Sales Letter Writing TipsDoes your sales copy induce website visitors to buy, or does it merely state the advantages and benefits of your company’s products or services? In the first case, the sales letter becomes an effective marketing tool; in the second case it is doing only half its job.

Learn how to improve your conversion rates by following the sales letter writing tips below…

Sales Letter Writing Tip 1 – Quality Content

The best sales letter is one that people keep. Something in the content inspires them to perhaps not act immediately, but to keep the letter for future reference. Even better are those missives that do both – cause the reader to buy right away but also save it to share with others or use at a later time.

How can you do this? Offer content that is valuable. For instance, if you sell computers, include a checklist of the top 10 features most consumers desire or the top customer-rated manufacturers. This is something that will get read, acted upon, and kept.

Tip 2 – Aesthetics

Your sales letter is meant to be read; make sure it appeals visually to the reader. Design it so that it is easy to read, yet eye-catching. Colour is an important component, but use it carefully. You don’t want the text to get lost or be too faint or small to read. Remember to include white space and graphics that break up long pieces of text. Your logo and contact information should be prominent.

Sales Letter Call To Action Tip 3 – Always Include A Call To Action

Getting someone to read your sales letter is one thing; getting them to take action is another. You have to tell the consumer you want him or her to do and make it quite plain. For example, you could insert a link to the sales page of a particular laptop and include a blurb something along the lines of “Click here and get this great XYZ laptop for $100 off the regular price if you order before January 1st”. This provides a call to action by telling the reader what to do, how to do it, and by when to do it.

Tip 4 – Offer An Incentive

Consumers are more likely to act if you give them an incentive to do so. In the example from sales letter writing tip #3, the incentive is a $100 discount – pretty powerful as a way to induce someone to act. Other incentives could be an extra product for free, a buy one get one sale, a percentage off all orders over a certain dollar amount, etc. Be creative. Not all incentives need to cost a lot to be effective.

Tip 5 -  Personalise The Message

Instead of blanketing the market with a single piece of impersonal mail or email message, add the customer’s name, if possible. Use it throughout the letter, too. People are much more apt to respond to your call to action if they feel it is a personal invitation. Remember that you are creating a relationship and resist the urge to simply peddle your goods or services. Personalised communication sets your company apart from a larger, more remote corporation.

Tip 6 – Test For Effectiveness

Before you hit the send button or spend money on postage for all those sales letters you’ve just created, consider giving it a test run first. Use a small group of prospects or current customers and look at the results for this test run. If the ROI is dismal, you may need to tweak the content before trying again. It’s better to figure this out before sending hundreds or thousands.

Tip 7 – Help Them With Their Concerns

Try to figure out what might be holding them back. Is it price? Break down return on investment. Are they afraid it won’t work? Tell them about your no-hassle return policy. Do they need to see examples of how well your product works? Point them to your tutorial video, your customer testimonials, etc.

Help people through the sales process in your letter. You don’t have a chance to answer questions to try to anticipate and answer them in your sales copy. Test your sales letter writing skills on friends and mentors for feedback if possible and ask people who will give you more than a “great job” so you can get a real feel for how to go about making your sales letter better.

Have a most outstanding day.

Sean Rasmussen
Aussie Internet Marketing
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008 - 2010

 

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Update Your BlogA lot of internet marketers build a website and wait for results. The most successful internet marketers don’t stop building. Finding online success can take time but even after you reach it, you cannot become complacent. Content is king and updating your blog content regularly will help you continually bring new traffic to your sites.

Search engines will visit your website or blog every time you add new content. If your site becomes static, eventually the search engines will stop coming. The aim of the search engines are to bring people new information and when you have an audience, lack of regular new information will stop them from coming as well.

If you don’t update your blog regularly, not only will you lose the attention of the search engines but your subscribers will probably opt-out as well. If you have RSS subscribers, the most recently updated blog will be in their reader list on the main page. If you can stay on that main page as often as possible, you’ll have a greater chance of getting heard.

If you have a static website, consider adding a blog to it to keep at least one section regularly updated and if you have a blog, try not to neglect it. Even a few blog posts a week will pay off and could help you develop a great income stream.

How Often Should You Update Your Blog

Not all internet marketers can update their blogs daily but if you can, this is a good idea. Write blog posts and articles in advance and schedule  your posts so that your audience is trickle-fed a regular stream of updates and information from you.

Here are some tips to help you update your blog more often and get traffic to it:

• Write a few articles per week for article distribution and link to the blog with strong keywords.

• Use tools that allow you to schedule updates (such as SocialOomph) to tell people to visit your blog when it updates.

• Blog ahead. Wordpress lets you schedule your blog posts for a future date.

• Post at around the same time each day. If you establish patterns, both your customers and search engines will anticipate this and react to it.

Write a series. You might do a link roundup one day of the week, announce a special promotion on another, etc.

• Add a contributor. You may want to find someone with knowledge of your industry to add a weekly blog post to the blog. Blogs that have more than one author often do well.

• If you do a weekly newsletter, you can also use this as content for your site. After you’ve sent it out, post it on a section of your website. If you’ve optimised your newsletter for search engines, you’ll benefit even further.

• Link to yourself. If you have several blogs and can’t write a post every week for every one of them but the niche is related, link to one blog from another to create new content and merge audiences as well as provide backlinks to your own sites.

• Welcome and encourage guest posts for your blog. You may have some readers who’d like to do a guest post with a link back to their site. This gives you content, can provide interesting information to your readers, and helps you build a network of friends. Those friends will probably send their own audience to your blog which gives you new potential subscribers.

• Use syndicated content. Articles on article directories are often free to re-distribute if you leave the links in tact and credit the author. You can find great articles that relate to your audience and post them on your site. Do this carefully so you’re not sending your traffic to a competitor.

A blog is a powerful tool for internet and affiliate marketing but is only useful as long as people keep visiting it. Do you have any blogs that are collecting dust? Take on board some of the tips provided above and update your blog as often as possible for maximum results.

Have a most outstanding day.

Sean Rasmussen
Aussie Internet Marketing
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008 - 2010

 

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