How To Include Benefits In A Sales Letter

It’s the benefits that sell a product or service not the features. Every basic copywriter knows this yet not all know how to include benefits into their sales letters in the right way. Many will just throw them about or include the ones that they think are relevant. Others will at least have some basic structure and include them in the part of the sales letter that is designed to arouse that buying feeling in prospects but will fall short of getting the most from these incredibly important benefits.

Without benefits things don’t sell, plain and simple. The best unique selling propositions all have benefits in them. For example what sounds like a better marketing service for your company? You have marketing service A who’s unique selling proposition is “We really care”, then you have marketing service B who’s unique selling proposition is “Rated #1 In The U.S.!”, and then you have marketing service C who’s USP is “Increase revenue by 10% or your money back”. Which one are you going to use everything else being equal? Marketing service C that’s who. The one who actually provided you with a benefit.

Benefits, Benefits, Benefits

In a face to face sales situation you ask questions of the buyer and then listen intently narrowing in on what their key buying emotion is. For example let’s say you’re selling a carpet cleaning service. One guy is simply neurotic and wants his house cleaned from top to bottom, another is a wife who’s mother in law in coming into town so she wants to impress her, and another is a kid who threw a party while his parents were out of town and just want you to clean it all up quickly. Depending on what the desire and need of the customer is is going to change how you sell to them and the benefits that you really high light.

With copywriting you can’t do this. Unfortunately you cannot have a conversation with your prospect form a sales letter. So you need to lay down all of the benefits in a sales letter you don’t have the luxury of just going with what you think the main benefit should be and leaving it at that. You have to make sure you address the main buying reason of your prospect so you have to lay out every benefit of your product or service. You might have ten main benefits and it’s number seven that is going to cause the prospect reading to buy. You never know which is why you have to include them all.

Where To Include Them

Now that you know you have to include all of your benefits to make sure you’re addressing the needs of your prospects something else that you need to learn is where to include them. And the answer is right away and then a rehash at the end of the letter. Even in the headline the biggest benefit should be stated boldly and clearly. Headlines are no place to be vague or cute. Get right to it and get right to the point. Then after the headline is the lead. In the lead you want to really trump up the benefits and build a picture of what your product or service is going to do for the prospect.

So for example if it was a weight loss program for women you’d want them to feel all the guys staring at them, their husbands paying them attention to them, and the jealousy of all their friends in the lead. You’d want to stir up these emotions. Then you’d back all of this up with facts and logic before hitting them one more time at the end with all of the benefits. While in the lead you want to use descriptive words and descriptive language at the end you want to list out each and every benefit that there is.

An Example

A perfect example of this is when writing a book. Let’s say that you have a one hundred page book on working out. Now let’s say that this book had 250 headlines throughout the book. Just like this article is divided up into four separate headlines each addressing something different. When you wrote the sales letter for that book you would want to list out page by page each and every benefit. So if you had 250 headlines in the book each one addressing something different you’d want to include them in the sales letter.

In the lead you’d describe the overall effects of the book what your prospect can expect and really get them excited about it. Then right before the call to action in the summary part of the letter you’d list out all of the benefits so that your prospects knew exactly what it is that they are getting. You’d go from headline to headline (assuming they all described benefits) and list them out.

  • Find out this one food that can increase fat loss 400% (pg. 12)
  • The one exercise that makes all the difference when it comes to having ripped abs (pg. 14)
  • The truth about steroids that the bodybuilding industry is too scared to tell you (pg. 15)
  • How I gained 20 lbs on muscle in under a month using this one simple technique (pg. 16)
  • Without this exercise I would have never been able to play pro ball (pg. 18)

You get the general idea.

Summary

Knowing how and when to include benefits in a sales letter is incredibly important. The benefits after all are the heart of your letter and what sells it. Without benefits nothing is going to get sold. A list of benefits and nothing else will sell more product then the rest of a sales letter without the benefits. That’s how important they are. Never forget that people are sold through emotion (benefits) and then later rationalize it through logic (all that other stuff). Make sure you don’t miss any benefits because if you do then you’ll also be missing customers and sales.

If you have any questions you would like to see answered in a future post send them to me at charlessledge001 (at) gmail (dot) com. If you found value in this post then I would encourage you to share this site with someone who may need it as well as check out my books here. I appreciate it.

-Charles Sledge

Charles Sledge