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THE MAGIC BUILDING BLOCKS OF THE PERFECT SALES LETTER

The internet is the most revolutionary commerce tool that we’ve seen in our lifetime. Millions of people spending billions of dollars every day. You can start from your kitchen table, and almost instantly become a global company, simultaneously making business transactions with clients in Boston, Barcelona, and Borneo. It’s easier now, more than ever, to build a business and make a comfortable, even extravagant living.

Piece of cake, right? “If you build it, they will come.” But not quite. Plenty of businesses – especially online businesses – fail. Why?

Here’s where most online marketers fail:

Guess what happens? Nothing!

Most websites are like an Old West ghost town. You can practically see tumbleweeds blowing down the streets.

What went wrong?

Nine times out of ten, they’ve lost sight of the fact that the single most important ingredient to their website is the words.

You can have the coolest spinning, flaming, flashing, morphing graphics on your site and still not sell a dime’s worth of product. The reason? Words sell.

The most boring, black-words-on-white-background sales page will outperform a flashy, colorful site every time... with the right words.

The first place to employ those words is your sales letter. This is the primary selling point of your website. This is where most decisions to buy are made.

The typical sales letter has fifteen basic elements or building blocks. It’s a formula. The 15 blocks fit within the P.A.S.T.O.R. Framework. And if you follow the formula, you will get predictable results. You will sell stuff.

Here’s an outline of the building blocks, explaining how to use them and how they fit inside the P.A.S.T.O.R. Framework

THE 15 BUILDING BLOCKS OF A SALES LETTER

These first few blocks correspond to the “P” in P.A.S.T.O.R. – the Person, Problem, and Pain.

1) Pre-head.

The pre-head is also sometimes referred to as the “eyebrow.” I guess that assumes that you think of a sales letter as a face. Because it’s a sentence fragment usually found at the top left of the sales letter, it may look a bit like an eyebrow. That’s a stretch, but it’s the closest thing to an explanation I’ve found that sounds reasonable.

It might look something like this: “Attention, Pug Owners!”

Now, if you’re the owner of a dog that belongs to the pug group, that’s going to grab your attention quickly.

How do I know? Because I am a proud Pug owner, and I can tell you that anytime I see something that’s directed to Pug owners, it’s got my attention. I want to know: What do you have for me? Help me spend some money on my dog!

That’s how the pre-head works. It is a short sentence fragment designed to grab the reader’s initial attention. It works very well regardless of what your product might be.

If you have a product that’s designed to help people learn to play guitar, the pre-head could simply be: “Attention, guitar students!” Or, if you have a product that’s targeted toward people learning to fly airplanes, it could be: “Attention, student pilots!” Or, if your product is for parents whose children suffer from ADHD, it could be: “Attention, parents of ADHD kids!”

You’re targeting the prime prospect for your message and you’re qualifying him or her. You’re saying, in essence, “Do you belong to this group? If you do, this message is for you. Pay attention!”

2) Headline.

The headline is the “ad for the rest of the ad.” Its job is to make the reader want to keep on reading—specifically, to get him or her to read the next sentence. That’s all your headline has to do.

Studies show that you have about two seconds to grab the attention of people who are reading your copy for the first time. That’s how long it’s going to take them to decide whether or not they’re going to keep on reading. In many cases, they’re going to click the button and they’ll be gone.

So you’ve got to do your job well in the headline and really grab their attention. An example sales letter headline:

“They All Laughed When I Sat Down at the Piano.

But When I Started to Play...”

You may wonder why I keep referring to an “ad.” What exactly do I mean by “ad”? Well, the kinds of websites that we’re writing are websites that sell. Often they’re referred to as a “sales letter” website, and what that means is that it’s written in letter format as if it were a letter on paper. Often it’s on one long, scrolling web page.

This is the primary tool of the online direct response marketer (that’s you!), because it’s been proven to be the most effective tool for the purpose. I refer to that as an ad, and I also refer to an e-mail that’s trying to make a sale as an ad, and I also refer to a Facebook ad as an ad. Whatever copy you’re writing, for the purposes of our discussion in this book, it is an ad.

Each of those items that I just mentioned—the e-mail, the sales letter, Facebook ads—has a headline, so the principles apply, even though the execution may be somewhat different. You can compare this formula to just about any sales letter you encounter online, and you’ll see they all follow it to the letter.

3) Deck Copy.

Some people call this the subhead, but I think that’s inaccurate because we have another block (in our imaginary “stack” of building blocks) that we’re going to call a subhead. So I want to distinguish that from the deck copy, which comes right underneath the headline.

