Writing a sales letter or sales page on the web is not so different sales copy for a newspaper or magazine ad. In fact, it’s also similar to making sales in person. The same rules apply, but sometimes they just need to be addressed in a different way.

Stay Customer-Focused

When you walk into a brick-and-mortar store, the best marketers will have someone to greet you, maybe even at each department; someone who asks, “What can I help you find today?” Your website is a store. Keep that in mind as you write your copy.

You don’t want to rush up to your customer extolling the virtues and credentials of you and your company! Not that there isn’t a place for that – you may need it to build credibility and goodwill. But the first thing you want to do is direct your customer to exactly what he or she is looking for.

Emphasize Benefits, Not Features

This is one of the primary tenants of advertising, yet so many still ignore it. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. When you first walk into the store (access the web page), you’re not looking for all the great technical specifications for that digital camera. In fact, they might not even mean much to you.

Instead you’re looking for the benefits having such a camera would give you – it’s light weight and small size so you can carry it in your pocket, the joy of viewing the pictures with colors so vivid and realistic, pictures have the same great quality indoors or out, you can view them immediately and print them yourself or have them professional printed or put to disc, etc. These are the things to emphasize in the sales letter, because they are the things that will sell most people.

Talk to One Person

Your writing style must sound like your speaking to a single person who is sitting right next to you at this very moment. Try to connect with him by recognizing his problems and offering your solutions. This is called “relationship marketing” and is quite effective. Maintaining this “conversational” tone is the key.

You’re not teaching, so don’t sound like an instruction manual. Use simple language and good grammar, but don’t let that limit you. Sometimes bending those rules will make you seem more approachable and friendly, allowing you to get your point across more quickly.

Deliver!

Deliver on your promises; keeping your web page relevant. Don’t forget how you listed your page in the search engines and in various advertising throughout the ‘net. If someone finds you based on a search for “fishing equipment,” but the first thing they see on your page is a long commentary on the latest college football game, they’ll leave before they find the fishing equipment you’re selling.

This applies to your hyperlinks within your site, too. If your link anchor says “About Us,” then the landing page can be that spot where you put all your credentials that you shouldn’t be putting on your sales page! But it should NOT be a form for him to fill out to get on your mailing list. It’s even worse if he has to press more links to actually get to the “About Us” information he was looking for in the first place!

Get Interactive

Get your customers involved in your websites. Have opinion polls. Request reactions. Take surveys. Always show the results of these activities, so users can come back and see what everyone else thought, and see their own comments reflected in those results. This makes them more likely to bookmark your site and revisit.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 20th, 2010 at 12:59 pm and is filed under How To. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.