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This week's feature article discusses ways to breathe new life into sales letters and the Quick Tip has some ways to make your ads sell ...

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Jennifer 

32 Easy Ways to Breathe New Life into Any Webpage Sales Letter

by  Jimmy D. Brown.

     Does your website convince people to make a purchase?
If not, here are 32 easy ways to breathe new life into your
sales letter...

     1) Write your sales letter with an individual in mind.
Go ahead and pick out someone, a real person to write your
sales letter to.  Doesn't matter if it is grandma or your
next door neighbor or your cat.  Write your sales letter
just like you are writing it to them personally.  Why?
Because when your potential customer reads it, it will
seem personal, almost like you wrote it with them in mind.
Too often, sales letters are written as if they were going
to be read to an audience rather than one person.  Keep your
sales letters personal, because one person at a time is
going to read them.

     2) Use an illustration to get your point across.  In my
sales letters I have told stories about my car stalling on
the side of the road to illustrate the idea that we must
constantly add the fuel of advertising to keep our
businesses running. I have compared the hype of easily
making millions online to the chances of me riding bareback
across Montana on a grizzly bear.  Leads have read of how
getting to the top of an oak tree relates to aggressively
marketing online. People love a good story that pounds home
a solid message.  Tell stories that illustrate a point you
are trying to make.  Emphasize a benefit by sharing an
account from the "real world."  It effectively creates
interest and further establishes the point.

     3) Create an interest in the reader from the very first
line.  Your first line of the sales letter should
immediately create a desire in the reader to want to know
more.  Carefully craft your first
line.  If you can immediately get them wanting to know more,
you've got a winner.

     4) Use bullets. People spend a lot of time reading
bulleted lists. In fact, they often reread them over and
over.  Use bulleted lists to stress the benefits of your
product or service, to spell out exactly what is included in
your offer.  Use an extra space in between each bullet to
really highlight each line and create a sense of more length
to the list.

     5) Launch into a bullet list immediately.  Shortly
after your opening line, immediately give the reader a
bullet list of benefits to absorb.  Hit them with your best
shot.  Pull out the big guns and stress "just a few of" the
most important things the reader will discover.  By offering
a killer list early in your sales letter, you will
automatically create a desire in the reader to continue
through your ad copy.  After all, if they are already
interested after the first list of benefits, they will
certainly be open to finding out even more reasons why your
product or service will aid them.

     6) Just let it all flow out.  Write down everything
that enters your mind as you are writing your sales letter.
You can edit it later.  If you just sit and start writing
everything you know about your product or service and how it
will benefit your customer, you will be amazed at how much
information floods your mind.  Write it ALL down.  Then read
through it - you'll be able to add a lot more detail to
many of the points.  Edit it after you have exhausted all of your
ideas.

     7) Make your sales letter personal.  Make sure that the
words "you" and "your" are at least 4:1 over "I" and "my."
Your ad copy must be written about YOUR CUSTOMER not
yourself.  I'm not sure how the old advertising adage goes,
but it's something like this, "I don't care a thing about
your lawn mower, I just care about my lawn."  Leads aren't
interested in you or your products, they are interested in
themselves and their wants and needs.  When you are finished
with your sales letter and have uploaded it to a test
webpage, run a check at http://www.keywordcount.com and see
what the ratio between "you" and "your" versus references to
"I," "me," "my," etc.  It's a free service.  Make sure it's
at least 4:1 in favor of the customer.

     8) Write like you speak.  Forget all of those rules
that your grammar teacher taught you.  Write your sales
letters in everyday language, just like you would talk in
person.  Don't be afraid to begin sentences with "And" or
"Because."  Don't worry about ending a sentence with a
preposition.  Write like you speak. Your sales letter isn't
the great American novel, so don't write it like you are
Ernest Hemingway.

     9) Use short paragraphs consisting of 2-4 sentences
each.  Long copy works...but long paragraphs do not.  Use
short paragraphs that lead into the next paragraph. Don't be
afraid to use short sentences.  Like this one.  Or this.
See what I mean?  Shorter paragraphs keep the interest of the
reader. Longer paragraphs cause eye strain and often force
the reader to get distracted.

