The Ultimate Guide to Long Sales Copy - Part 2

Read our First Part of the Long Sales Copy Series

Identify with the reader

Before you will be able to convince readers that you have a solution to a problem, you

need to convince them that you truly understand that problem — and that you can relate to them.

If you’re selling camera lens cleaner, this is where you tell the story of how you took dozens of roles of film of your sister’s wedding, only to have them turnout bleary and dim because your lens was so dirty, and now your sister was so mad about it that you want to make sure NOBODY ever makes that mistake again…

As we saw, Adrian identifies with his visitors by telling his own story in a chatty, ‘you –and-me’ sort of way:

I, like many of you have spent most of my life looking for that ‘magic bullet’ that would allow me to finally achieve the mountains of muscle that escaped me for so long.

Rachel’s sales letter tells of funny stories of  how her own “bath salts making attempts” have gone wrong to enable her to identify with her reader:

My experiments with free Internet stock recipes were
A DISASTER!

1.    My brother still laughs about the time I made the bath tub turn bright red — for a whole week!

2.    Definitely not my personal favourite was the hard, round clump of bath salts I ended up with that would be more useful at a bowling alley than in a bathroom!

3.    And then there was the time that a chemical reaction I definitely wasn’t expecting – and the recipe definitely didn’t warn me about – blew the cork right off the bottle!

In your own sales letter, do your best to relate to the reader in a way that says: “I know exactly how you feel.  I’ve been there myself.”  It’s a highly effective, inviting approach to drawing your reader into the sales letter.

Provide an overview of your solution

OK, so you’ve created a problem.  Your readers trust you.  And you and your readers are speaking the same language.  It’s now time to present your offer (your product or service) as the solution to their problem.

You don’t need to go into a great deal of detail just yet, but this is where you can expand on the promise of resolution that you’ve been building up to.

So for example, if you’ve been promising a way out of debt, this is where you can name your debt consolidation service as the answer to your readers’ problem.  If you’ve been building up to the problem of cats getting fleas in the summer, this is where you introduce your miracle anti-flea potion.

You don’t have to explain exactly how your product or service works at this point.  You just need to provide your offer as the solution to the problem.

Rachel’s sales letter does this very well by launching into a list of bullet points.

Bullet points are an effective way to get your major points across because they are emphatic, predominantly displayed blurbs of your best benefits and most important information — and most importantly, they are easy to read.

Most people ‘scan’ through copy, rather than reading every word.

On the next page you will see how Rachel positions her product as the solution to her customers’ problems:

Finally, I was satisfied that I had created the best and most extensive collection of therapeutic bath salts possible, and was ready to start indulging in my own custom blended baths…

… and giving my very own handmade gifts of bath salts to my friends and family.

They were an amazing hit!

1.    My best friend couldn’t get enough of them.  She even joked about having to quit her job so she’d have enough time to try out all 101 formulas!

2.    Then she said she hoped I didn’t mind, but she’d actually passed one of my jars of ‘Oriental Green Tea’ to someone at her church, to thank her for looking after her cat one weekend.

3.    My mom loved the soothing quality of my botanical blends.  She’d always felt a bit stiff after spending time at work, and she says a half-hour soak in my ‘Sea Bliss’ bath was the best therapy for sore muscles she’d found. She even passed out samples to her colleagues at work.

5.    I gave my next-door neighbour a basket of my ‘Uplifting’ aromatherapy salts with grapefruit and rosemary essential oils, and she thought it was the most invigorating bath she’d had in years! Then she asked me if she could have a few more, because she had friends she wanted to give them to as gifts — she thought they’d be perfect!

And that’s when it hit me!

Once I realized just how lovely it is to soak in your very own natural handmade bath salts — and once I saw how popular my salts were with other people (who used them AND gave them as special gifts) I knew I’d be crazy not to make all of my recipes and research available to everyone who loves this indulgence.

It took me lots of time and lots of wasted money before I cut through all the fluff and downright incorrect information available on bath salts — even with my background in cosmetics.  I wanted to make all of this information publicly available for those who want it.

So I took all of the recipes, all of the instructions, the tips, the background information, all that I had — and put it into “The Comprehensive Guide To Hand Crafted Bath Salts” — a 187 page e-book that gives you everything you need to create your own natural, spa quality bath salts — for just pennies per bath!

See how this works?  The sales letter explains how the readers can make their own bath salts to use themselves or give as gifts without actually giving away the information shared by the book.  The book title is then revealed at the end of the section.

Give them a lot of benefits

The next thing you need to do is launch into a list of the benefits and features of your product or service.  In other words, this is where you really start explaining how your product or service will solve your reader’s problem.

Of course, you should be highlighting benefits (instead of features) throughout your sales letter — beginning with your title and moving right down to the last line of your letter.  But this is where you can begin openly parading the greatest part of your offer in front of your readers because as of this moment, they’re ready for it.

The best thing to do here is create a list of compelling, highly appealing products that will ‘wow’ your readers with impressive details… it’s similar to the section above, where you’ve provided solutions to the customers problem.  Here, what you are doing is expanding on the solution and piling benefits on benefits to create as much value in your product as possible.

I’ve filled over 187 pages with the exact information you need to make your own luxurious salts plus, now included are 158+ high-quality pictures of the different salts.

When you’re ready to make your own bath salts, why not use a resource that doesn’t just give you copies of the same old recipes everyone else has. What’s the point of making recipes that everyone, including your neighbor’s cat, is using?

What you need is real tips and sound advice, so you can figure out how to:

1.    Relieve even the driest skin by using real milk and cocoa butter to create a moisture rich soak
2.    Relax the stiffest muscles by understanding the different kinds of salts, and knowing when to use them
3.    Easily avoid the potentially damaging effects of certain essential oils
4.    Enhance the relaxing quality of your bath with these five simple steps
5.    Discover the thrill of colour changing bath salts — they could be blue in the package and pink in the water!
6.    Benefit from the healing power of scent, by understanding essential oils and fragrances and knowing when to use them and how to create amazing blends
7.    Enjoy a bath that literally sparkles, by knowing how to use micro colourings
8.    Treat your loved ones to beautiful, personalised gifts using a computer program you probably already own to create unique packaging
9.    Soothe yourself with bubbling bath salts — and enjoy bath salts that double as bubble bath and soothing salts
10.    Easily create any shade of coloured bath salts by understanding how colour additives work

Rachel’s sales letter about bath salts tells its readers about the product using the following list of benefits:

Note how each bullet points tells the reader exactly how they will benefit from the tips and advice on offer.

Don’t think your readers will get bored with your benefits or stop reading.  If you can provide powerful, compelling benefits, you honestly can’t include enough of them!  Long bullet lists of benefits are extremely effective because:

1.    You can build value through a long, visual list

2.    People tend to scan text and bullet points are ‘scannable’ and easy to read

3.    You’re talking to different people with varying needs, and bullet points allow people to focus on the benefits that are specifically relevant to them

Just PILE on the benefits and use bullet points wherever possible.  It’s the very best way to convince readers of the value of your product or service.

Stay tuned for our third part of the Long Sales Copy Series….Coming Tomorrow!

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• The Ultimate Guide to Long Sales Copy - Part 1