I’ve written two new sales pages for a client this week.

 

Sales pages are my favorite type of business writing. They pay best ($250/hour and most take at least five hours to write) and they’re exhilarating to write. (Because if they aren’t exhilarating to write, they can’t possibly be exhilarating to read!)

 

They get my creative juices flowing in ways that few other business-oriented pieces do.

 

SALES PAGES ARE ALIVE!

 

Sales pages must wake people up and insist that they pay attention.

 

They have to put readers into a kind of hypnotic trance so they have no desire to slip away even for an instant until they reach the end of the piece (or before because they simply can’t wait to hit the BUY NOW or REGISTER NOW button).

 

WHAT I DO WITH SALES PAGES

 

 

I get the first draft down relatively quickly by placing on the page the details of the offer — the facts, figures, features, etc.

 

Then I go back with a Creative’s eye to see how I can make that material magical — how I can make it sing and dance. I use alliteration, punctuation, and other tractor-beam-like techniques (some of which an English teacher would slap me silly for doing*) to keep the target audience sliding down the page, falling more deeply into the substance and value of what’s being offered as they go.

 

At the end, they simply MUST engage (or I have failed as a copywriter). To pass the offer up, they’d feel deprived of benefits/takeaways they suddenly can’t imagine living without.

 

And not a word of it is dishonest.  It’s all true, all legitimate.  (I won’t write copy for clients who aren’t the full meal deal in their niches. I won’t use my writing skills as a shill. That would be the sacreligious use of a skill that I have honed to BENEFIT the world, not to defraud it.)  If I were to lie or to make claims that I cannot back up with detailed confirmation, the Federal Trade Commission could come after me and heavily fine me and /or my clients, neither of which I would ever want happening to us!

 

* THINGS ENGLISH TEACHERS WOULD SLAP ME SILLY FOR DOING

 

Before I became a copywriter, I read several copywriting books. I did so because I had been a freelance writer for decades already but I had never been a sales page writer. The two are almost mutually exclusive (except that learning to write sales copy has made me an even better general writer).

 

Three of the most crucial things I learned about writing sales copy (the correct term here is copywriting) follow.

 

THE PERILOUS PERIOD

 

At the end of every sentence is a perilous period. Unless the very next word is riveting and compelling, the readers of a sales page are fully capable of giving themselves permission to leave. So, the next word following a period has to compel them forward — just as the “Unless” and the “So” at the beginning of the last two sentences compelled you forward.

 

The human mind is insatiably curious. It can’t leave an and, but, so, or, or if well enough alone! It simply MUST know what comes next!  So, by violating English standards (“Never start a sentence with and, but, or“), a copywriter breaks the rules to compel the reader’s mind to travel farther down the page.

 

ALLITERATION

 

Now, obviously, I can’t use the above technique with every single sentence in a sales piece. So, another other thing I do most commonly is use alliteration where it will have the best (most hypnotic) effect.

 

Alliteration is the repetition of an initial consonant sound in words that are in close proximity to each other.

 

Here are a few well-known examples:

• Leapin’ lizards!
• She sells seashells by the seashore.
• How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?A woodchuck would chuck all the wood he could if a woodchuck could chuck wood.
• Taco Tuesday
• Bed Bath and Beyond
• Good Grief!

Again, I don’t overdo alliteration either. Copywriters’ techniques can’t be ham-handedly used or they stick out like sore thumbs. They have to be massaged into the copy so it sounds like a personal conversation between two people.

 

CADENCE AND MUSICALITY

 

Finally, I make sure that each piece has a cadence and musicality within its structure that both suits the topic and is pleasing to the reader’s sense of rhythmic justice.  We all have an “inner ear” that seeks out cadence and musicality, whether we’re aware of it or not.  Whenever a sales piece successfully combines riveting copy, alliteration, cadence and musicality, and a sense of “safe community” (the know/like/trust factor), it has the secret sauce that drives sales.

 

Mostly, I love writing sales pages because they are marvelous opportunities to dance with words until the symphony is perfect!  IT ALWAYS FEELS SENSATIONAL TO SUCCEED!