     10)  Stress the benefits, not the features.  Again,
readers want the burning question answered, "What's in it
for  me?"  What need is it going to meet? What want is it
going to fill?  How is your product or service going to be
of value or benefit to the reader?  Spell it out.  Don't
focus on the features of your product or service , but
rather how those features will add value to the life of your
reader. For example:  If you are selling automobile tires,
you may very well have the largest assortment of tires in
the world, but who cares? I don't care about your selection.
But, I do care about keeping my 3-month-old baby girl safe
while we are travelling.  So, instead of focusing on your
selection, you focus on the fact that my baby girl can be
kept safe because you have a tire that will fit my car.
You're not selling tires, you're selling safety for my
family.  Stress the benefits, not the features.

     11) Keep the reader interested.  Some sales letters
read like they are a manual trying to explain to me how I
can perform some complicated surgery on my wife. They are
filled with words and phrases that I need a dictionary to
understand.  Unless you are writing to a very targeted
audience, avoid using technical language that many readers
might not understand. Keep it simple, using words, language
and information that are easy to understand and follow.

     12) Target your sales letter.  When you are finished
with your final draft of the sales letter, target it to a
specific audience.  For example: If you are selling a "work
at home" product, then rewrite the sales letter by adding
words in the headlines and ad copy that are targeted towards
women who are homemakers.  Then, rewrite the same sales
letter and target it to college students.  Write another
letter targeting senior citizens.  Still another could be
written to high school teachers wanting to earn extra income
during summer vacation.  The possibilities are endless.

      All you need to do is add a few words here and there
in your ad copy to make it appear that your product or
service is specifically designed for a target audience.
"Work only 5 hours a week," would become "College Students,
work only 5 hours a week."  Your sales letter is now
targeted. Upload all of the sales letters to separate pages
on your website (you could easily target 100's of groups).

     Then, simply advertise the targeted pages in targeted
mediums.  You could advertise the "College Students" page in
a campus ezine.  The "Senior Citizens" page could be
advertised at a retirement community message board.

     By creating these targeted sales letters, you can
literally open up dozens of new groups to sell your
existing product to.  And, in their eyes, it looks like the
product was a match made for them.

      13) Make your ad copy easy to follow.  Use short
sentences and paragraphs. Break up the sales letter with
attention grabbing headlines that lead into the next
paragraph.  One thing that I have always found to work very
well in sales letters...

     ...is to use a pause like this.

     Start the sentence on one line, leaving the reader
wanting to know more, and then finishing up on the next
line.  Also, if you are going to use a sales letter that
continues on several different pages of your website, use a
catchy hook line at the end of each page to keep them
clicking.  "Let's get you started down the road to success,
shall we?  CLICK HERE to continue."

     14) Use similes and metaphors for effect.  When the
customer purchases your product, they will generate "a flood
of traffic that would make Noah start building another
ark."
If they do not order today, then they will "feel like a cat
that let the mouse get away."  Use words to create a picture
in the readers' mind.  When you think of Superman, what
comes to mind?  Immediately, we remember that he is "faster
than a speeding bullet."  "More powerful than a locomotive."
"Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound." See how
word pictures stick in our minds?

     15) Focus on one product or service.  Don't try to sell
your customer multiple products at the same time. It only
confuses the reader.  Keep your ad copy directed at one
specific product or service.  Then, use other products and
services as back-end products.

    Copyright © 2000 Jimmy D. Brown. All rights reserved
worldwide. Jimmy D. Brown is helping average people get out
of the rat-race and earn a full-time living online.  For
more details on firing your boss and creating your own
internet wealth, visit us right now at:

http://www.roibot.com/w.cgi?R18328_privatevault

The second part of this article will be in next week's newsletter, but if you can't wait that long to start writing powerful sales letters that work, here's a helping hand.

If inexperience is standing in the way of you starting your own Internet business, here's a comprehensive guide to get you started!

Here's a great tip on how to get things done:

"There are three ways to get something done; do it yourself, hire someone, or forbid your kids to do it."

