Web & Email Sales

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.