
I like the idea of the overstruck “regular price” and then the discounted or sales price and an immediate “call to action”. That’s a technique that’s used by television marketers on a regular basis along with their “call to action” to call their operators within the next 20 minutes and… etc.
.-= Don White´s last blog ..The Ukulele – A Very Brief History =-.
Hi Sean,
Recently I receiving a sales letter via email. It had attention grabbing headlines but caused me to lose interest due to the letter being too long and, I don’t know him.
Due to my learning in the YOTA Forum, I see a benefit this marketer would have by having a blog. He could ease the reader into his topic and then design a great sales letter to sell his very interesting ebooks he has on offer.
.-= Jill Brown´s last blog ..Couples Marry at Common Law =-.
Hi Jill,
I think I learn the most from sales letters I don’t like. I think by being really clear about what gets my attention and what doesn’t; I’ll learn to write sales letters that make sales.
.-= Jazz Salinger´s last blog ..Finding Your Passion =-.
Is it just me or are online sales letters getting longer these days? Too many people are making the emphasis on flashing widgets and large fonts. All points that lose my attention very quickly as in my mind being akin to spam and trying way too hard.
When the time comes for me to be taking on writing sales letter I will certainly be referring back to this post for great tips once again
I’ve tested many different sales letters for my drop shipping website and read many copywriting tips and books for help. None have been as basic and point driven as Sean’s which I find very effective and has a greater impact – such a great sales letter design that can essentially be followed for my own devices.
Thank you for the copywriting tips, I will be sure to compile these with my others and make a killer copy
.-= Sarah Butland´s last blog ..Kelly Moran Took Me On Summer’s Road =-.