Chuckle ... tell me about it!

Quick Tip

The Secret Behind Million-Dollar Ads
by David Garfinkel

Want a little secret to turn your advertising into an
irresistible magnet for customers?

Dale Carnegie knew the secret, and that's one reason his book
"How to Win Friends and Influence People" has sold more than 15
million copies.  In fact, British Airways recently named it, "The
Business Book of the 20th Century."

It's a great book.  But if Dale had titled it "How to Remember
People's Names and Curb Your Incessant Urge to Argue," do you
think it would have sold as well?  Probably not.  There's great
power in good titles.

What you may not realize is the words "How to Win Friends and
Influence People" are not only the title of the book.  Those
words were also the headline of a mail-order ad, which sold the
book.  The ad ran successfully for many years and sold hundreds
of thousands of copies.

So what does this have to do with turning your advertising into
an irresistible customer magnet?

Here's what.  Behind the title and headline is a "secret code"
that makes it powerful.  Dale knew it.  Great advertising
copywriters know it.  And now, you're going to know it, too.

The "secret code" is actually a generic formula that gets
attention and creates desire in your prospect's mind.  Every
winning headline has a unique generic formula hidden inside.
Here's the formula in Dale Carnegie's book title and headline:

How to _____ and _____.

Let's see the formula at work.  Say you are an executive
Recruiter, and you help companies find new executives.  In
reality, your biggest problem is finding the executive
candidates in the first place.  So, to increase your group of
candidates, you decide to run an ad in your local business
journal.  Here's how you could use this formula to write a
headline for your ad:

How to Get a Better Job and Make More Money

.and right away anyone who's even a little interested would read
your ad.  Then, if your copy (text) is even halfway decent,
you'd get plenty of calls.

Or, let's say you run a martial arts school.  Here's how you
could apply the formula in an advertising headline to get you
new students:

How to Stay Fit and Protect Yourself

Do you see how powerful that is?  You've just zeroed-in on
people who are likely to be interested in learning martial arts.

The brutal reality of advertising:  An ad with a good headline,
and even mediocre copy, will get you a response and generate
sales.  But with a poor headline, even the most brilliant copy
will get you little or no response.  Why?  Because without a
good headline to get their attention, most people won't read any
further.

The good news is, once you have identified a good headline that
works in one industry or market, you can adapt it (like we did
with the Dale Carnegie headline, above) for your own business.
Great headlines work as subject lines in emails, titles on Web
pages, and of course as headlines in print ads and sales
letters.  Great headlines will literally transform your sales.

How does this work in today's economy?

Recently a client asked me to help him introduce a new service
to Internet Service Providers.  (Note: To understand what you
are about to read, you should know that ISPs call their
suppliers "backbone providers.")  I wrote a direct mail letter
and my client sent it out to ISPs.  Because my client was
revealing new information his prospects hadn't heard before, we
used the following "teaser headline" on the front of the
envelope:

What Your Backbone Provider Isn't Telling You

Was this an entirely original headline?  No.  I had seen a
similar "teaser headline" on a successful mailing to promote an
investment newsletter:

What Your Broker Isn't Telling You About High-Tech Stocks

So I merely identified the "secret code" in the original winning
headline, and applied it to my client's market, ISPs.

The response to the mailing was overwhelming!  Nearly 10% of the
entire ISP industry responded to our letter -- and my client has
added eight figures of new annual revenues as a result of the
business that developed.

I'm telling you this not to brag, but to point out the awesome
power of good headlines.  While many people spend hours and
hours trying to come up with "the perfect headline" for their
ads, there is an easier way.  Find proven headlines that already
work for another business in another industry, and adapt them to
your business. 

Then prepare for a flood of new customers! Click for more:

http://www.roibot.com/r_hl.cgi?R390_hltext

======================

David Garfinkel has been described as, "the world's greatest
copywriting coach."  He's a successful results oriented
copywriter and the author of Advertising Headlines That Make You
Rich, which shows you exactly how to adapt proven money-making
headlines to your business.
http://www.roibot.com/r_hl.cgi?R390_hltext

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