A sales letter is your brand's written pitch to your ideal customer. Its purpose is to capture your customer's attention, inform them how you can solve a problem they have, and ultimately increase sales. It needs to be compelling and filled with value.
Donald Miller, author of the book Building a Storybrand tells us that the story structure can offer you a game-changing upgrade to improve your brand’s messages from sales letters to website copy, social media posts, and so much more.
Donald Miller also teaches other companies how to use traditional story structures for marketing messages.
Most people don't know about the power of the story structure, so they create weak corporate messaging, but following the proven StoryBrand Framework allows you to engage your existing clients while attracting new ones too.
This approach to marketing has helped many companies around the world simply because the story structure is too familiar to ignore and it eliminates all the unnecessary parts of your pitch.
Here are some tips on how to write your brand's sales letter using the StoryBrand Framework.
Put Your Customers at The Center: Lessons From Ray Edwards and Donald Miller
Ray Edwards says it best in his book, How To Write Copy That Sells when he treats the sales letter as a trailer and your brand's product or service as the movie.
“Then the question becomes... how do we create a “trailer” – in our case, a sales letter – that makes people decide on the spot that they must have the actual product?”
Donald Miller, the author of Building a StoryBrand teaches us the answer. Make the trailer all about the customer.
When your customer sees your sales letter and realize that it's one written just for them, your story becomes irresistible.
The StoryBrand sales funnel starts and ends with the customer, taking them from zero to hero. The first thing you need to do to make sure your copy works is to stop making it all about your brand and put your customers at the center of it all.
Use Easy-to-Understand Words
Clever wording of product copy creates confusion. And when you confuse, you lose. Lose what? Your customer’s attention.
It’s never been easier to ignore sales messages. We’ve evolved—a human being can now sense an ad from a mile away. It’s never been more important to show up with the right message.
When you write your sales letters, avoid complex sentences by using words most people would understand.
There are brands out there that use jargon to try and establish authority, but explaining it in simpler words tells your audience that you have a clear grasp of their needs.
In other words, if you use simple words, you're telling your customers that you know exactly what you're doing.
If you want to establish your authority in a more sustainable and engaging way, let your customers know that you've solved other people's problems before with your solution. Add some social proof and testimonials. Using ten-dollar words doesn’t impress anybody anymore.
Read Every Word Out Loud
Reading the sales copy will reveal many things. When you hear yourself reading your work, using your voice with eager intentions behind the tone, you'll immediately recognize the parts that need revising.
When you're still talking about your brand, you're probably doing it wrong. Your company's role is to guide your customer through the solution you're offering.
Your Sales Letter Needs to Highlight:
- Your customer's problem
- Why the problem shouldn't exist
- How you can help solve this problem
- Proof that you've done this before
- 3 easy-to-follow steps to get to the solution
- A clear call to action
Finally, good sales writing feels natural and conversational but good sales writing is more formal and conversational than usual.
Create One-Liners and Explore More Angles
One-liners are single sentences that help people realize why they need your business/product. It will grab customers' attention and attract their imagination for your brand.
Imagine writing an elevator pitch. Like we said before, it's so easy to ignore brand messages these days. You want to show up with a one-liner that captures their attention immediately.
Your one-liner should be about:
- The problem your brand addresses
- The success story your customer will experience
These days, you need to be brave enough to turn your back on mindless marketing methods that bombard people with irrelevant messages. With a clear message, you only need to show up in front of the right people.
And because your message is so clear, it'll be easy to spread the word—this approach to marketing is more sustainable and it builds loyalty faster and easier than flashy yet annoying ads.
Readers will scan your copy as well before they read. Your sales copy probably contains multiple content styles. Analyze the flow of your writing to ensure that your message remains on-brand.
Test different messages to find out which ones resonate more with your ideal customers. When you bring your brand in front of your customers, you might need to take on different platforms.
Different customers have varying personal narratives. It's entirely possible that a message in one platform doesn’t perform just as well on another.
Seek different approaches and test them all—create a blog post, engage with customers on social media, build online communities that ignore algorithms. Adding some variety can also help you fortify your brand's general messaging.
Create a Clear Call to Action
After doing the emotional labor of creating a simple and clear marketing message, it's time to reel them in. After you've convinced them to buy in, make sure they'll know what to do next.
Add a clear-cut CTA button to your sales copy and make sure it's easy to understand. Terms like:
- SHOP NOW
- SCHEDULE A CALL
- GET A QUOTE
These are just some of the most common CTA buttons you can see on just about any marketing material out there today. CTAs are also important because they can serve as a measurement tool. You can determine the effectiveness of your marketing copy just by looking at how many people clicked through your CTAs.
Why The StoryBrand Sales Funnel Works
Every sales funnel focuses on the customer’s journey that ends in the sale. The StoryBrand Framework makes a necessary tweak into this system by positioning your business as a guide and shaping your brand’s story into one that invites your customer into a transformation.
This simple framework can help your business create a website that attracts the right people, it brings your product or service in front of those who actually need it. It doesn’t guarantee that your business won’t be ignored, but it makes sure that those who ignore it won’t move the needle for your business.
Learn How to Use The StoryBrand Framework in Every Part of Your Business
Join the next StoryBrand Workshop today and use the proven power of stories to create marketing messages for your brand that move the needle for your business. In this workshop, you’ll work with StoryBrand Certified Guides and get all the coaching that you need. It’s immersive, interactive, and it will change the way you show up for your customers.
Strengthen your company’s internal communication, enable customers to spread the word about your business, and improve the way you increase your ROI. Click on the button below to sign up for the next StoryBrand Workshop.
Click here for more valuable information!
