A well crafted direct response sales letter written for your information product is the engine behind every business owner’s ability to turn dreams into reality.
A Direct Response Sales Letter Copywriter Can Instantly Take You from Zero to 60
When you settle for less than a top-notch direct response sales letter copywriter it’s like pitting the family Ford against the winning car in the Indy 500. In the end it costs you more in real dollars than the right choice from the start. When you choose poorly you experience the roar of the engine and the squeal of tires ringing in your ears… the rear-end of your competitor disappearing at seemingly light-speed, and the sting of black smoke as you edge off the start line in your trusty ride.
I have good news for you. It never has to be that way for you. If you have great products… if you want to leave the competition in your dust… you already know you need a copywriter who can rock your prospect’s boat. You want a copywriter who can shake your prospect to attention. You want a copywriter who can make buying your product the most logical thing your prospect’s done in the last ten years.
Here’s how top-tier direct response copywriters achieve that. I call it the 3 R’s but those R’s don’t stand for read’n, ritt’en, and rithmatic…
Research
Before the best copywriters put a single word to paper there’s a LOT of grunt work. Copy that sings and soars doesn’t happen by chance. Unless you like to roll the dice and “hope” for the best, your copywriter has to dig deep and go through volumes of information. Information like…
- your past promotions
- your competition
- your competition’s promotions
- your product
- your offer
- any bonuses or premiums included with the offer
- your target audience
- studies
- research conducted by reputable sources
- your customer service files, etc.
… all to come up with the right lead, the perfect theme, the best voice behind the letter, the hero, and much, much more…
Reorganization
At this point your copywriter is buried with facts, figures, data, statistics, clues, product content, and emotions. I’ll get to those emotions a little later…
That’s when I start seeing what fits together… kind of like figuring out how a puzzle fits together.
I start thinking about all those questions, objections, and problems my reader is going to have as they read through my letter. I do that because I know if I don’t head off each one… if I don’t answer each in the way I want to answer it before the reader even thinks of it… my letter isn’t going to do its job.
That job, of course, is to jolt my reader out of his natural state of semi-consciousness and his stubborn inclination to do nothing. I have to get him to reach for his back pocket to rip out his credit card and buy with wreckless abandon.
I start putting one thing here and another there. I make notes to myself about what’s missing and then figure out how to get it so my letter has a foundation as solid as the rock of Gibraltar.
Slowly and surely a rough-rough draft evolves. A logical sequence to the sales story begins to surface. This story is critical because this is what the prospect will use to explain his buying decision to his wife. But my letter is still lacking the be-all end-all of a winning sales letter…
Rifling
A control busting bring-the-cash-in-by-the-wheel-barrow sales letter does one thing better than the loser. That winning sales letter hits the reader smack dab in the middle of the forehead with the emotional thread that strikes a cord in every fiber of his being. I call this direct hit to your unsuspecting prospect’s deep residing emotion… rifling. I call it rifling because it hits your prospect like a crack marksmen who drops his unsuspecting target in a single shot.
Don’t get me wrong. I haven’t described it this way because I don’t value your prospect. Just the opposite. Your prospect is my number one most favorite person on Earth. A good letter is more in-tune with his thoughts and feelings than his mother, his spouse, or his best friend. I like to crawl inside his head where his deepest thoughts reside… the thoughts he shares with no one. Even though sometimes those thoughts are embarrassing.
But I can’t just leave him feeling miserable. I have to show him a path to what he wants more than his next breath. That path leads either directly or indirectly to your product. I help him experience the future he could have. I help him realize how valuable your product is. I show him what a screaming deal it is to trade his hard earned dollars to get it.
One thing the best copywriters share is a burning desire to connect with their readers in a way no other human has. Personally, the more I write the more excited I get. When I read that final draft out loud the cells in my body are vibrating with excitement because I can feel the instant draw pulling the reader end, I experience the build-up throughout the letter, and the crescendo right before the sale. If I don’t feel that excitement, that build, that strengthening conviction… it’s back to the drawing board.
When I’ve tapped into the emotion that triggers your prospects hot button, helped him logically conclude this is the solution he’s been looking for, and helped him leap to act now… at that point I’m ready to fire it off to you.
But first, I make certain you’ve got a second headline to test. Because we want to send a test launch to 500 of your best prospects and get the results. If we blow the barn doors off the control, this winner is launched to your big list.
If not, we test the second headline on that same group of 500. Testing is the core of direct response copywriting. Direct Response Copywriting isn’t about building your brand, or draining your bank account on losers. Direct response copywriting is about producing “in-the-money” winners.