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The Internet marketing gurus have pronounced the traditional sales letter dead, buried it, held a wake and crowned its successor. The new generation of sales letter is long and detailed and contains personal anecdotes. For the potential customer this is good: they can learn what a program is about without submitting their email address to a complete stranger. For the Internet marketer it is good because it is a new challenge and a challenge is always good for stirring up fresh ideas. For some Internet marketers it is bad because they don't have the ability to write a good sales letter.

If you are in the latter group, don't despair, you have options. Here are three to consider: (1) hire a professional to write the sales letter for you, (2) borrow someone else's sales letter and just change a few details around or (3) buy expensive software to do the writing for you.

If you are thinking of developing a long sales text for your website or email campaign, each of these options has a drawback. The first option is definitely the best but the services of a decent copywriter will set you back a serious amount of cash. The second option could very easily lead you into trouble if you base your letter too closely on a document which is protected by copyright. From what I have read the expensive software is not fool proof and is, well, expensive.

The biggest problem with the second and third options is that if you can't write decent advertising copy, you might not know what to change to stamp your personality on the sales letter. Also, you might produce something that does not make sense or, worse still, you might produce something unintentionally funny and either of these can ruin the credibility you have worked hard to establish.

The following is an extract from the opening paragraph of a real website (incidentally, although the ad copy gets a thumbs down, the product is fine) using a long sales letter:

"First, let me say, this is a rather unusual story. Y'see as I'm writing this, just the other week something happened. I was sitting in my front lounge, laptop on my sofa mindlessly watching TV. When there was a knock at the door. Scattering to put on some clothes I wandered over to the window and noticed it was my neighbor"

If you scan this quickly, you will understand the situation the author is trying to convey but there are problems in the way this paragraph is written and, if you read the whole page, you will find problems with the continuity of the story. The first issue is that, due to poor construction, this paragraph does not actually make sense. For example, one sentence reads "When there was a knock at the door." A comma instead of a stop after "TV" would help a bit towards making sense but it would still be a clumsy sentence. Also, I know how a crowd scatters but how does one person manage "scattering" on his own? He most likely meant "scrambling" but the reader should not have to work to decipher meaning, it's part of the writer's job to make the meaning clear.

If he likes to work in the comfort and privacy of his own home wearing just his birthday suit, that's fine. The problem is that further on in this story, the neighbour says: "I see you through this window (she points) every single morning. You're right there on the couch when I get up. Right there when I go to work. And more often that not you're right there when I get home.."

What are we to make of this? Is the author an exhibitionist who likes to cavort naked in front of a window on a daily basis? Is the neighbor a voyeur or just a very liberal minded person? Does this scene take place in a naturist colony? Actually, if it was a naturist colony he would have been comfortable in the buff and wouldn't have been "scattering" himself in paragraph 1. My answer would be none of the above. It's my belief that whoever put this copy together simply forgot the reference to needing to put clothes on in the first paragraph. This tells me the story is the invention of someone who has not had the experience described and has not pictured the whole scene

I should also say that on the website in question it says "often that not" (as above) instead of "than", it isn't a typo by me.

Would the website owner be pleased that potential customers become sidetracked by thoughts of him being naked in full view of his neighbors? Of course not, he wants them to focus on his product and a good copywriter will know exactly how to do that. If you are less than fully confident of your ability to produce good advertising copy, hire a professional: a professionally written sales letter will pay for itself over and over again.

If you do employ a writer to ghost write your own story, make sure you provide plenty of detail to bring the story to life. You want a production in glorious Technicolor not sepia and the writer will need real details of your experience to make the story seem personal. When you have the finished article, give it to a couple of trusted friends and get their opinions and criticisms so you can decide if any editing is required before publishing. I just saw a website where the owner, somewhat self-importantly, stated that few companies would receive his "world renewed" seal of approval. Where were his friends when he was adding this masterpiece to the Internet?

If you want to use a long sales letter on your website, it's usually best to relate your own experiences because people like true stories. If you think that's too boring, at least be creative in your composition because it won't be too long before your potential customers have seen so many of these badly cloned efforts they won't be fooled by any of them.

Copyright 2006 Elaine Currie