The Deck Copy will be a block of type that is usually in black bold type and set apart from the rest of the text. It comes between the headline and the beginning of the letter. An example of good Deck Copy:

The job of the Deck Copy is to reinforce the impact, and expand on the idea proposed in the headline. It can also be used to arouse more curiosity.

These next few blocks correspond to the “A” and the “S” in P.A.S.T.O.R. – we amplify the pain, and we tell the story of our solution.

4) Lead.

This is the very beginning of the body of the sales letter. This is the part that comes after “Dear Friend.” It can be one paragraph, two, or several. Sometimes it consists of a simple “if, then” statement; sometimes it consists of a story that is intended to persuade you to think in a certain way.

The lead sets the criteria for whom the letter is intended, and what they stand to gain by reading the rest of the copy. Think of the classic lead, which goes something like this:

“If you’ve struggled to lose weight, if you’ve tried every diet imaginable, if you’ve taken every pill, if you’ve tried exercise routines, machines and personal coaches and you still haven’t taken the weight off; then you’re about to read the letter you’ve been waiting for all your life. Here’s why...”

That’s a strong lead. Does it do what we just talked about? Does it set the criteria for the intended reader? Does it tell you what you stand to gain by reading the letter? Apparently it’s going to tell you how to lose the weight even if you’ve tried all this other stuff that never worked.

5) Body.

This is the bulk of your text; most of your sales letter. It also contains all the other elements that we’re about to list. You can almost look at these top four as the main elements of the letter and the remaining parts as sub-elements that fall within the body.

Before we move on with the list, let me say a word or two about how to do the research necessary to write your ad. The first thing I do is a simple Google search on your product, and also on your target market (example: search “pug” as well as “pug owner,” “pug lover,” “pug training,” etc.). Try to form in your mind what your market is looking for and start searching for keywords that they might use. In other words, pretend you’re a Pug owner looking to find something you need or want for your pooch.

Another way to do this research is to think about the generic terms used for the product category that you’re working with, and take those generic terms and combine them with the word forum.

That’s a great way to find places where people are discussing your topic online. You can just lurk, read the threads in the discussion forums, and see what people are talking about. Look for topics that keep coming up over and over again.

If you find there are webinars hosted for the market to which you’re writing copy, get on those calls. Listen to the questions that are asked. If there are “real-world” seminars, go to those seminars and talk to people who are there—not about your product, but about their problems. Especially attend the question-and-answer sessions at real-world seminars. Listen to the questions that people are asking.

My friend Armand Morin—who has built multiple million-dollar brands online—initially built his business by attending seminars. He was at a seminar once, taking notes - but not very many notes. The person next to him asked, “Armand, aren’t you getting much out of this?”

He said, “It’s great! I’m getting a lot out of this!”

His friend said, “But you’re not taking very many notes.”

Armand’s response: “Oh, I’m just writing down the questions that people are asking. That’s how I know what products to create.”

6) Subheads.

These are smaller headlines that separate the major sections of your sales letter. I refer to them as the “bucket brigade” of your copy.

In the olden days before there were automobiles and big red fire trucks, there was the bucket brigade. This was a group of people in a village or town who would run down to the river or the lake and form a line between the water and the burning building. They stood within arm’s reach of one another. The person nearest the water scooped up a bucket of water and handed it to the next person in line, and it would get passed along until it reached the burning building, where the person at the end of the line dumped the bucket of water on the flames. Then the bucket would be returned to the water source to be re-filled and passed back through the line to the fire. That’s how they would put the fire out.

I’d like to take credit for inventing the “bucket brigade” analogy ... but I can’t. I don’t know if David Garfinkel of the World Copywriting Institute is the person who invented it, but I heard it from him first.

Subheads act like your own bucket brigade. They lead your reader through the body of your copy to get the gist of your message. My good friend and copywriter Michel Fortin says there are three things that prospects who read your copy “never do at first” (notice the “at first;” it’s the job of your copy to change that!).

Prospects never read anything at first; they never believe anything at first; and they never buy anything at first.

At first they’re not going to read your letter... they’re going to glance at your headline and decide whether you’re getting any more of their attention.

If you hold their attention, then there are three things they’re going to do next. They’re going to “skim, scroll and scan.” They skim through your letter and see if there’s anything of interest to them. They’re going to scan your subheads to get the gist of your story.

