Most Internet Marketers rely on their savvy copywriting techniques and persuasive skills learned over years from offline print world. These concepts go back to 1920’s, where person-to-person dialog took a backseat due to new mass media platform to push sales message in various advertising forms. Today, Internet Marketers assume this is still only option when it comes to “online” sales letters, since reader is not physically present and cannot give immediate corrective-feedback.

In a minute, I’ll tell you why this will be their downfall…

Your sales letter is your voice to convey your benefits and offerings to masses. The only reason a visitor is even at your site is to see if you have a solution to their problem. Effectively convince them that you have solution for a reasonable price, overcome any objections and you get sale! Simple. Right?

“Wait a minute! How do I know what’s most important to each different visitor. How do I convince an unknown reader that I have their solution?”

Good questions. You may have one product with various benefits, or many different affiliate products which you promote. Which benefit or product should you focus on so that each specific visitor has no choice but to rip out their wallet and start spewing out credit card numbers?

Read this part carefully –

All persuasive sales letters (no matter how hypnotic and enticing) must anticipate mindset and views of visitor. As a copywriter, you’ve been given task of being a mind reader. You are forced to write your sales letter in such a way that it answers every possible question and objection. And when possible, trigger emotional desire that was brought with each visitor. This can be quite daunting, considering that each visitor has their own specific desires and questions relevant to their unique situation. But bottom line is -- you must satisfy visitor's quest for meaningful, relevant information before they will say “yes!”

Now I am going to unveil a powerful and exclusive formula to do just that. Discover hidden desires deep inside minds of each and every one of your visitors. You will have all-knowing power of what each wants from you.

All that you have to do is master “super-amazing-advanced-top-secret proven technique” real live salespeople all over world have used for years to dig out that elusive customer desire. They ask!

A correspondent to AdBriefing, my monthly newsletter, has posed a very sticky question. How, she asks, can you tell whether a headline you have written is a good one…or not? What she means by this, I imagine, is whether headline will actually help to make sales, rather than just act as a passing amusement to its readers.

The latter precept, that a headline should actually try to sell something, is not as universally known as it might be. The vast proportion of headlines actually say nothing whatsoever about product and benefits of owning it. And reason for this is that good, selling headlines are not easy to write. So majority of so-called copywriters take easy route and produce something which they think is humorous or eye-catching and hope that this will do job. That it won’t and doesn’t can be witnessed day in and day out in press ads, brochures and websites worldwide. But I digress.

There is sadly no absolute test that a headline will do job it is paid to do. If there were, we benighted copywriters would be earning ten times what we are earning now, on grounds that our work would be foolproof. Every headline we conceived would be irresistible; and products would move off shelves like Spring snow off a dyke.

But there is a test – a very good and worthwhile test – that you can apply to any headline you create. I call it ‘So What?’ test.