Online Marketing Bag of Tricks - Sales Letters

I’m putting together a series of marketing tips for you which will be included only on this website. These are the tips and tricks that online marketers use all the time to make more sales from their one page websites. Later posts will discuss other advanced marketing tips.

In your sales letters…

Show your website visitors a bargain. If your product can save them money, make them money, or if you’re currently running tests on price points be sure to tell your visitors that with a tangible and honest dollar figure. This is especially true if you are running a special - let them know if they order today they are receiving a discount and that you won’t be holding that price for ever. You want to consider showing them twice - by either a percentage or dollar figure. “Order now and save 30% of our regular price.”

Using bullets is a common practice in both online sales letters and printed pitches. They work in our busy lives as most readers are skimmers. Use bullets (dashes, dots or circles preceeding short sentences) to highlight benefits, features or a list of bonus products of your main product. Benefits are the key to selling anything.

Compliment your reader in your ad copy and on your thank you page. We all love a compliment and this helps to earn your readers’ and/or customers’ trust. A fine example seen on another site: “You’ve made a smart business decision by landing here and taking time to investigate this…”

Apart from pricing techniques you may like to try increasing the perceived value of your product by making your offer scarce - in quantity sold or through bonus products. Although this adds stress to the reader it does help to let them know your offer may not be on the table for long…

Find your competitors’ products’ weakness and use it as your USP (unique selling proposition). Let your readers know that your product has been recommended, written about, or given more success to your customers for specific reasons that your competitions products are missing. As an example: your USP could be that your competition doesn’t offer exclusive rights, consultations, etc.

Use the ‘fear factor’ in your sales letter copy. By owning, knowing, or using your product or information your customers can avoid pain, wasted time, loss of sales, etc. Sad but true, this ‘fear factor’ motivates people to buy. As a general rule don’t over-emphasize this one; play the card out on the table and let your customers decide if avoiding pain is their motivator.

Find similar: Ask Laura