They’re going to scroll down your letter as they skim, and they’re going to scan it for things that they are interested in. If you can capture their attention while they’re doing this, you’ve overcome the first thing they never do. Remember, they never read anything at first.

If, and only if, you’ve captured their attention during this process of “skim, scroll and scan” with your powerful headline and persuasive subheads, they will go back to the top of your letter and begin to read.

Second, people never believe anything at first. So now that they’re reading, the job of your copy becomes to overcome their disbelief and skepticism and tell them the story they wanted to hear from the beginning.

I had a conversation with somebody today, talking about the difference between manipulation and persuasion. In my opinion, manipulation is using tricks to convince people to do things they didn’t want to do in the first place, things that are not in their best interest. Persuasion, on the other hand, is using tactics to persuade people to do something that is in their best interest, and that they wanted to do to start with.

Think about your own experience when you’re online and searching for something... perhaps a copywriting course like my own Copywriting Academy. At first, you’re going to “skim, scroll and scan” the website and decide if this is for you. When you see there are some things that interest you, you stop and begin reading.

What you really want, in this scenario, is to be convinced that this copywriting course will answer your questions and provide you with the ability to make more sales.

That’s what your prospects want as well. That’s the difference between manipulating them and persuading them.

If you can get past the fears that cause them to object to doing what you ask them to do, then you can move them to the next of those three things that people never do at first.

Finally, people never buy anything at first, but if you’ve overcome the first two, overcoming the third is often just a matter of asking. The subheads serve as the bucket brigade that moves that process along.

7) Rapport.

What we mean by rapport is relationship building. People like three kinds of people: one, those who are like themselves; two, those they would like to be; and three, those who like them back. Those are the keys to building rapport. Rapport is building your relationship, a friendly relationship that makes a person feel understood and valued. An example of good rapport building copy, from a sales letter about a gold instruction product:

“If you’ve ever suspected — like most good golfers I know — that the best way to get really good at golf is to just figure it out yourself... you now have proof it’s true.”

Rapport demonstrates that you know the reader’s pain, that you understand his or her problems, and that you have some common experiences that you can share that proves you understand his or her pain.

Dr. Stephen Covey’s book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People says that one of those habits is to “seek first to understand, then to be understood.”

That’s what building rapport is all about. This should not be a manipulative process. It can be used for those purposes; however, I hope that you won’t do that.

All these techniques that we discuss, these psychological tactics, are powerful motivators of human behavior. I hope you understand that when I tell you that I want you to promise to only use them for good purposes, I mean it. These very tactics that we use in writing good sales copy, persuasive sales copy, can also be used to manipulate other people to do things that are not in their best interest.

I refuse to use these tactics that way, and it is my hope that you will as well. Rapport-building is a powerful tactic for persuading certain behaviors, so use it with care.

8) Bullet Points.

A bullet point is a brief statement that identifies a single benefit offered by your product or service. It usually doesn’t reveal how that benefit is derived.

What do I mean? First of all, the reason they’re called bullets is because they often appear in bullet point fashion on a sales letter. That’s because bullet points are extremely scannable; they’re easy to read. There’s lots of white space around them; they’re short; they’re punchy; and if you format them correctly, a reader can gather a lot of information by scanning over bullets very quickly.

Copy that converts at a high rate (i.e., makes a lot of sales) usually has a lot of bullets. Bullets are very powerful sales tools, and I’m going to urge you to use lots of them. That’s why we will spend an entire chapter on writing bullets and how it’s done. There are some very specific techniques that I think you’re going to find very helpful.

Want an example of a great bulleted list? Here’s one from a sales letter written by world-class copywriter Clayton Makepeace:

Now, don’t you wonder what those are?

That’s the purpose of a bullet point... to create that curiosity reaction that makes you think, “I’ve got to know what that is!” Think about your own experience buying products from websites. Have you ever bought a product because you just had to know what one specific bullet was talking about? I have!

These next two blocks, 9 and 10, correspond to the “T” in P.A.S.T.O.R. – testimonials (and proof).

9) Credibility.

You often see this section of a sales letter started with a subhead that says, “Who am I and why should you listen to me?” That’s a classic subhead line that is often used by marketers.

It works. You must build credibility with your prospects in order for them to lower the resistance they’re naturally feeling. Why do they feel this resistance?

Fear. When they’re shopping online, they’re afraid of giving you their credit card number. They’re afraid of giving you their e-mail address, their contact information. They’re afraid you’re going to rip them off. One of the keys to overcoming this fear is to establish your credibility.

