The Rule of Three

In order to generate sales, your marketing copy needs to have an internal rhythm that psychologically draws people in and keeps them reading. Yet, most of us are not psychologists – or else we’d be making $350 an hour and not need to sell information products online.

So, how do you get people to read on and feel “natural” about your sales copy?

It’s simple – just remember the “Rule Of Three.”

Anything you write – be it prequalifying questions or bullet points – should come in groups of three.  It just clicks in the mind better and keeps people reading.

In other words, you don’t want to have five bullet points about your benefits – you want to have three, six, nine, 12 or 15.

The same goes for your introductory paragraph – which should always be three sentences – and your closing section – which should be three or six sentences.

Always remember the rule of three and profits you’ll find will come to thee!

Prequalifying Your Customers

When a potential customer comes to your site, the first question they are going to ask themselves is “Did I come to the right site?” or “Is this site for me?”

That’s why the opening paragraph of your letter needs to prequalify your potential clients – so that they know they should keep reading.

The best way to do this is to start off with three questions about the reader. Make them general enough so that the majority of people reading them would have to answer “yes” to at least one question. This reassures them that they have come to the right place and should continue reading.

For example, if you were selling CDs or an e-book about working from home you could lead off with:

“Are you not making enough money? Do you hate your job? Would you like to have more money in the bank?”

Almost anyone in the world – other than Bill Gates – would have to say “yes” to one, if not all three of those questions.

And then they’d keep reading.

The $100 Rule

Once you’ve decided what sort of information product you want to sell, you need to decide how to price it. Do you want to go for the big bucks right off the bat?

Probably not.

The key to selling stuff on the Internet is to generate impulse purchases. Unlike a brick and mortar store that people will walk by regularly on their way to work, you usually only have one chance to make a sale – during the two or three minutes maximum that someone is looking at your site.

Therefore, you have to price your product low enough so that people feel comfortable making the purchase without too much thought.

That’s where the $100 rule comes in.

Market research studies show that when thinking about buying something people are much more willing to make an impulse purchase if the item costs less than $100. In fact, a majority of people said that before they’d buy any item costing more than $100 they’d talk to their spouse about it first – which is the last thing you want to have happen.

Therefore, no matter what you are selling make sure you price it less than $100 – even if you just make it $99.99 – or you will lose lots of sales.

Testimonials

When it comes to selling your products, you can only do so much on your own. Even if you write the best sales letter in the world – people still understand that you have a vested interest in talking up your merchandise.

What makes people trust you is to hear from other people who have tried your product, and had it work for them.

That’s why you always need to include several testimonials in any sales letter you put on the web.

Don’t, however, go overboard. If you put in too many testimonials, you’ll break up the rhythm of your sales letter. In general, try to have at least three but no more than five testimonials in your sales page.

Getting testimonials doesn’t have to be that difficult. You can ask your family and friends to try your product. Or you can offer your product at a discount to several customers in return for them providing you with testimonials.

The main point is that testimonials create credibility, and credibility sells – so make sure you include them in each and every sales letter you create.

Short and Sweet

One of the biggest mistakes people make when they try to sell their products online is giving people too much information. They write sales letters that are so long that people never get to the closer and give up reading before they make a purchase. Or else they tell people so much about the product that their potential clients don’t need to buy it – they can figure out the “secrets” for themselves.

Ideally a killer sales letter should be six to nine pages long when written in Arial 12 with an Arial 20 main headline and Arial 16 sub headlines. It should tell your customers the benefits of the product – but make them have to order it to find out exactly how it will help them.

In general, when it comes to killer sales letters, less is more. It’s OK If you are enthusiastic about your product – but don’t go overboard and write the sales equivalent of War and Peace.

Just keep it short and sweet and rack in sales and turbo charge your profit potenial!

The Guarantee

When someone comes to your site to read your sales letter, you have a very limited time in order to close the sale. Unless you can capture their email address for follow up messages you need to get them to make up their mind and open their wallets in five minutes or less.

The problem is that even if a potential client is entranced by your sales page and really wants your product, part of them will hesitate. After all, the Internet has a very bad reputation for sales products and they don’t want to get ripped off.

That’s why you always need to have a money back guarantee in any sales letter on your homepage. The guarantee is what takes someone who wants to buy but is nervous and converts them into a buyer.

It doesn’t matter how long a “trial period” they have for the product. You can offer a 30 day, 60 day or even one year guarantee. It all accomplishes the same thing – it makes someone comfortable purchasing your product and encourages sales.

The good news for you is that almost no one ever asks for a refund. And, the stronger your guarantee the less likely it is that someone will ask for their money back. For example, if you offer a two week satisfaction guarantee you’ll get more returns than if you offer a one year satisfaction guarantee. That’s because after a year your client will probably have forgotten about your product and won’t remember to ask for a refund. Yet, the one year guarantee seems stronger to them when they are thinking about buying.

Bonus Items

When people come to your site, what really makes them buy? What pushes them from “Maybe I’d like to try that” to “Holy Cow! I need to order this!”

Bonus items.

The truth of the matter is that people like to feel like they are getting something for nothing – even if they have to pay for it. That’s why no matter how good your product is, you always need to offer to give your potential clients something for “free” in order to close the sale.

The good news for you is that your bonus items don’t have to be that spectacular – or even particularly expensive. You just simply have to have several of them and make sure that they have some relevance to the product you ARE selling.

Often you can accomplish this by offering people free reports that enhance your product – or online consultations with yourself in order to help them use your product to your best advantage.

An easy way to accomplish this is when you’ve bought the rights to large CD sets. For example, perhaps you have the rights to sell a six-CD set of Armand Morin’s Marketing Secrets.

Why not have your sales letter be about the first two CDs, and then offer to “give” the next four CDs as a “free bonus”?

Sure, you would have included those CDs in the package anyway – but your customer doesn’t have to know that!