MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

I am cur­rently up in Philadel­phia at JV Alert, and I am hav­ing a ter­rific time. Ken McArthur has really put together a tremen­dous event and I will be shar­ing some of my key learning’s and insights from this seminar.

One of my favorite ses­sions of the day was an open Q&A panel with 10 pro­fes­sional online copy­writ­ers… many of them are some of the lead­ing online copy­writ­ers that money can buy.

One spe­cific tip that was brought up dur­ing the ses­sion was the sequence that your online sales let­ter should fol­low as you are prepar­ing for the close.

The ques­tion that was asked was:

“What comes first, the offer, bonuses, or the guar­an­tee? Is there a spe­cific sequence that we should always follow?”

The answer is YES! And the win­ning sequence is:

1) Present the offer:

• Describe the offer, includ­ing the price

NOTE: In their mind, the cus­tomer should already be say­ing… to take my pain away and solve this prob­lem… the price is not too bad.

2) Remove the risk:

• Offer a risk rever­sal, the guarantee

NOTE: In their mind, the cus­tomer should now say… wow, there is noth­ing I could lose by tak­ing action.

3) Pile on the bonuses:

• Over deliver with addi­tional bonuses that will fur­ther help the cus­tomer relieve their pain and take them to the next level

4) Recap — final summary

• Of course you want to have a neat sum­mary towards the end and also never ever for­get to fin­ish with pow­er­ful PS lines

Accord­ing to exten­sive test­ing, the above sequence was con­sis­tently per­form­ing bet­ter than any other sequence. So, go back to your sales let­ters right now and check if your sequence is the same. If not, I sug­gest that you setup a test to see if you can fur­ther opti­mize your con­ver­sion rate by doing what the experts do.

Last 5 posts by

• Do you think SEO in other lan­guages is eas­ier? — Sep­tem­ber 18th, 2008
• Google Slap — How to recover from a Google Slap? — Sep­tem­ber 8th, 2008
• What Does Your Order But­ton Say? — August 29th, 2008
• Will Knol Rule The Search Engines? First Analy­sis Indicates…It Just Might — July 23rd, 2008
• Are small busi­nesses drop­ping out of AdWords? — July 23rd, 2008

About the Author

Prior to MindValley Media, Mike was the Head of New Ventures Strategy at eBay where he conceived of the strategies that led to the investment in Craigslist, the launch of Kijiji.com and the acquisition of Skype. Mike has an MBA from Stanford and previously worked for the Boston Consulting Group. He is also a certified Google AdWords Professional.

Check out other posts by Mike Reining

If you want to see what's in the private lab...

Ask yourself... which part of your business would you most like to improve?

I can send you 7 tactics related to your specific needs, if you like.

You don't have to buy anything, just take it as a backstage pass into our private course.

Will it give you the solution you've been waiting for?

There's only one way to find out.