Establishing credibility will answer the top question that they have once they’ve started reading your letter and that is, “Why should I listen to what this person has to say?”

10) Testimonials.

Testimonials are third-party verification that your solution does what it claims to do. These third parties are credible people, who have used your product or service, liked it, and are willing to endorse it.

We’ve all seen them. We’ve all seen testimonials used. Most of us probably know by now that just using someone’s initials in a testimonial is not as effective as using his or her full name.

The most believable testimonial is one that is done on video and obviously not done by an actor. We can all tell when a real person gives a truly heartfelt testimonial on video as opposed to when an actor or actress gives a testimonial.

So, you want to make your testimonials as believable as possible. Usually that means getting a video testimonial.

The next best thing is to get a photograph of the person, not a studio shot, but a candid shot, and include his or her full name and website address or, even better, his or her phone number. Most people won’t agree to sharing their phone number publicly, and of course you must be respectful of that. But using a phone number in a testimonial is deadly effective for making sales. My clients who have used phone numbers in testimonials report that very few people actually call the phone number. Those who do just want to determine if it’s a real person, so the calls are generally very short.

Using the phone number of someone who’s giving you a testimonial really enhances the believability of that testimonial. This starts to tie a lot of the elements of a sales letter together. The testimonial enhances believability, which enhances credibility, which means people let their guard down, which means it’s easier to build rapport and to get them to accept the promise of your offer. Do you see how these things begin to weave together? That’s how we form the fabric of a good sales letter.

Now, if you’re just starting out, of course, you may not have any testimonials. In this case, you could use quotes from famous people, as long as it’s clear you’re not implying that the famous person is personally endorsing your product. (If he or she is, good for you!)

For example, if you have a product about doing better advertising, you could include this quote from Mark Twain inside a testimonial box: “Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.”

Now, that isn’t specifically about your product, but it supports your premise that advertising is important and can make a difference in your business. Besides, it’s from Mark Twain! People will read that and think, “Mark Twain’s a genius. This guy must know what he’s talking about!”

You can also use quotes from articles in research from credible sources. If you have a quote from a story you saw on CNN, you can use that, as long as you stay inside the boundaries of fair use. You can’t steal someone’s copyrighted material, but you can certainly use quotations from people in authority that would be persuasive with your audience.

These next few blocks correspond to the “O” in P.A.S.T.O.R. – we are building the offer (which is really the transformation our product produces).

11) Value Justification.

This is where you start to talk about how valuable your product, service, or solution actually is to the user. You highlight the value to your offer and do it in a way that contrasts it favorably to the price. Here’s a good example...

If you are selling a course that teaches people how to save at least $10,000 on their income tax, then talk about the fact that they’re going to save at least $10,000 and some people will even save $14,000, or $20,000.

Then when you reveal the price of your product being $500, it contrasts very favorably with the $10,000 in savings. I mean, really, who wouldn’t hand over $500 in order to get $10,000 back? Would you give me a quarter if I give you a dollar in return? That’s the value proposition that you’re trying to set up, or “value justification.”

My goal when writing copy is to demonstrate the value to the buyer is at least 10 times the price.

12) Risk Reversal.

Let’s review what we’ve accomplished so far. We’ve grabbed the reader’s attention, built the case that we have a solution to his or her problem, brought him or her to the place of building rapport, established our credibility, showed him or her all the benefits of our product, demonstrated for him or her how it’s worked for other people, and established how valuable the product could be. Now we come to the real crux of the matter: removing any sense of risk-taking that our prospect may be feeling.

The simplest form of risk reversal is simply to say you have a 100 percent money back guarantee. You’re telling them, in effect, “Try the product. If it doesn’t work, you get your money back, so what have you got to lose?”

Now, of course, you have a couple of things to overcome. First of all, people have heard the phrase “100% money back guarantee” so often that it has become audio wallpaper to them. It has lost a lot of its meaning because it’s been used so often—it’s almost a cliché.

Your job is to find a way to express the guarantee or the risk reversal in such a way that you’re taking all the risk off their shoulders and putting it onto yours, so that they feel they’re taking no risk at all.

For instance, perhaps you’re selling e-books. Instead of just saying, “You get a 100% money back guarantee when ordering my e-book,” you might write something like this:

“Download my e-book, read it, and if you don’t like it, then just e-mail me and I’ll give you all your money back. I’m taking a risk by doing this. I can’t make you give the e-book back. I can’t get the atoms back off your computer when you download the digital e-book, so you could just order the e-book, ask for a refund and rip me off, but I’m going to trust that you’re not going to do that to me.”

