A Low-Tech Way To Boost Response

Some peo­ple have asked me to give a few tips and tricks they can start using right away to apply some of the strate­gies I wrote about in my “Death of the Saleslet­ter” report, with­out resort­ing to audio or video, or fancy scripts.

Aside from the var­i­ous tech­nol­ogy you can start apply­ing to make your sales expe­ri­ence more dynamic, there are some very sim­ple things you can do to your saleslet­ter, right now, to improve its read­er­ship. And ulti­mately, its response.

It’s easy, it’s fast, and it’s proven to increase results.

It’s adding pic­tures, pho­tos, cli­part, and content-​​relevant graph­ics to your saleslet­ters. Par­tic­u­larly, one near the top, around the head­line. (For an exam­ple, check out our lat­est prod­uct, “Mar­ket­ing E.S.P.” (both the optin page and the sub­se­quent sales page).

Head­lines are part of the most impor­tant ele­ment of any saleslet­ter: the “A” in the AIDA for­mula, which is to grab people’s atten­tion and to get them to start read­ing. If you don’t get peo­ple to start read­ing your copy, it doesn’t mat­ter how good your copy is.

They just won’t buy.

Bet­ter head­lines have been proven to increase read­er­ship and response by as much as 700% in my own split-​​tests. But adding pho­tos and graph­ics near the head­line have equally boosted response as well, some­times even more.

I’m not talk­ing about graphic head­ers. I’m talk­ing about pic­tures within the body copy.

I per­son­ally do most of my own graphic work. But when I choose to out­source, the one artist I use the most is Design​Gu​ruRyan​.com. If you’re inter­ested, Ryan also offers a ter­rific infor­ma­tion prod­uct on how to use graph­ics and images to improve conversion.

My friend Brent Turner, branded as the Design Frog, has an amaz­ing pack­age, too. If you pre­fer a more toned-​​down and sub­dued graph­ics pack­age, eCov­ers Lab offers a pack­age, too — and I recently bought it with­out bat­ting an eyelash.

Many pack­ages include arrows, call­outs, stars, frames, order but­tons, and so forth, as well as var­i­ous for­mats, includ­ing the Pho­to­shop native .psd for­mat, so for those ama­teur design­ers, you can change them to your lik­ing if you wanted to.

Vic Kally, who is a bril­liant graphic designer and direct mar­keter whom I talked about on this blog before, offers a bril­liant solu­tion and alter­na­tive to his highly hated “mega-​​headlines” by sim­ply turn­ing them into short ani­mated ones.

For copy­writ­ers who still wish to retain their wordy head­lines (I’d still try to edit them down as much as pos­si­ble), Vic sug­gests a cool trick. Use ani­mated head­lines, where por­tions of the head­line tran­si­tion from one to another in sec­onds, like a slideshow.

This way, if you wish to retain your bulky 80-​​word head­line for exam­ple, you can break it down to 3–4 shorter, less wordy head­lines that tran­si­tion from one to another.

(Also, using this tac­tic you can also apply the ele­ment of curios­ity by adding half-​​finished sen­tences or ideas that force read­ers to watch the remain­der of the head­line — or, bet­ter still, to get them to start read­ing the saleslet­ter — to get the rest.)

I don’t believe we should resort to this, how­ever the use of ani­ma­tion is a cool aspect of mak­ing the web page a lit­tle more dynamic, other than video, which you can test with your saleslet­ters if you must use wordy head­lines. (I am test­ing this, too, right now.)

But head­lines and graph­ics aside, an impor­tant ele­ment you can add to your saleslet­ter, par­tic­u­larly near the head­line, is of a photo or pic­ture. I have found that some pic­tures do increase response, par­tic­u­larly if the pic­ture represents:

1. The author of the letter.
2. The prod­uct being offered.
3. The major prob­lem suf­fered with­out the product.
4. Some­thing that rep­re­sents the main benefit.
5. Before and after pic­tures show­ing the results.

As for #4 and #5, I have found that they work best with tar­geted or pre-​​qualified markets.

Sim­i­lar to the fact that news­wor­thy head­lines seem to out­pull benefit-​​laden ones these days, graph­ics that show a ben­e­fit can be coun­ter­pro­duc­tive with generic, unqual­i­fied audi­ences. Obvi­ously, test­ing is the only way to know.

