For most business owners, writing sales letters are perhaps one of the hardest things to do. But for those who have basic knowledge in copywriting, sales letter writing might not be as hard as what most people think it is. This is because there are actually proven formulas that work in almost types of business letters. One of these formulas is the AIDA principle. The AIDA principle is an acronym for basic guidelines in copywriting. AIDA stands for (A) attention, (I) interest, (D) desire and (A) action.
Attention
The very first thing that the reader would do upon receiving your sales letter is to scan the entire content. Most sales letters are quite long, and the customers wouldn’t really take so much of their time to read the whole content of your letter not unless it catches their attention upon scanning it. Having said this, the letters should be eye-catching enough so as to draw the attention of the reader to the letter.
This can be done by using a catchy and colorful heading. The heading should also be on different font size as the body of the letter. Using bullets and subtitles would also help in catching the attention of your reader. Interest Upon catching your customer’s attention, it is important to keep the customer interested about the succeeding lines of the sales letter. The first paragraph is basically as important as the heading and so as the second and the last paragraph. Each paragraph should achieve the purpose of keeping the reader interested in reading the next paragraph.
One way to keep the reader’s interest is by asking questions. Questions are proven to arouse interest as the reader would be pushed to think upon reading the question. It is important however, that the question is relevant to the product that you are selling.
Desire
In the certain part of the body of the letter, second and third paragraph perhaps, it is necessary for you to stimulate the desire of the customer to invest on the product. This part is crucial as this would provide the selling point of the product. This could be done by citing the benefits and advantages of owning the product.
If you are promoting a laundry shop, for example, you may mention that the laundry shop is conveniently located in front of a coffee shop wherein the customers can have coffee while waiting, or that the laundry shop has its own Wi-Fi network that would allow internet access inside.
Action
Finally, the last paragraph should encourage the customer to take immediate actions of owning the product. At this point, it is vital that you would convince him to do whatever that is that you ask him to do. This can be done by mentioning the benefits that he or she could get if he or she would own a product now. In the case of the laundry shop example, you may say like there is a discount for the first 100 customers.
Applying the AIDA principle does not only facilitate your sales letter writing tasks, it also helps increase the number of customer responses to your sales promotion letter. Get more tips on sales letter writing tips.