A Quick Guide to Writing Sales Letters

| by Paula Brett |

Sales letters are arguably the most important part of selling your products and services. You can spend the money to have someone else write your sales letter for you, or you can write it yourself.

If you write it yourself then you want to follow what is commonly known as “AIDA”. AIDA is an acronym for attention, interest, desire, and action. This is how you want to structure your sales letter.

Attention
The main goal you want to accomplish at the beginning of the letter is to hook the reader. You want to capture the potential customer’s attention so that the customer keeps reading. That is your one main goal.

The best way to do this is to take the biggest benefit of what you’re selling and highlight it. You want to capture the reader by using a pre-header, a header, and then a sub-header. If you don’t hook the reader by the end of the sub-header then you can forget about anyone buying your product or services.

Interest
After you initially hook the readers and capture their attention, the next goal you need to achieve is to make the readers interested. You need to pull them into what you’re saying.

Often you can do this by tossing out an interesting detail but not explaining it right away. For example, you can write something like “I’m about to tell you how you can make $100 before you go to bed tonight. But first I want to let you know…” That way they’ll keep reading to discover how they can make money.

Desire
Since you’ve accomplished getting the readers’ attention and capturing their interest, next your job is to make them want to buy your product or service. You have to tell them how they will benefit from what you’re selling – how it will improve their life.

Two of people’s biggest buying triggers are greed and safety. So, if possible, you should try to make them think they will be richer or safer if they buy what you’re selling.

Action
Finally, you want the reader to actually buy what you’re selling. So tell them to buy it. Spur them into action. And you want them to buy right then, if possible. So offer them a little something extra (money off, a free report, something) if they buy within a certain
time period.

The Slippery Slide
“The Slippery Slide” is a popular phrase you’ve probably heard. It refers to wanting to get the reader sliding into your sales letter and to the end of it before the reader knows what happened.

This is exactly what you want to happen. You want to grab the reader and lead them quickly down into your sales pitch until they are at the end of the slide wanting to buy.

Writing Copy
It takes many years and a lot of practice to get really good at writing sales copy. The best copywriters have spent many years honing their craft and reading books by famous copywriters. But if you start with the general formula that was laid out in this article, you will have a good start on your own copywriting success.

I hope this article is helpful to you. If you’re interested in learning more about the art of copywriting, you can now get your hands on a fantastic manual by a high-powered copywriter that will show you insider secrets that will get you writing killer copy right away.

It’s written by Lenny Eng and endorsed by some heavy hitters including Dr. Joe Vitale. I recommend you check it out now!

Best wishes

Paula

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