The Long Sales Letter: Should You Use
it In Your Advertising?
By Dina
Giolitto
If you're a web
marketer and you've done your homework, you've probably
come across the Long
Sales Letter in your internet travels. Top web marketing
experts like Yanik Silver, "The Copy Doctor" Michel
Fortin and countless others use it to pitch their comprehensive
instructional kits. You may have even made a purchase based
on what you read in one of these letters.
Powerfully persuasive, the Long
Sales Letter employs carefully targeted copy to draw the
reader in, emotionally identify with them, create a need for
the product, and incite them to make an immediate purchase.
The Long Sales Letter, in all its verbosity and sensationalism,
gleams with promise. It appears the surefire way to make sales
come pouring in.
But is it? Should you fork your hard-earned
cash over to a copywriter who will create a hypnotic and riveting
sales letter that goes on for pages and pages hyping your
product? Should you grab for your credit card and buy one
of those comprehensive teaching packets that tells you everything
you ever wanted to know about writing a Long
Sales Letter yourself?
Answers often come in the form of questions.
Here are some questions I typically ask my clients:
What are you selling, and how much does it
cost?
Does the product you offer on your website
fulfill immediate short-term needs?
Or is it something that might help someone
reach a long-term goal?
Items that satisfy immediate yearnings for
a low price don't require a rousing speech to attract buyers.
What these products do require is visibility. How funny would
it be to receive a letter in the mail from the CEO of Bubble
Yum, urging you to buy his product! Totally unnecessary; Bubble
Yum does a fine job of selling itself on the "impulse
buy" rack by the supermarket check-out. Music CDs and
clothing are things that don't cost huge amounts of money,
and virtually sell themselves. Your customer will know in
a matter of seconds whether they want what you have. In such
a case, skip the letter. Instead, showcase these items in
a high-traffic area where they will be seen.
Who are you marketing to?
I did some work recently for an e-greeting
company who had me writing a long and persuasive letter. I
posed the question: "How much do we really need to convince
people to buy these e-greetings? Either people will like them,
or they won't." My client in turn made a good point:
the sales letter wasn't needed to tout the actual product
on the site. But it would certainly come in handy for potential
affiliates and promoters. The sales
letter was a handy tool that depicted us as an intelligent
group of people with a knack for selling - and that could
very well be the driving decision for those who might want
to represent us. So yes, a sales letter may actually work
to your benefit, depending on the audience you plan to address.
Would your product or service be considered
'an investment?'
An investment is a possession acquired for
future return or benefit. Items that offer long-term benefits
cost more money. They promise a brighter tomorrow; an investment
for the future. They also require more convincing to get people
to buy them. I recently met a career coach who features a
goal achievement system, in the form of an e-book, for purchase
on her website. Her e-book is moderately priced for its category,
and well-written in my opinion. Would I advise her to use
a sales letter to pitch the e-book? Yes, but I'd make the
letter an overview of her entire service offering and not
just about the e-book.
The trick is to convince people that a career
coach will help them reach their personal and professional
goals, which in turn will do wonders for their career, bolster
their confidence and improve their quality of life. If you
can sell them on this broad concept, then they'd likely sign
up for career coaching sessions, and at the very least purchase
a goal achievement system e-book. With your sales
letter, you can build a case for maximum investment, and
at the very minumum, make a few supplemental bucks with a
supporting product.
How much information can you fill your letter
with?
As much as you have to build a solid argument.
Start by openly addressing the customer's frustrations and
fears. "Are you tired of throwing away money on lukewarm
ads that just don't sell?" The reader is hard-pressed
to disagree. Next comes the aspirations; the hope for a better
tomorrow: "Imagine an ad campaign that can triple your
sales at a minimal cost to your business!"
Pose your company as having solution; the
secret key, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. "Watch
your sales rate explode!" "Discover the secrets
that successful marketers know!" They're not really secrets
and nothing is literally going to explode, but such language
creates a sense of excitement and urgency. Build your credibility
with testimonials and success
stories. "Bob Luken had this to say about our system:"
(list testimonial). "Marla Thompson lost 49 pounds in
three months thanks to our weight loss program!"
Finally comes the call to action: "Buy
now, and get on the path to a more properous tomorrow!"
"Click here to start saving immediately!" A word
to the wise: once you make your point, wrap it up. Beware
the hypnotic effects of repeated ideas and words, and endless
streams of mind-numbing copy. Not everyone succumbs to such
trickery! I speak for myself when I say that after four or
so paragraphs, the reader is likely losing interest. At this
point, one of two things may happen. They will scroll all
the way to the end and click BUY NOW, or they will grow disgusted
and leave your website.
How strong of a message do you require?
The flashy, all-I-need-now-is-a-megaphone
Sales Letter doesn't
work for everybody. Take the hospitality industry, for example,
which calls for a bit more subtlety and finesse. You don't
want to appear frenzied or desperate to make the sale, or
you may scare away the customer. Strong language can do just
that. Some Lengthy Sales Letters use what I consider marketing
brainwashing tactics. The brainwashing comes when you start
repeating what you've already said, but in a slightly different
way. Or when you follow the formula I've outlined in the previous
paragraph, but do it no less than 12 times in the body of
your letter. This is a form of "loud" advertising
in itself!
If you ask yourself the right questions,
you'll get a better idea for whether a Long
Sales Letter, or any other type of advertising strategy
you might have learned about, is the best approach for your
own company. Be honest with yourself during the questioning
process. It also helps to "put your feet in the consumer's
shoes." In my ten years as an advertiser, one thing rings
true as far as I can see: the more aggressively you push your
products and the "busier" the ads, the more lowbrow
or "low-confidence" consumer you'll attract. As
a general rule, when creating ads, less is more. So if you
have a good point to make, make it in the best way you can,
but don't go to extremes. If your ads are always long-winded,
bold and frantic, you'll attract plenty of attention. But
it may not be the kind of attention you want.
Copyright 2005 Dina Giolitto, Wordfeeder.com
Copywriting and Marketing. All rights reserved.
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