Sales Letters… Direct Response

What exactly is a sales letter? Well, when you want to sell a product or service to someone, you have to first tell them about it in a way that interests them. You need to give them all the details they need. And if you are selling from a web page or by direct mail, then this will usually call for a sales letter. The sales letter has a serious job to do so you need to get it right.

There are a number of things, which might influence a prospect’s decision to buy whatever you’re selling and one of those is the price. Now the thing about price is, it’s not the “be all and end all” of selling. Sure, you can sell some products and services on price but then how do you justify this against quality?

Many people know that you almost always get what you pay for, and so if you are asking a low price for a product they might just think it’s rubbish and so not buy at all. The same goes for certain services. So the buyer may approach this conundrum in either of two ways.

If money is not an issue, i.e., the buyer has plenty of it, then he might not worry about the price but will want the best possible quality product or service for his money. But if the buyer is looking for the cheapest possible price, then he’ll be happy to pay bottom dollar. Of course, he’s still likely to complain like hell when he finds out that his purchase is a pile of poo!

Okay, so we copywriters have to create sales letters in order to sell products for our clients, and we do this based on a number of factors. One, of course, is price and one is quality but far and above all else are the benefits that the product or service will provide for the buyer.

It’s the benefits that will ultimately sell the product regardless of price, and that’s because when we buy or are ready to buy, we become totally focused on that product. We develop a kind of tunnel vision, and everywhere we go we see the product or service we want or there are references to it.

At least it always appears that way. What is in fact happening, is we are in buying mode for that particular product or service, and so we become totally absorbed by the thoughts of having it. For example, if you were thinking about buying a new car, you might start to look at the ads in your local newspapers. Then you might go on the internet, and begin visiting car showrooms. Many of them!

Your brain is taking in all this data about cars and you begin to mentally sift through it, making a note of the important facts. You will compare prices, performance and looks. Then you might compare comfort and fuel consumption, then there’s the environmental issue and safety to consider. The more expensive the item the more information you will gather and compare. This is a very emotional time because buying decisions are based on emotions. Copywriters know this and fully exploit it.

This deliberation process is the same, albeit in varying degrees, for all types of major purchases except essential items. This information gathering is then followed by justification. That simply means when you have decided to go ahead and make the purchase, based on the information you have acquired, you must then justify it to yourself. Now that’s where the magic of the skilled copywriter comes to the fore.

You see, the information gathering is mainly concerned with features but the justification is generally based on the benefits. And so the copywriter will write the sales letter with the benefits in mind, and state these right up front. We want to get the reader drooling over the product or service in the quickest possible time, then we can tell them about the features later, which are secondary to the benefits.

We have to create so much desire in the reader to want to buy or rather own the product right there and then. So we reel off all the benefits and then we back this up with a list of features, and then we ask for the sale. This is the call to action. “Buy it now while you can still get all these benefits for such a low price”. Even if the price is sky high, it doesn’t matter. The benefits make it all worthwhile.

This process is known by the acronym AIDA. A – attract Attention. I – get them Interested. D – create Desire. A – call to Action. If you would like an emotional killer sales letter to help sell your products or services, contact me today.