Nev­er­the­less, here are some exam­ples. For #1, the pic­ture is a sim­ple photo of the per­son who authored the let­ter. It’s the same as some news­pa­per or mag­a­zine arti­cles, in the article’s byline, where the pic­ture of the author is shown.

Bet­ter yet, if you can add a pic­ture of the author in action, par­tic­u­larly if the per­son is speak­ing to an audi­ence, speak­ing on stage, writ­ing on a white­board, deliv­er­ing the prod­uct or ser­vice, or work­ing with a client, they out­pull tra­di­tional stu­dio photos.

For #2, this is a photo of the prod­uct itself. The best ones I’ve found are pho­tos of the prod­uct in its entirety, and if pos­si­ble while in use. They boost cred­i­bil­ity because they show that the offer, the author, and the prod­uct are real.

When I write saleslet­ters for infor­ma­tion prod­ucts, I often ask the busi­ness owner to send me a copy. What I often do is dis­play the prod­uct on a white bed­sheet or kitchen table, then take a photo of the entire pack­age and add it to the salesletter.

(Some of my top-​​marketing friends have even added pic­tures of them pulling out the prod­uct from the box when they receive it in the mail. It’s a great proof-​​generator, since it shows exactly what peo­ple are get­ting and how they are get­ting it.)

For #3, an exam­ple is when I wrote the saleslet­ter for an anti-​​spam soft­ware, where I added a pic­ture of a per­son pulling out his hair star­ing at his com­puter screen, which donned a pic­ture of a can of Spam (i.e., the sand­wich meat one).

An exam­ple of #4 is, for copy I wrote for a “dat­ing guide,” I put up a pic­ture of a happy cou­ple in lov­ing embrace. We also see this style of photo with “get rich” saleslet­ters, where the author is posed along­side his lux­ury car, or hold­ing up money, etc.

The premise is that any pic­ture that rep­re­sents the ulti­mate ben­e­fit or result of the offer is good. There are many cre­ative ways to do this, if you put your mind to it. Think of how you want the reader to visu­al­ize them­selves after apply­ing or using your product.

For #5, it’s almost a com­bi­na­tion of #3 and #4. And it’s prob­a­bly the most pow­er­ful. Before-​​and-​​after pic­tures rep­re­sent com­par­isons between before using the prod­uct and after doing so, and there­fore show­cas­ing the con­trast between the two.

You often see these with weight­loss prod­ucts, muscle-​​building prod­ucts, or makeup prod­ucts. But they are not lim­ited to cos­met­ics or beauty.

We did this with a sale­set­ter I wrote for a com­pany sell­ing spe­cial daylight-​​mimicking “light­bulbs” that cre­ated warmer, richer light­ing, using less energy than most bulbs.

What did we do? We took a pic­ture of a room with reg­u­lar 60-​​watt light­bulbs. We then took another of the same room but with this company’s bulbs.

The before-​​and-​​after pic­tures, set side by side in a sin­gle graphic placed at the top of the saleslet­ter, increased response. (Look­ing at the pic­tures side by side, you can instantly see the obvi­ous dif­fer­ence the light­ing made in the room.)

We also added a cap­tion — and cap­tions really do increase response — that indi­cated the pho­tos were unre­touched and unadul­ter­ated. It said that the pic­tures were taken at the exact same angle with the same cam­era, and were not mod­i­fied in any way.

In fact, add cap­tions to all your pho­tos. Cap­tions are pow­er­ful as they’re almost always read. It’s not only a great oppor­tu­nity to describe the photo but also one to add some inter­est­ing fact, tid­bit, or ben­e­fit related to the picture.

(Add some­thing you want read­ers to remem­ber or appreciate.)

If you don’t have any pic­tures, you can cer­tainly use stock pho­tog­ra­phy. I do when I add post icons at the upper-​​left cor­ner of my blog posts. Some stock photo sites include iStock​Photo​.com, BoxedArt​.com, Pho​tos​.com, SXC​.hu, and Big​Stock​Photo​.com.

Vic Kally also gave a remark­able tip: stock car­toons. Car­toons are fab­u­lous because they are great atten­tion grab­bers, offer a bit of humor, and com­mu­ni­cate prob­lems and solu­tions in them­selves in a direct, poignant, and mem­o­rable way.

Any­way, hope this helps. What other sug­ges­tions do you have to add more “eye grav­ity,” proof, and cred­i­bil­ity to your copy? I wel­come your feedback.

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

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