“5 Fast And Easy Ways To Make
Sure Your Sales Copy Gets Read!”
by Craig Garber
You know, I always say sending someone a sales letter is like crashing a party.
And when you crash a party, you've got about 5 minutes to convince your host why they should let you stay, instead of tossing you straight out the front door.
One way you can appeal to the host of the party, without actually "doing" anything... is by "looking good".
Let's face it, if you're attractive and you present well, people go out of their way to accomodate you a lot more than when you look like you just woke up from a night out, right?
Well... this same concept applies to your sales letters: If they look good... if they're easy on they eyes... and if they're "attractive"... your prospect's going to be significantly more inclined to listen to what you have to say in that letter.
But if your sales letters look like those incredibly confusing property tax bills your local government sends you... or if they look like the paper version of a used car salesman... you can bet your next month's mortgage payment...
Your Letter's Going To Hit The Back Of
Your Prospect's Trash Bin, Almost... Immediately!
So without any further ado, today I'm going to show you 5 fast and easy ways you can make sure your sales letters look more like something off the cover of GQ magazine... and less like some pre-formatted insensitive sales letter template, like 99% of all the garbage you find inside your mail box looks like.
1. Use wide, clean margins!
Listen, I know you want to jam as much as you can into your sales letters, but don't do this at the expense of alienating your prospects because your margins are too close to the edge of your papers.
When there's no "white space" in your sales letter, your prospect feels overwhelmed, the same way you're feeling when you look at your desk and there's no "desk space" because it's all cluttered with papers... books... magazines... unopened mail... and what-not.
I always use at LEAST a 1 inch margin on the left and right sides, and on top. My bottom margins usually go no lower than a half inch.
2. Use Serif Fonts
Studies show serif fonts -- fonts with edges -- make reading much much easier and less strenuous on the eyes.
That's why newspapers and magazines use these fonts.
Now I know you may be thinking, you've seen online studies that show arial fonts (like this) are easier to read online, and this may be true in small doses, like in menu headings... category titles... or sub-headings.
But if you're writing a full-blown long-form sales letter, believe me... using a font with a serif, is much easier for you to digest.
Like this:
- Georgia
- Times New Roman, or
- Courier 10 (click here to read "How To Sell To Howard Stern... Oprah Winfrey... And...
Paul McCartney!” and to download this font)
For offline sales letters, I usually use Times New Roman for my headlines and actual text, and Courier 10 for testimonials and lift letters (click here for samples), or... if I'm sending the letter to an older marketplace and I want to make sure visual impairment doesn't affect response.
3. Use nice clean white paper!
Unless you're going for a certain "upper-crust" feel, don't use anything too thick (more than 20 pound weight) and don't use any fancy colored paper either.
You want your prospects to feel as "comfy" as possible, as if they were reading a letter from an old friend.
And your old friend isn't going to send you a computer-generated or typewritten letter on flashy paper or pastel-colored paper, are they?
So make sure you don't do this to your prospects either.
4. Make Your Headline Stand Out!
If you're smart enough to put a headline on your sales letter (and if you're not, don't bother sending your letter out at all), make sure you don't go and waste all that time and effort you went to, by making your headline...
Too Small To Get Noticed!
You want to make your headline BOLD... you want to use first caps (start each and every word with a capital letter)... and you want to put your headline in quotes.
Also, you want to use at least an 18 to 20 point font, or maybe even larger if you can.
Doing each of these things will boost your response.
Like this:
“How To Play Killer Lead Guitar
Like Jimi Hendrix... In 31
Days Or Less!”
(By-the-way, I just bought one of my sons a guitar, so if you know where I can buy this course... and if the results are guaranteed... please let me know.)
Here's a headline I'd like to test one time. It voilates the "first caps" rule, but I'd bet it would do well:
“If you give me 10 minutes a day... I'll show you how to completely eliminate back pain -- but only if you can answer "Yes!" to each of the following questions!”
And lastly...
5. Put A Page Number At The Bottom Of Each Page!
This way, if the pages that make up your sales letter get torn apart, you don't have to worry about your prospect getting lost, or wondering where to go... or where they left off.
Also, at the bottom of each page, along the right-hand edge of your footer, make sure you put something like "Please turn to next page"... or "next page please"... or... "go to page 7".
Why do you need to do this?
The answer is simple: If you're not telling your prospect what to do... and if you're not continuing to "grease the slide" along the way, making it easier for them to get through your entire sales letter as smoothly as possible... your prospect simply won't do it on their own.
And that's just too much of a risk to
take...
when you're trying to sell something!
Remember, they're going to be distracted and preoccupied with all the other things going on in their lives at the time, so keep them moving along in your letter, as best you can.
Look at it this way: Doing any single one of these things, in and of itself, may only add "this" much value.
But doing ALL of them...
Goes a very long way towards making your
cash register go ka-ching... over-and-over again!
See you next week.
P.S. Just a quick thanks to one of my subscribers, Andrew Cavanagh, who runs www.HelpHomelessKids.com.
Andrew was kind enough to send me some additional information about Name Squeeze pages, which I discussed in last weeks tip, “When Long Form Sales-Copy Doesn't Outpull Short Copy: An Eye-Opening Inside Secret Finally Revealed!”
And if you haven 't already done so, go ahead and click here right now to sign up for my FREE Tip Of The Week -- it's the Number One Direct-Response Marketing And Copywriting Newsletter for independent business-owners.
Any comments?
Send them to me by scooting over to the contact form on my "Here's How To Contact Craig" page, and maybe I'll publish them -- I appreciate your feedback!
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| “Craig Garber is America's top direct-response copywriter. Join the ranks of Garber's swelling list of global VIP's who subscribe to his unconventional weekly marketing moments, and discover how to dramatically boost your sales and improve the response to your sales copy, on his website at http://www.kingofcopy.com. Copyright © Craig Garber. All rights reserved.” |