In those few sentences, you’ve made it obvious that the risk is really all yours.

The risk is not being taken by the prospect at all. And yes, it’s true, a certain percentage of people will do exactly what your copy “suggests,” they will rip you off by downloading the e-book and immediately asking for the refund. But not most people—in my experience, most people are honest.

By describing the situation in those terms, it’s really not any different than offering a 100 percent money back guarantee. It’s just using language that more vividly illustrates the fact that the seller is shouldering the risk, not the buyer. By doing so, you remove one of the biggest obstacles to making the sale.

13) Bonuses.

Your bonus is a related but unexpected gift that enhances the value of your offer. I want you to think carefully about what I just said— first, it’s unexpected. Those of us in the marketing world expect there’s always going to be a bonus, but in “the real world,” where folks are not accustomed to seeing sales letters, and certainly not accustomed to studying them, prospects often are surprised.

Let’s say you’re selling an information product, a course on how to lose thirty pounds in thirty days, and people are reading your sales letter, which says you’re going to give them instruction on how to do this very remarkable thing. They notice at the bottom of the page that you’re offering a bonus. It’s a workbook. This workbook will give them a place to record their progress, and it’s absolutely free, if they order today.

It’s worth $19, but you’re going to give it to them for free. Now, that’s an unexpected bonus; it’s related to your primary offer, and it’s valuable. It increases or enhances the value of your offer. That is a good bonus. The mistake I see people making in their online sales letters is offering bonuses that are not related to the product that they’re selling and that don’t enhance the value of their product.

Think of the bonus as the “extra degree.” Here’s what I mean: it takes 212 degrees of heat to boil water. Water at 211 degrees is very hot – but it is not boiling. When water boils, the steam generated can produce electricity or power an engine that moves a train or a ship. The extra degree of heat takes potential and turns it into action.

That’s the situation with the prospect reading your sales letter. If you’ve done all the other parts right, they’re at 211 degrees and you need to find a way to get that extra degree to make that water boil; to generate steam, and to make the sale happen. Your bonus is that extra degree, that extra nudge that pushes the prospect over the edge.

These final two blocks correspond to the “R” in P.A.S.T.O.R. – we are Requesting a Response (in other words, we’re asking for the sale).

14) Call to Action or “Explicit Offer.”

The Explicit Offer is sometimes called “the Call to Action.” We have, up until now, been building the case for the transformation our product or service produces. You may want to think of that as the implicit offer. The explicit offer is simply the place in the copy where we ask for the order and tell the reader what to do. You say, “Okay, these are the details of what I’m selling you, and here’s what you need to do: click this button and order now,” or “Order your copy now,” or “Download this product immediately,” or “Get instant access.” However you phrase it, you’re basically saying, “Okay, I’ve explained all the reasons why; now it’s time for you to buy.”

Oddly enough, this is often a place where many business owners and marketers take a step back and become shy and reclusive, not as aggressive as they should be in asking for the sale. By the way, this also happens in real-world sales—face-to-face selling. Often a salesperson will be at an appointment with a potential buyer and will go through the entire process of selling, but won’t ask for the sale.

You have to ask for the sale in order to get it. I guarantee you’ll lose 100 percent of the sales that you don’t ask for.

15) P.S.

Don’t underestimate this one.

I know it’s kind of a cliché that online sales letters have five, six, or ten PS’s. Don’t engage in that nonsense. The research that I’ve seen shows that either one or three PS’s seem to work best. You certainly don’t need any more than that.

I usually just use one.

Here’s why the PS is important: Remember that readers skim, scroll, and scan. They start at the top and scroll all the way to the bottom. Why? Because they want to know, “What is this person selling and how much is it?” and that’s usually near the bottom of the page.

So, often they’ll scroll all the way to the bottom, and if you put a good, properly formatted PS at the bottom, you can restate your entire proposition in one sentence. This is the place where you sum up the top benefit that your product offers. If the copy is online, supply a link to the order form. An example of a good P.S.:

“P.S. The time is now. Those big corporations are going to keep taking from you till you’ve got nothing left to give. Do you have the courage to fight back? Your chance to make all your dreams come true has arrived. Will you go for it? Will you take action? CLICK HERE TO DO IT NOW.”

Those are, very simply, the fifteen basic elements of a sales letter. Make sure you have all these “blocks” in your stack, and your chances of having a winning sales letter (one that makes more sales) become much greater.