Part 1: The Sales Letter

What is a sales letter and what are the benefits of this style website?

Typically, a sales letter works when you are selling a single product–usually one that benefits from an emotional appeal.

You can make a website and then have a “sales page” for individual products. If you open a merchant affiliate account (i.e. clickbank), then you need a page on which to put the payment button so the affiliate can track the purchases.

Sales pages also work for Internet Marketers (IMers) who have large mailing lists they’ve built over time using “squeeze” pages. Squeeze pages are web pages that offer some free giveaway, a report or tutorial on a subject of interest to a specific target market. People who want the free report sign up and are emailed free tips, tutorials and reports.

Those who sign up or have previously purchased are highly probable future buyers. The internet marketer sends an email with tips and suggestions and announces they’ve created a new product and adds that link to the email. The combination of a good product, great list, well-planned email copy and a well-written sales page that speaks to the target market, is how many IMers become successful. It’s not easy because all of these things have to work together. And you have to know how to speak to a target market and realize it’s important.

When writing a sales letter style, you must keep in mind you are selling a solution, not a product.

So write it like the product you are offering is the answer to a problem. A good “sales letter” should always be positioned to a target market and has a particular organization of copy that leads the target audience through a process. It’s not just randomly slapped on the page. So while the sales letter style website doesn’t require a menu and should not have one, it does require a specifically choreographed outline of emotional events that make an argument for a particular product. A good story, so to speak.

You may think sales letters don’t work.

I’m here to tell you they do. And they work REALLY well when they are well written and the marketer has a good list. The letters that don’t work are written by amateurs who attempt to copy a style but have no clue how to research the market and apply the principles to speak to that market.

Sales letter writers do more than write copy. They do a lot of work nailing the target and presenting the key selling points.

Is this the site you should build?

Choosing the style of website you build depends on what you want it to do, how long you want it to be up, what kind of product you have and what your target audience will respond to.

Part II: What is a menu-driven site and what are the benefits? Coming Soon to this blog in front of you.