While the main objective for sales letters does not change at all – and that’s to encourage customers to avail of your products and services – there are different types of approaches you can use to make them more effective.
7 Types of Sales Letter You Can Use to Improve Profit Margins
Introductory Sales Letters – This is perhaps the most discussed about type of sales letter in the Internet. This type of sales letter introduces your company to prospective customers. Readers may or may not know about you, but either way, they’re sure not to have bought from you, and your sales letter should tell them why it’s time to change that fact. When writing this letter, keep it as brief as possible because they don’t know you well enough to believe that reading more than one page of your letter would do them any good.
Product Update Sales Letters – This is mainly for old and existing sales customers. The primary thrust of this letter is to let them know about your latest product offerings and how they compare to previous items in your product line. Usually, sales letters of this ilk offer incentives as well for customers to buy during the promotional period. Make sure you include details about the expiration date for the promo period as well as information for ordering just in case they’ve forgotten how already.
Selling Incentive Sales Letters – This type of sales letter is also for old and existing customers. Although you’re not offering them anything new to buy, you’re offering them the chance to purchase old or existing products and services for lower or better rates. There could be discounts, rebates, or other selling incentives. It could be a contest or any other promotion to encourage them to buy more and buy now.
When writing this type of letter, it’s important to make the incentive as exciting and attractive as possible. Secondly, emphasize the urgency. Selling incentives last for a brief period of time – it has to or you might go bankrupt – so make sure they understand that the clock’s ticking away!
Thank You Sales Letters – If it’s the first time for any individual to avail of your products and services, always send them a thank you letter right after completing their purchases. You don’t have to do it and they know it. But you did it all the same and customers will always appreciate your efforts. It will also make them remember your website more easily. At the end of your letter, of course, make sure that you mention what other great products and services are awaiting them in your website upon their return.
Holiday Sales Letters – Never let any important holiday in the year pass by without writing to your customers. Write to them one or two weeks before the holiday. Write the appropriate greetings then segue with explanations as to why your products or services could be a perfect gift for the celebrated holiday. If you have holiday promotional offers you definitely have to mention them in this letter.
Company Celebration Sales Letters – These sales letters establish the fact that you think of your customers as part of your family, and that’s why you include them in your celebrations. If this year marks the 60th year you are in business then make sure that you let your customers know this. Acknowledge the role they’ve played in your success and of course don’t forget to end the letter with an invitation to drop by your website in order to build stronger and longer lasting bonds. These letters also apply for any achievement, award, or recognition that has been bequeathed to your company.
We Miss You Sales Letters – Your customer or order tracking software can usually alert you when a long period of time has elapsed since certain customers have dropped by or purchased from your website. Make sure to send them “we miss you” sales letters to these customers as well as customized information regarding your newest products and services that you’re sure they’ll welcome based on data from their previous orders.
These may take time to write, but it’s an effort well-spent because it ensures that your customers will remember you – even when though much time has passed since their last visit – simply because you took the time to remember them as well.
Sales letters, whether in actual mailed letter or email format, is probably one of the most tedious and annoying means of advertising ever devised. From a customer perspective, getting your physical mail box flooded with flyers and your email inbox stuffed with spam is NOT a good way to start out the day. From a salesman or business owner’s perspective, trying to offer people a product that you KNOW will actually help them becomes more difficult because the public in general is becoming more jaded from all the trash letters being sent out by half baked marketing groups with substandard products. To this end, here are 7 tips from an irritable consumer to give some advice to people making sales letters:
Honesty is the best policy – nobody likes a scammer, with the sole possible exception of the scammer himself and any associates who make a profit alongside his sales. Those “wonderful” people aside, everybody else would rather take a scammer, disembowel him, and hang him from a flagpole by his intestines. So first thing’s first: you want us to read your letters? Shoot straight and don’t hide or lie about facts.
Get to the Darn Point – you’re not writing a novel, are you? It’s a sales letter. Keep it short so you don’t waste our time, and if something can be said in 5 words, why phrase it in 20? Granted, some of those lengthier statements may be intended to amuse us, but if we wanted a quick laugh, we can always just go out and watch a mime getting run over by a truck.
Talk TO your Readers, not AT Them – a lot of letters come across sounding like they’re being delivered from a stage or a pulpit. Talk TO your readers, person to person, not AT them like you’re making a grand speech. Again, if I wanted to fall asleep listening to a speech, I’d just go to church or a corporate meeting at work, or maybe watch TV and look for a politician.
