So what’s the deal with sales letters? Most of you have probably seen them. I am talking about the standard long form sales letters that usually follow a general basic layout with a big headline at the top, pages and pages of sales copy you have to scroll through, testimonials, some big claims about the product, and are usually promoted as the newest, latest, greatest way to make money online.
I was trying to figure out how to explain them and share my thoughts in a nice linear way but I couldn’t (or didn’t want to take the time) to lay that out. So I am gonna just lay out some thoughts on them and explain them. I will be making a lot of blanket statements and painting with a huge broad brush so keep in mind that with nearly all these points there are some huge exceptions.
1. I hate sales letters – Personally I am not a fan of the sales letter approach. I think it can be very manipulative and entice people to make their buying decisions based on emotions rather than facts. But that is the goal of most of these sales letters. They want to stir up your emotions and coerece you into buying something you probably don’t want or need. It is kind of the same philosophy behind informercials. They will show you all the great things the product can do, make you think you are crazy for not owning it but when you sit down and practically think about it you don’t really need what they are selling.
I also think for the most part they are pretty ugly. Over the past couple years the sales letters have been doing a better job graphically and there are some pretty good looking pages out there now but the standard format that has been around for years is pretty low on the design scale.
2. Sales letters work – Why do people use sales letters? Because they work and can work very, very well for the right product and the right target audience. This method of long sales copy has been around for years and if you look through some old magazines you will see a lot of ads that utilize long sales copy similar to most of these pages. If this sales method didn’t work people would stop doing it but every day many marketers are putting up more and more sales letter pages and making millions doing it.
Example 1: There was recently a product launch of a new system put together by a guy that basically explains his method for selling and it did over $4 million in sales in the first day or two. The product is a decent product (not the best I have see but not the worst by far) but the sales copy was very good and he sold a ton.
Example 2: Another recent launch had the sales copy written by a friend of mine and it converted at over 18% the first day. I think they are up to around 8,000 sales so far and that will keep growing.
3. 90% of the money making systems touted by these sales letters are crap – OK, I am not sure if the number is acutally 90% but I have looked through many of these products over the past few years, read the ebooks, looked at some of the software tools, and even tried a few of them out and most of them are pretty worthless. Lots of them contain outdated techniques that might have worked great a couple years ago but are no longer effective (If someone was really making $50K a day or whatever the claims are why would they share the “secret”? When it stops being effective that is when they sell it), worked once but might not work again, have lots of other outside factors that aren’t explained in the course, or might contain 1 or 2 helpful tidbits of info buried within a 200 page ebook or a 10 DVD set or something. I don’t doubt most of the claims made by these people but I don’t think more than a couple of the people who spend the money on these courses will ever achieve any success with them.
4. Some of the products are good – There are some systems out there being sold by these sales letters that are actually very good. They contain easy, step by step plans to follow, contain some valuable information you don’t find anywhere else, have great support, and will actually help you with your business.
We interupt this post for a brief commercial announcement and disclaimer: Yes, my company acutally uses sales letters for some of our products we have developed. The most recent is Traffic Geyser. What does Traffic Geyser do? In a nutshell it will take your video and submit it to about 90 different sites including video sites, blog sites, and social bookmarking sites. We regularly see user submitted videos achieve top 10 rankings in Google within a few minutes. Of course that doesn’t always happen depending on what keywords the videos are targeting but it is a great time saving tool if you do much in the way of video marketing.
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming…
5. Sales letters aren’t always sales letters – Over the past year or two many sales letters have morphed into more of a “squeeze page” approach. The page will be much shorter and ask you to enter your name and email to for more information, a free report, a trial, etc. Once you do that you will receive follow up info pushing for the sale.
6. Your name means a lot – There are some people in the sales letter industry that could put pretty much anything out there and people will buy it. They have built a reputation for having some good products and have built a big following that like them and trust them. Of course if they put out a garbage product their reputation will take a hit but they will still sell a ton of it.
7. If someone buys once they will buy again – If you can get a customer to buy from you once you have a live one. I know dozens and dozens of people who have purchased 10, 20 or more of these systems expecting it to be the magic bullet (which doesn’t exist). Nearly all of them will just sit on a shelf or in their computer and never even be read. Since the sales copy got them so excited they must have been expecting something where you can just push a button and make money but all of these systems require work. Even if they do listen to all the CDs, read all the ebooks, watch all the videos, and use all the tools there is still a very, very good chance they will never make any money but you can be sure when the next great sales page is put in front of them they will whip out the credit card and drop another $1997 hoping it will finally be what they are looking for.
8. Huge affiliate payouts – The standard affiliate payout for most of these products being pushed by sales letters is around 50%. Some of them are around 33% and some are as much as 100% but the standard is around 50%. That is pretty signifigant when you are tallking about a $2000 training system. Sell a couple dozen and you can take the rest of the month off. There are a lot of people who make their living just pushing other people’s products. Generally these people have built up big mailing lists and just push everything that comes out to their list. I think the more effective people are much more selective in what they push. If they only promote quality products they will end up with a much more responsive mailing list. If they are just pushing all the crap out there people will start to ignore them pretty quickly.
9. Beware of the marketing funnel – What is the marketing funnel? Quick rundown of a standard progression:
- You buy a $47 ebook or report
- When done with that you are hit with a more complete report for $297
- Next up is a 10 hour DVD training course for $1997
- Live seminar or conference for $2997 is next
- One on one coaching from the guru: $5997
So you think you are getting all the info you need for just $47 but by the time you are done you have spent a few grand.
I have some more thoughts but isn’t 1,500 words enough? Maybe I will hit some more in a future post. But here are some quick hits:
- There are good guys and not so good guys in this industry. I have my opinions I will share in private but not here. Most of them are very uninformed opinions. hehe
- If it sounds too good to be true it is. Don’t get sucked in to the hype. Be realistic.
- Don’t automatically dismiss all sales letters. There are some gems out there.
- Totally different world from standard “affiliate marketing”. I would think there would be more overlap between the two but there isn’t much. I regularly talk with a couple of the top copywriters in the business and they think what I do is total voodoo. But they are expert copywriters.
- There are no magic systems that will make money automatically. They will all take some work so don’t expect miracles without putting in the effort.
Any questions? Agree or disagree with any of these points? Leave me a comment and let me know.
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