5 Critical Copywriting Components

Keep these five things in mind when writing your sales letter - they may help to lift your conversion rates

If you have read the pages on AIDA copywriting, and QUEST then you can think of this as an addition, rather than a substitute.

There is so much literature about copywriting available, it can be difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff. So here are my 5 critical copywriting components. They work for me, and there is no reason they won't work for you as well. Each of these is a well tested and proven component to a successful sales letter.

1. The Main Headline

I have seen it written that you should put as much thought into the first headline, as you do for the rest of the sales page. While this might be exaggerating a little, it certainly is THE most important element on your page.

Testamonials

A great headline will grab the attention of your target audience. It is definitely worth split testing your headlines to see what one is working best.

I think people underestimate the selling power of good testamonials. So what makes a good testamonial? Probably the one below is not going to fall into the class of "good".

"I bort your stuff the other day and I have to say WOW!!!!!! Awsum dude, keep it up!!!!!!!! I wil be recommending you to all my buddies.
~B.S

A good testamonial will......

• have a headshot of the endorser
• explain how it filled their need
• be verifiable (keep all testamonials on file)
• address some important benefit of your product
• be genuine

3. Less is better

There is a trend these days towards shorter sales letters. Gone are the days of those multi page letters that went on and on and on and on....

There are some still around, but I believe they are going to becomes less common. And for a very good reason: they don't work as well now as they used to.

Try stripping you sale page down, if it exceeds 1000 words. Take a long hard look at what really doesn't need to be in there, and do some ruthless pruning. As always, split testing is the only way to reach definitive conclusions.

It might be that you can replace a lot of the superflous text with a video. Do you use a video on your sales page? If not, then think about whether you have the right sort of product to use one...the internet is all about interaction these days, and any way that you can interact with your vistors is always good.

4. Create Desire

Seems obvious, but not everyone can do this. Some of the things that will create desire for your product include....

• extract of TOC or a free chapter to read (applies to ebooks)
• a few Johnson boxes to highlight key benefits
• draw attention to the customers dire situation as it is NOW, and show him how it can be turned around
• special bonuses and/or prices available for a limited time

5. Clear Call To Action

Are your visitors in any doubt as to what they should be doing on your sales page? Don't have multiple choices for your visitors. It leads to confusion. The whole page should be leading the vistor towards that "Get XYZ Now!" button, and leaving them in no doubt that clicking on it is what they NEED to do.

Distract them with things like links to offsite references, a left hand navigation panel (oooh, that page looks interesting, I think I'll go look at that now) or a signup for something not relevant to your product, and you will probably get what you deserve: a lost customer.

Conclusion

This list could have been easily exanded out to 10, or even 15. But like any list of this type, there are always going to be a few key points that stand out as deserving of the "top 5". Many other copywriting errors are bad, but not unrecoverable. But get even one of these 5 wrong, and you will sink without trace. That's why they are my 5 critical copywriting components.