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5 Fast and Easy Ways to Make Sure Your Sales Copy Gets Read!
by Craig Garber
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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".
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Let's face it, if you're attractive and you present
well, people go out of their way to accommodate 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:
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.
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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
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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.
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"Craig
Garber is
America's Top Direct-Response Copywriter. You'll find hundreds
of marketing tips to increase your sales, and his insanely popular FREE Direct-Response Marketing
Tip Of The Week, on his website,
www.KingOfCopy.com.
Copyright © Craig Garber. All rights
reserved."
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