The Mightier Pen

Sales Letters, Flyers & Leaflets

To write a good sales letter or sales flyer is a highly challenging business that should never be approached lightly. Regardless of how wonderful and brilliant your product or service is, ultimately it will be the wording of your sales documents which will decide the fate of your sales figures.

There is a huge amount of psychology involved in creating highly effective sales letters or promotional material. It is no good merely describing how wonderful you think the product is.

We live in a world where people are bombarded many scores of times each day by sales literature, promotional information, advertising and product features. From billboards to television advertisements, from web page banners to emails, and from website content to printed letters, we are all overwhelmed by sales talk.

Or at least, we would be overwhelmed if it were not for the fact that we have all become terribly good at filtering out advertising and sales information which does not grab our attention immediately. To be successful, the wording of your sales documents or sales pages needs to catch the attention of your prospective customers, intrigue them, excite them, hold their attention and make them want more.

That is a very great deal to ask for in today's cynical climate. Taking time to understand who your target customer base is, what makes them tick, and how to present your product in a way which they will find irresistible is a task that must be approached with the greatest care and seriousness.

All too often I have seen sales pages written by enthusiastic entrepreneurs who are terribly excited by their own product. Unfortunately, much of their sales pitch revolves around this excitement, and the one thing guaranteed to put off any prospective customer is a seller centred approach. Your sales letter must focus immediately on the customer - and keep the focus on them at all times. Rather than saying "I am confident that this software will speed up the time is takes to file reports", turn it around and make it customer-centred: "You will be able to complete your reports in half the time."

Another critical aspect of the successful sales letter is to somehow make the customer visualize themselves with the product - thereby making a direct connection. Rather than "You will be able to complete your reports in half the time", try something along the lines of "Picture yourself walking out of your office having completed all of your reports in half the time." It's irresistible isn't it? You can't help imagining yourself in that situation. Now you have focused on the customer, and developed a visual connection, what next?

It's important to make the customer aware of the advantage - what will they gain? Free time? An earlier lunch? A chance to get home early and beat the rush? Creating a visual connection that centres on the customer and presents a positive advantage straight away is a good start.

But there is so much more. How do you manage to hold the customer's attention? How do you manage to get all your information across without turning them off? How do you make them want more information?

And most importantly, how do you manage to turn their hard won interest into a successful sale?

If you have a product or service and are considering sending promotional flyers, sales letters or marketing emails, then hiring a professional freelance writer who understand how to create that winning sales document will make a very significant difference. Picture yourself taking an extra holiday next year on the back of the 300% increase in sales returns as a result of that new advertising promotion. Now that's irresistible!

Advertising Literature

So you have the most ingenious, most desirable, best designed product the world has ever seen? But at the moment, unfortunately, you're the only person in the world who knows about it.

How are you going to get the message out? Obviously you have decided that you will need to advertise, and adverts need words. How many sales pages have you seen posted on the web that begin with a remarkable statement or title printed in a font so large you almost need to scroll up and down to read each letter?

Shouting about a product louder than your competitors is not a recipe for success. We live in a world today where we are bombarded every day by people shouting at us from the screen, the radio, from billboards and posters, from our email and on almost every web page we visit.

The only way we can manage to get on with our lives is by ignoring almost all of the shouting. Most sales pitches are ignored by the vast majority of people. Which is a shame really, considering the fact that your product really is better than all the rest. But how to convince people of that?

Before convincing anyone, advertising literature, sales letters or other promotional materials need to catch people's attention - and not just as many people as possible - the right people. To catch the attention of those people you feel would benefit from your product, you need to understand them, and work out a way of catching their interest.

Whatever advertising technique you use to catch the attention of teenagers looking for music will clearly have little impact on city traders looking for the latest share prices.

Think of the last time you bought something on the basis of the advertising literature or promotional material. What was it that caught your attention? What was it that held your attention, and what was it that led you to find out more, and ultimately place an order and part with your hard earned cash?

Almost certainly all of the answers converge on one fact: words matter.

A slight emphasis here, a key word dropped in there and a syntactical structure that inexorably leads your intrigued customer all the way up to the welcoming arms of your sales page. Writing sales documents or advertising pages is not just about writing enough words to fill a page all the way from an enormous title to the 'Buy Now' button at the bottom, not to hammer every last detail, product feature and benefit into your submissive customers.

Writing successful sales documents is an exercise in psychology. Consider this example for instance: for the rest of this page, make every effort you can not to imagine a blue elephant on roller skates.

Almost certainly you are now only half heartedly reading this paragraph because you are simultaneously visualizing a rather bizarre and totally unrelated concept. In fact, whilst your attention has been caught and distracted, you're vulnerable to further suggestions.

Understanding what makes your customers tick, and being able to weave a cunning vocabulary into a pattern of irresistible dialogue that results in a successful sale time and again is essential if your sales literature is to be worthwhile. Hiring a freelance writer who understands these concepts will ensure that your sales pages and flyers are not merely adverts, but demonstrations of human psychology.

Okay. Enough of the blue elephant now. You can stop thinking about him.

No really, anytime you like.

How Can The Mightier Pen Help?

The Mightier Pen can produce sales copy that sells. Whether it's for print or for web, we can help you reach your target audince more effectively, helping to increase the number of leads and the number of sales.

Please use the contact form on the right to discuss your requirements and to request a no obligation quotation