Ask Melvin Ng

Here are more copywriting tips you can use.

• Reduce the width of the sales letter so that the focus of the customer will be on the sales letter or else their eyes will be running all over the place.

• Try not to include any other links in the sales letter because you want the prospect to click on the most important link of all – the buy now link.

• Include the disclaimer or terms and conditions where appropriate.

Here is a screenshot on how a typical sales letter would look like on a browser.

This is an example of a headline designed to grab the attention of the prospects.

Remember that the headline is the most important part of a sales letter. It is even more important than the body of the sales letter.

By just changing a few words at the sales letter, you can increase your sales by a significant amount.

Now, I’ll put up another sample of the body of the sales letter:

In the body section of the sales letter, most copywriters talk about the problem the prospect is facing and later on the benefits of the stuff you are selling. (Remember that you are focusing on the cure, not the medicine)

Towards the end of the sales page, you will need to emphasize the reasons why the customer must BUY NOW.

Customers and prospects are lazy by nature. They will put off something as long as possible especially when it comes to paying for something.

So you have to give them a compelling reason to buy now (such as a limited time offer or a fast action bonus).

So the format of the sales letter as a summary is this:

• Beginning (headline)
• Middle (body)
• End (buy now)

Writing a sales letter is more of an art than a science. You really got to know your target market, what they are thinking when they read your sales letter and how to lead them to read line by line.

 

Copywriting is the way to go because most Internet marketing niches require you to sell something in order to make money.

If you can master the art of writing powerful sales letters, we guarantee that your services as a copywriter will be in demand and you can charge thousands of dollars for writing a well-written sales letter.

If you have got what it takes to write a compelling sales letter, to take hold of readers with an attention grabbing headline, tell compelling stories to get prospects to read all the way to the end and to engage the customers in such a way that they will rush to your virtual doorstep, credit card in hand the this is the best route for you!

Typically there are a few components to writing an effective sales letter. They consist of three main focal points – problem specification, problem agitation and the solution to the problem.

Here is a sample format you can use.

INSERT YOUR HEADLINE HERE

INSERT YOUR SUB-HEADLINE HERE

From: (Your name)

Date: (Use a script to print today’s date)

Tell your prospect who you are and tell a short story about yourself.

As you go on, tell them about the problem they are facing. Address them in such a way that they feel that you are relating to them (hey, this guy’s talking about ME!). Elaborate more and more about the problem and agitate the problem so they feel that they have to do something about it.

INTRODUCE THE PRODUCT HERE

Name of the Product and Picture

Explain in terms of benefits and not features. Most people make the mistake of telling the prospect a list of things the product can do but they forget to focus on the needs of the prospect.

Perry Marshall, one of the top copywriters teaches us to, “Focus on the itch, not the scratch”

Testimonials

Here, is the section for testimonials where you can include so you can further convince the prospect.

Guarantee

Make sure you include a guarantee or if there isn’t a money back guarantee, be sure to justify why you don’t have a guarantee. Either way, guarantees are essential when trying to sell something.

BUY NOW!

Make sure you convince the prospect to take action and buy from you. This is very important because people are lazy by nature and will procrastinate from acting if they have the chance too.

P.S Remember to include a couple of post scripts because believe it or not, sometimes this line may strongly influence the closing factor.

Remember, there is no rule as to how long a sales letter can be, it can be as long as you want. But generally, long sales letters do much better than short sales letters.

Use common fonts and not uncommon fonts because not all the computers can read uncommon fonts. Use fonts like Arial, Verdana, Georgia, or Tahoma. Use bold letters and capitals strategically. Underlines can be used as well but it can get confused with hyperlinks.

 

Pay per click is perhaps the best advertising medium available for Internet-based businesses and for small businesses in general. It allows them to carefully cut the advertising fat by choosing exactly what they will pay for and what they won’t.

They not only get to select the keywords they want to bid on, but they only pay when someone actually clicks through one of those ads and is directed to their site. This is a far cry from paying for advertising on a billboard, which might generate a lot of “impressions,” but few actions.

Unfortunately, though, advertising through PPC programs, such as Google’s Adwords, is no piece of cake – despite what many gurus may tell you during a sales pitch. In fact, it may be extremely hard or even impossible to get a reasonable return on your investment in certain niches using pay per click advertising.

However, if you keep a few basic principles in mind, earning an excellent ROI on your PPC advertising investment is nearly guaranteed. So where do you start? Arguably, the most important part of creating a successful PPC advertising campaign is writing an ad that will increase your click through rate (CTR), so this is a good place to start.

Writing an ad that commands a high ROI can be broken down into the following steps:

1. Pick the right keywords for the ad. While this seems like it has nothing to do with writing the ad, it actually is the first and most important step. If you want your ad to have a high click through rate, it must be narrowly focused around a set of keyphrases that all have the same root keyword in common. This will allow you to repeat that root keyword 1-3 times throughout the ad. Whenever someone searches for one of those keywords and your ad pops up, the root will appear in bold, since it is part of the keyword they searched for. This will make it stick out clearly, drawing them to click on it.

1. Avoid fancy stuff in the headline. Here, all you want is a simple description of the product or service offered: “Grand Piano for Sale.” Also, remember to include that root keyword in the headline to make it stick out more. People need to immediately see whether or not your ad is relevant. And the best way to communicate that is to say exactly what you’re selling.

1. Communicate the best feature associated with your product on the first line of your ad (below the headline) or clarify exactly what is you are selling. For example, in the “grand piano” ad above, you could ad something like the following: “Choose Between 700 Grand Pianos” or “Pay Only $500 for Your Grand Piano.”

1. Last, in your second line, communicate a benefit associated with your product. Here, rather than saying something physical about your store or product, you will explain what the product can do for the person. The product might “Save You Hundreds” or “Teach You How to Make Millions.” Make sure it is compelling and relevant. Ask yourself (and possibly a friend) whether or not this is something that would make you take action.

And there you have it: a 4-step blueprint for creating an “attention-grabbing” PPC advertisement. Once you put your first ad up and allow it to rotate, you will then want to start testing competing ads.

The best way to do this is to alter one part of the ad at a time. For instance, start off by altering your headline until you get a better CTR. After that, work on your first line – and so on. After a few weeks of working out changes, you should have an effective, powerful ad.

 

Here is another example that copywriters can focus on – creating squeeze pages.

Squeeze pages are landing pages or lead capture pages designed to solicit or capture opt-in E-mail addresses from subscribers. Normally, the site owner offers something in return for the subscribers’ E-mail addresses.

In Internet marketing, most marketers borrow copywriting techniques from offline direct response marketing. The structure of the squeeze page has a headline, bullets that list the benefits, a teaser copy, deadlines combined with the scarcity factor, testimonials, and even audio and videos.

A sample squeeze page would look something like this.

Remember that a squeeze pages are normally much, MUCH shorter than a sales copy.

You are not selling a product on the sales page. You are just capturing an E-mail address so you can follow up with your prospect over a period of time.

Squeeze pages go hand in hand with autoresponders because of the follow up element.