InternetBusinessManual.com - Step 7: How To Write Effective Ad Copy

c) Open with a problem or need your prospect has, which your product can solve.

d) Get to the other benefits of your product that meet your prospect’s needs, listing in order of importance.

e) Give proof of your claims (testimonials, statistics, pictures).

f) Make a hard-to-refuse offer (bonuses go here).

g) Give a guarantee.

h) Drive your prospect to act (create urgency).

i) Ask for the order.

j) Make clear how to order.

k) Add a P.S.

This is the basic structure of a great direct sales letter. The following steps will show you all you need to know to actually create an order-pulling sales letter.

1) Sell what you product will do FOR people, rather than sell the product. In other words, benefits sell, not features. You need to put yourself in your customers' shoes and try to understand what benefits would get them excited about your product. You need to determine what can your product provide for them that they absolutely have to have?

Determine first the positive features about your product. Get a blank piece of paper and list every feature.

Then take those features and find the benefits of those features.

For instance, a feature of a room air conditioner could be a remote control. The benefit is the convenience of shutting it off without have to get out from under the bed covers.

If you were going to put this in writing you might write, “No more freezing walks to shut off the ac thanks to the remote control.”

Describe the benefit first, then the feature, because people are more interested in what a product can do for them than what it has. Then, arrange in a list these benefits in order of importance, numbering them from the top at number 1, down to the last.

You will make the greatest sales, however, if you make people believe they need your product.

How do you do this?

By showing your prospect how they will be with your product and without your product. Make it clear they will be missing out on some tremendous benefits for themselves if they don’t buy your product, and you will get orders.

2) List the top benefit as your headline. This is the first thing they see, and on this alone will they decide whether to read more or not, that’s how important your headline is.

Your headline needs to attract the type of person you want and make them want to stay long enough at your site to be sold.

A lot of people only want to know what’s in it for them, and how much, and they’ll skip over everything in-between. They’ll buy if your benefits and price are right, but you don’t have too much of their time to convince them. So you have to create immediate attention with a powerful headline that peaks them with enough curiosity to keep reading.

Here are a few attention-grabbing headlines:

This Tape is Banned—Call and Find Out Why

You’re Going To Kick Yourself If You Don’t Look Into This RIGHT NOW!

Walk While You Sit

Only Clean Windows Once A Year

Zip Away Unwanted Inches

Dead Doctors Don’t Lie

Are Rich People Smarter Than You?...or do they just know something you don’t?

3) Use the power of bullets. Good sales letters use lots and lots of bullet pointed lists telling the prospect what benefits they will get when they buy. Benefits presented in this powerful method help to excite your readers about your product and get them begging to buy.

So it is important that you take your time to write down as many benefits about your product that you can think of. The higher the price of your product, the more benefits you should list.

People are only interested in what your product will do for them. Putting these benefits in a bulleted list is a proven sales generator. And the longer your list of concrete, specific benefits, the more excited your reader will become over all they will be getting.