What’s In It for The Reader? – yep, that’s the bottom line bubba. What’s in it for me? Your new fangled high tech swiss army bulletproof cell phone may come with more processing power than an entire network of PCs, it might be made from materials that theoretically shouldn’t exist through modern smelting methods, and may even include a tazer gun in case I get mugged. But what do I get out of it when all I need from a phone is a longer battery life, a built in MP3 player for my tunes, and a high powered “babe” magnet?
Fine Print Makes People Nervous – use large, clear print for your letter text. Nobody likes having to use a magnifying glass to read a letter. Fine print, from the stand point of a consumer, will often hold various arcane stipulations designed to squeeze extra bucks out of our wallets. We like knowing what we’re getting into and what we’re buying without any hitches, snags, and hidden agendas, thank you very much.
Concentrate on Getting Interest, Not a Sale – if you try to push your product off on me, I’ll shove it back into your face and down your throat. There’s an old adage: Don’t call me, I’ll call you. This applies to most any potential consumer. As far as I’m concerned if you push for a sale, then all you want is my money. If, on the other hand, you catch my interest and give me a good reason to call you, THEN we can talk about my buying your stuff. Make it worth my while.
Let The Reader Know How to Reach You – one of the most irritating aspects of business sales letters is incomplete or vague return contact information. I know that being “mysterious” and “hard to get” is a common ploy. News flash here: playing hard to get makes people walk out on you, and being mysterious usually means you have large skeletons in the closet to hide. So, that translates to you’re being a scam. If you want to talk about making a sale, let me know how to reach you quickly and easily.
Coming to the point in your business where you can begin to think about quitting your full or part time job is an exciting time! Don’t let the excitement cloud your judgment. Begin by thinking carefully about this next big step. Here are 7 things you’ll want to consider when quitting your job becomes a possibility:
1. Money – You knew this one would be in here, right? It’s so important that you take the time to figure out exactly how much money you will need to work from home full time. There have been many an entrepreneur who’s skipped this step and succeeded but you don’t need to take that chance. Plan ahead to make sure you will make enough money to support yourself and your business.
2. Time – now this one is obvious but you need time to run your business. Some moms get an idea in their head that they will be able to work around their kids (at naptime, after bed, etc) and still create a thriving business. This is not a realistic way to think. If you have young children, plan to have a child care provider take care of them while you focus on your business – you’ll get more work completed and be much less stressed this way.
3. Set a Schedule – Before you get into the day to day of running your home business set up a schedule of work hours that you and your family can respect and live with. Print out the schedule, have it laminated and post on your fridge or other prominent place so everyone knows when you will be occupied with business. Family and friends seem to have a hard time with the fact that you are actually working and can’t stop anytime you feel like it for phone calls, outings, etc, so setting them straight from the start will help you get your work done efficiently.
4. Leave that Door Open – When you let your work know that you’re leaving, do it properly. Make sure you give the appropriate amount of time to find a replacement and leave on a good note whenever possible. You never know when you might need your job back or a good reference so always leave that door open.
5. Money Saved – It’s always a good idea to have money in the bank but when you are quitting a job this becomes more important than ever. Tuck away two or three months worth of pay and you can be sure you’ll leave work with some peace of mind.
6. Taxes – As a small business owner you will be responsible for paying your own personal taxes at the end of the year. The best way to prepare for this is to put 25-30% of your income into a separate account for when the taxman comes knocking.
7. Time to Enjoy – Where’s the fun in working from home if you don’t take time to enjoy what you have created for yourself? Make sure that you don’t book yourself so solid that you have no time for anything but work. Working from home is about working smarter, not harder!
As you know there are many things to consider on our journey toward working from home. The list above should give you some things to start thinking bout. Whatever you do, make sure to set yourself up so you have the best possible start to working from home and you’ll be so glad you did. Best of luck on your new work at home journey!
So, you’ve decided to start a home based business. Congratulations, and welcome to the high energy world of entrepreneurship. I have owned and operated my own home based business since 1994. While is takes some time to learn, one of the fastest ways is to role model someone who is achieving their goals. I learned fast that having a success coach or mentor will help you succeed at much faster pace. One of the biggest thrills of owning your own business is the flexibility of your work time, deciding when to work, go to the beach or spend time with your family. The financial rewards can be numerous. The nice thing about owning your own business is you get paid what you are worth.
