First, at the beginning of the salesletter, you have to capture the attention of your visitors with your headline and subheadline. This is to draw the visitors in with exciting benefits and compel them to continue reading the salesletter.

Next, to generate further Interest in your product, you start talking about the main benefits of your products, and how your products can solve their problems or satisfy their needs. Of course, you need to believe strongly about the benefits of your products, and adopt an enthusiastic tone when writing the salesletter, similarly to how a salesman would convince his prospects to make a purchase.

After which, you need to create even more Desire for your product, by describing your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) further or providing more benefits of your products. This is also where you can add free bonuses and money-back guarantees, to create additional desire for your product.

Lastly, after you’ve built up enough value with your product benefits and bonuses, you can then mention the price, ask for the order and give them purchase instructions. Remember – do not mention the price before you’ve built up enough value from the customer’s perspective.

With this understanding of the basic structure of your salesletter, let’s move on to the components of your salesletter.

Attractive Headline/ Subheadline

Your headline determines the success or failure of your business. It’s meant to capture the visitor’s attention and encourage them to continue reading your salesletter. When writing your headlines, bear the following tips in mind:

• Describe your most compelling benefit or promise in your headline. This is actually your Unique Selling Proposition (USP), which tells your visitors exactly why they should buy from you instead from other businesses.
• Include ‘powerful’ words like ‘YOU’, ‘free’, ‘guaranteed’ or ‘save’. Such words are likely to produce a greater impact on the visitor and increase your sales.
• Keep your headline short and sweet, about one to two sentences long. Visitors who scan their eyes over the website quickly are more likely to pay attention to short headlines than headlines close to one paragraph long.

Testimonials

To establish credibility among your visitors, you definitely need testimonials on your website. One of the first questions that a visitor will have is ‘How do I know I can trust this business enough that I can buy from them?’ In the online world, where face-to-face communication is absent, it’s all the more critical that you generate credibility for your business and products.

It’s best to place your testimonials somewhere near the beginning of your salesletter. It’s only after establishing credibility that the visitor will feel convinced enough to read on.

Main Body

The main portion of your salesletter should describe a problem that your prospects face – all the inconveniences the prospects face as a result of not having your product. After you’ve ‘agitated’ the prospects with the problem, you can then provide an overview of your solution (product) and describe how it can solve the prospects’ problems. Include a list of all the benefits of the products, preferably in point form so that prospects can easily scan the list.

An alternative approach is to write a story for your salesletter. This is also an attractive approach because people naturally like reading stories. You can write a story about how you experienced the current problems that your prospects are facing, how much you wanted to solve the problem, and how you went about developing the product to solve the same problem for others as well. After which, you can transition smoothly to the introduction of your product.

Of course, throughout the main body of your salesletter, you should focus more on the benefits of your products than the features. A feature is simply a characteristic of your product, while a benefit is what your product can do to help your prospects. This can mean a world of a difference when it comes to making more sales and increasing your profitability.

Free Bonuses

Closer the end of the salesletter, after you’ve mentioned your benefits and gotten your prospects interested in what you have to offer, you can start piling on the free bonuses to build additional value for your prospects.

Free ebooks usually make good complementary bonuses, because they’re free to create and free to distribute. If your business sells tennis racquets, for example, you can include several free ebooks on tennis lessons, as free bonuses. Remember to tag a price value together with the bonus, like ‘Claim your free tennis ebook worth $17’.

Money-back Guarantee

It’s increasingly common to see money-back guarantees for online businesses. A money-back guarantee communicates the confidence that you have for your products.

It’s important to note that a money-back guarantee almost always increases your response rate – the increase in sales that results from your guarantee outweighs the losses. This is in accordance with a fundamental business principle – a salesletter with an offer always outperforms one without an offer (in this case the money-back guarantee.)

Ordering Instructions

After building on all the benefits, piling on the bonuses and removing the risk with a money-back guarantee, you can then mention the price of your product and ask for the order. Provide clear, compelling instructions on how visitors can place the order, instead of ‘suggesting’ how they can do it.

Bear in mind that you can encourage immediate sales by using the ‘limited-time offer’ or the ‘limited-vacancy offer.’ Mention that the price of the product is on a discount for a limited time only, or that the price will increase after a certain number of products have sold out.

To conclude, if you’re writing a long salesletter for a single product, you need to take the visitor step-by-step through the sales process. Get them hooked on your benefits and lead them smoothly to your ordering page. This is the key to writing a successful and compelling salesletter.