The full title of this book by Dan Kennedy is
“The Ultimate Sales Letter: Boost your sales with powerful sales letters, based on Madison Avenue techniques“.
In my review posted at Amazon.co.uk, I gave the book a Five Stars rating. This means I think it is Excellent.
Here is my book review.
My copy shows plenty of signs of use and that’s probably the strongest recommendation I can give.
When I look at my copy of this book, it shows all the signs of use – the spine cracked, various sections underlined in different colours, others asterisked and there are comments in the margin.
This is a book I go back to when I am preparing to write a sales letter because it is a) very good and b) very well organised.
The author has identified 28 steps in the process of preparing the ultimate sales letter. Some of the steps can normally be skipped because most of us won’t have our letters externally printed.
To give you a feel for the book, let’s have a quick look at some of the steps.
Step 1 – Get Into Your Customer. Your sales letter must talk directly to the reader so the more you understand what they want, what they want to avoid, how they think and feel, what language do they use… the more you will connect.
.
Step 2 – Get Into The Offer. You have to understand the product or service you are promoting and the particular offer. “People do not buy things for what they are, they buy things for what they can do.”
.
Step 3 – Create A Damaging Admission And Address Flaws Openly. Identify why people won’t respond and where practical address the objection. Admitting fallibility increases the credibility of the other claims.
The steps continue to help you to prepare yourself to write the letter and then do it section by section.
I think the book misses its target audience slightly. The focus is on creating mass mailing letters but I don’t believe that the readership will be mass mailing and those who do, will probably employ a professional copywriter.
The 28 steps is likely to put off some people who have a more simple process in mind:
Step 1 – write the letter
Step 2 – post the letter
Step 3 – the phone rings
I wish copywriting was that simple.
This is an excellent book and will help you write better sales letters. However I don’t think experienced copywriters will learn much. If I was allowed half stars I’d rate it at 4.5 stars but because my book has been used so often, I’m happy to round up rather than round down.
It is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com. However you should probably go for the latest version of this great book at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com
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