3 Ways To Do Proper Research For Your Sales Letter

I’ve mentioned time and time again that 90% of a great sales letter has to do with research. If you get the research right, your sales letter practically writes itself.

I just finished an article for Russell Brunson’s DotComSecrets newsletter about this important topic.  However, I thought I would share the most important points from that article in this blog post.

What’s The Big Deal About Research?

Not performing the right research for your sales letter is like playing the Super Bowl without a game plan.  You just walk out on the field and hope and pray you’ll win.

This is how most marketers approach this. They forget there are a lot of factors they have to research outside their own business before they write a single word.

Here are 3 critical steps you need to take before you write a single word of copy. Use these and your chances of having a successful sales letter will go through the roof.

1) What Makes Your Product Unique?

Many marketers create “me-too” products. Just another ebook on how to make money online or affiliate marketing. Yet they do not differentiate themselves from their competition so that prospects have a reason to buy from them.

The #1 thing you need to do is determine what makes you unique.  This is what makes your product/service stand out from the crowd.

Do you have a unique guarantee. Offer better service? Do your customers get the desired benefits faster and easier than you competition? Figure this out and your sales letter literally writes itself.

2) What Ads Are Other People Using?

This is where the rubber meets the road. You need to find as many winning ads in your niche as possible to see what appeals they use in their letter.

Notice I said “Winning” ads. You do not want to just look at any ad and save it to your hard drive.  You need to seperate the winning ads from the “duds”.

The best way is to determine this is to look at ads that are run over and over again through PAID advertising.  For example, if you see the same ad over and over again via Google Adwords, you can guarantee that 9 times out of 10 that ad is converting well for them.

Further, go to the local library and look up magazines in your niche that have direct response ads. Take a look at the past 12 issues and notice the ads that are appearing over and over again.  These are ads you want to copy and save since the ads are obviously working for the company.

3) How Sophisticated Is Your Market?

This is the level at which prospects in your market have been exposed to advertising in your niche. For example, weight loss is a highly sophisiticated market since there is a lot of competition and prospects have probably seen thousands of weight loss ads in their life.

Whereas if you were selling an ebook on how to use the iPhone in 2007–the year the first iPhone was released to the public–the market would not be sophisticated since it was new at the time.

Knowing the sophistication of your market will allow you to determine how original and unique you have to be in your advertising.

For example, you would not get away with a lame headline like, “Lose 5 pounds in 3 weeks!” because people in this market have been advertised to over and over again.  They’ve seen tons of weight loss ads and this headline would not get their attention.

I highly recommend getting the book Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz. This book is one of the best advertising books you can read and he talks about market sophistication in great detail.  But this should give you a start.

I will probably have more to say about this critical part of writing a sales letter.  But for now, you can read more about the importance of research on a sales presentation when you read my for-hire page.

Take care,

Kevin Hill

“The Professor Of High Response”

 

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