Sales Letter

When you have finished compiling your ebook or have a product ready to sell, you will need to build a site or webpage to promote it to potential customers. This usually takes the form of a one page sales letter. You've probably seen many of these if you've been browsing the internet for any length of time, but if not just visit Clickbank who literally have thousands of these information products, and you will see the sales letter for each of these products. Look at the top sellers in each category and make a note of the techniques they use as they are obviously working.

From my experience there are several common features that every successful sales letter must have. These are listed below:

1. Compelling headline.

This is one of the most important aspects of your sales letter. It must describe the major benefit of your product and compel visitors to read your letter. An ineffective headline will often result in visitors leaving your site almost immediately.

2. Good sales copy.

The actual text should be in a font that's easily read by all visitors, and should fit entirely on the page, without requiring the reader to scroll left and right. You should also split your letter into sections, each with their own sub-heading. These sections should include short paragraphs and/or lots of bullet points listing the main features of your product. This will help keep your reader's attention. There's nothing more off-putting, from a reader's point of view, than seeing big blocks of text that you have to read. Every single line should compel your reader to read on and get to the end of the letter.

3. Keep it simple.

Don't fill your page with fancy graphics or animations, or audio recordings. Remember that not everyone has a high-speed internet connection, and for these people these features will cause your site to load extremely slowly on their browsers and most will simply leave your site straight away.

4. Testimonials.

Include at least two testimonials on your main sales page. These will add some credibility to your product and will boost your sales dramatically. These should be genuine, and ideally from reputable figures. Ask a few people online that you know or people with similar sites to review your product. Give them your product for free if it helps and then offer to include their testimonial including a free link to their site on your sales page.  

5. Include the price.

It really annoys me when I read a sales letter, extolling the virtues of a particular product, yet there's no mention of the price. You can only see how much it costs by clicking on the order now button. This always gives me the impression that the seller is afraid to give the price in case it will scare people off. I think the opposite is true and in a lot of cases readers are encouraged by a slighter higher price because they figure your product must be good quality for you to be charging so much.

6. Extra bonuses.

Don't go mad here, three or four extra bonuses are plenty. Any more than this and it looks like you're trying to compensate for the poor quality of your product. Even if they are just free bonuses with giveaway rights, make sure they are of a decent quality and relevant to what you are selling.

7. Call to action.

Encourage your visitor to buy now and not risk them considering buying your product at a later date, and subsequently forgetting all about it. Say something like "Buy now, only xx left!" or sell a certain number at a special introductory price and tell your visitors that this price will go up on a certain date.

8. Guarantee.

You should always include a money-back guarantee and the longer the better. Avoid short guarantees like a 14 day guarantee for example. If anything you'll probably get more returns this way as people will use or read your product straight away because they know they only have a short period to try your product, and if it's not 100% to their satisfaction they will return it. With a longer guarantee people will take longer to use your product as they know they have a long guarantee period and you should get less returns. XSitePro who I can thoroughly recommend (all of my sites, including this one, are created using their software) offer a 365 day guarantee at the time of writing because they are so confident in their own product. 

9. Include your contact information.

The more information you include about yourself the better. There are a lot of scammers on the net, and people will want to know they are buying from a genuine person or company. At the very least you should include your name and email address, but I recommend also including a photo of yourself and a phone number and address. This will add credibility to your product.

10. Collect email addresses.

This will allow you to follow with email letters at a later date, increasing the chances of you making a sale. Offer a free bonus or report, for example, related to your product in return for their name and email address. This should be included somewhere on your sales letter, and possibly on an exit pop-up as well.