Now that you’ve decided to start your own business, you might be thinking “How can I become successful, what does it take and what do I have to do?” These seven secrets will help:
1) set up a separate working area in your home. All you need is an area that you can maintain your focus in and get your work done. I remember a person whose home based business was doing 7 figures a year say to me,” Ron when I work I work, but when it’s time for family time it’s time for family time, you have to separate the two.”
2) Set Goals that you want to achieve in the coming year. Make your goals crystal clear, put them up on the wall, and set annual, quarterly and monthly goals. The clearer your goals are the better chance you have of achieving them. Put up a Vision Board in your home office, look at it everyday and see yourself accomplishing your goal.
3) Your third step is marketing. Decide who your target market is, what is the best way to reach them. Determine the best way to attract your target market. Who is your ideal client? Invest at least a week and go to your local library and read some books on marketing to see what the experts are doing. I myself invest in one marketing book at month to keep up to date on current marketing trends.
4) Time management is crucial to the success of your home based business. We all have 24 hours in a day but how you invest them will determine your success at the end of the year. A good thought is to work on your top priorities when you are the freshest, so you accomplish the most towards your goal.
5) Network with other like minded people. One of the fastest ways to grow any business is to promote Joint ventures with people who can introduce you to your best clients. I’ll never forget one of my first joint ventures that resulted in a 6 figure income in 90 days, the feeling and financial rewards are what make owning your own business exciting.
6) Look the part. If you want to be treated professionally, act like a professional. Set up a separate bank account for your business. Have a dedicated phone line and fax line for business. Outsource the creation of your marketing materials so your business has that high tech look.
7) Automation is the key. Learn how to become a prospecting machine. The number one things most successful home based business has are good high quality leads. Have automatic systems in place to help you identify and attract your ideal client. Target marketing is where your profits are at. Focus on adding value to the life of your clients and you will be reward handsomely.
These seven secrets will jump start your home based business in a hurry.
One of the most difficult things for network marketers is to increase your targeted website traffic. There are many ways to do this including paid advertising which does work. If you are just beginning, you may not want to try this as you still need to test whether your lead capture pages and sales pages convert.
Many internet Marketers Fail Online Because they Do not Know How Or What To Do To create the targeted website Traffic Needed To Make Their Site Successful. This article discusses seven proven methods that will help you increase your targeted website traffic.
1. Article Marketing
A guaranteed way to increase your targeted website traffic is to write original and keyword optimized articles for your web visitors. Article marketing, as it is called, will bring you repeated targeted website traffic that already wants to know more about your products and services.
There are several ways you can promote your articles:
* submit them to major article directories such as ezinearticles.com,goarticles.com and article dashboard
* Use an article submission service such as isnare or article marketer
* Use a semi-automated article submitter such as Article submitter Pro or Instant Article Submitter
* Trade your articles directly with other webmasters.
2. Blogging
Frequently posting original useful content to a personal blog will also help you increase your targeted website traffic.
The articles you post on your blog can have links back to your other websites which are called back links. These back links help improve Page Rank in Google.
3. Classifieds
* Craigslist
* US Free Ads
* eBay
4. Linking
Not all links are created equal. There are many methods to get incoming links. First you should submit your site to all of the directories in your subject area. Second, look for similar, but non-competing sites that you can trade links with. Many sites have automatic linking software that will look for a backlink and then add you automatically. Linking with similar websites will also increase your targeted website traffic.
Other ways to increase your links include:
* Link Exchange Services (such as Link Vault or Link Metro)
* Purchase Links (from webmasters or a link broker)
* Lists
* Co-Registration Lists
* Joint Venture (other marketer’s email lists)
* Opt-in List (requires you to build your own list first…)
* Safe Lists
5. Advertising
* Ezine Advertising (advertise in various newsletters)
* Pay-Per-Click (such as Google, YPN, MSN Adcenter etc.)
* Offline Advertising (flyers, direct mail etc.)
6. Social Media
# Social Bookmarking
* Social Multi-Media Networks
* Podcasts (publish your own podcasts)
* YouTube
* Google Video
# Social Networks
* Squidoo
* MySpace
* AdlandPro
* Direct Matches
# Social Voting
* Digg
* Reddit
* Netscape
7. Forums
Forums are an excellent way to increase your targeted website traffic As you respond and start topics in forums, you become familiar and trusted. Never blatantly advertise your products. Most forums allow a signature which is a space under your posts where you can place links to your websites.
Consistently using these methods will help you increase your targeted website traffic. The internet marketer with the mostlinks and targeted website traffic wins.