Why Writing a Sales Letter From Scratch is Not a Good Idea
You need to start writing a sales letter.
How are you going to begin? Are you going to put a pen and blank sheet of paper in front of you, waiting for the muse to whack you on the head? Are you going to camp in front of the computer, word processor open, and start a free writing exercise that may eventually become the core of a sales page? Are you going to dream that letter up, from headline to postscript, creating something completely original? If you nodded along with any of those scenarios, please reconsider your perspective.
Those techniques might work for experienced copywriters who have already internalized everything from the core structures to the fine details of a great sales letter.
They're a dead end for most of us, though.
The "from scratch" method of starting with a blank page suffers from some serious flaws.
It's time consuming.
It's difficult.
It may not produce a product that's consistent with what we know about the way persuasion really works.
It's incredibly inefficient and it puts all of the pressure to produce the most important component of your project squarely on your shoulders.
The better approach? Piggyback on the efforts of those who know about writing a sales letter that works.
Learn their methods.
Adopt their approaches.
You don't want to create direct replicas of proven sales pages, but you do want to start with a plan in mind--preferably a plan that stems from the base structural and organizational techniques that produce sales again and again.
You can do that by building your own swipe file of great copy and studying it, looking for commonalities and strategies that you can adapt to your own purposes.
Alternatively, you can take an even more efficient and aggressive shortcut by investing in template-driven tools that will march you through writing a good page from top to bottom.
When you have those resources, you can start writing a sales letter with direction, purpose and confidence.
It will give you a framework in which you can operate.
You'll be able to flex your creative muscle in a productive way, producing high-conversion copy faster and more easily than you may have though possible.
How are you going to begin? Are you going to put a pen and blank sheet of paper in front of you, waiting for the muse to whack you on the head? Are you going to camp in front of the computer, word processor open, and start a free writing exercise that may eventually become the core of a sales page? Are you going to dream that letter up, from headline to postscript, creating something completely original? If you nodded along with any of those scenarios, please reconsider your perspective.
Those techniques might work for experienced copywriters who have already internalized everything from the core structures to the fine details of a great sales letter.
They're a dead end for most of us, though.
The "from scratch" method of starting with a blank page suffers from some serious flaws.
It's time consuming.
It's difficult.
It may not produce a product that's consistent with what we know about the way persuasion really works.
It's incredibly inefficient and it puts all of the pressure to produce the most important component of your project squarely on your shoulders.
The better approach? Piggyback on the efforts of those who know about writing a sales letter that works.
Learn their methods.
Adopt their approaches.
You don't want to create direct replicas of proven sales pages, but you do want to start with a plan in mind--preferably a plan that stems from the base structural and organizational techniques that produce sales again and again.
You can do that by building your own swipe file of great copy and studying it, looking for commonalities and strategies that you can adapt to your own purposes.
Alternatively, you can take an even more efficient and aggressive shortcut by investing in template-driven tools that will march you through writing a good page from top to bottom.
When you have those resources, you can start writing a sales letter with direction, purpose and confidence.
It will give you a framework in which you can operate.
You'll be able to flex your creative muscle in a productive way, producing high-conversion copy faster and more easily than you may have though possible.