Do you have problems attracting new customers?
If so, the best thing you can do is create a good lead magnet.
A lead magnet is designed to attract a prospect in your target market and a good lead magnet will be structured as a sales letter.
A sales letter is designed to present an idea about your product or service.
The idea presented usually shows the reader how your product or service will solve their problem or make their life better.
Copywriting is a methodology of crafting a sales letter, AKA selling in print.
There are many great books on this subject.
Claude Hopkins was arguably one of the earliest known copywriters and he truly pioneered selling in print.
He made his way through life by advertising and a pretty handsome living at that.
Writing ads is a skill that so few have or even desire to learn.
The best copywriters get paid big bucks to do what you are about to learn.
Understanding the basics of how to structure an ad and how to make it appealing to the person you intend to reach, is simplified using a sales letter.
When you understand the structure you can hire anyone to design ads for you and you will have a pretty good feel of whether or not they are going to work.
If you have been sold anything of value, it is very likely that you were sold on what that product or service would do for you before you made your purchase.
Meaning the company who made the product, likely spent money to identify a problem or problems and then designed their product around solving that problem.
The person conveying the message is referred to as a copywriter.
Ray Edwards, the author of How to Write Copy That Sells, Writing Riches and several other bestsellers, has a formula for how to write to people in a way that makes them want to purchase.
Ray calls it the PASTOR sequence.
The PASTOR sequence is an acronym for a series of steps that takes the reader on a journey and guides them to a desired action or response.
The pastor sequence lays out as follows.
The P in pastor stands for “pain” or “problem”.
When you start out you want to identify a problem or pain that your reader is experiencing.
In many cases, you might identify this in the headline, subject line but it will be very early in the letter. It’s important to note when I refer to the letter, you may be talking on video so it may not actually be in text, but the point is, the content identifies the pain or problem very early in the message.
The A in pastor stands for “amplify”.
Once you have identified the pain or problem you want to amplify or agitate the pain.
As the expression goes, when someone stabs you in the back sometimes they like to twist the knife.
When you find pain you want to make the prospect feel the pain even more then they felt when you first brought it up and you do that by amplifying the problem.
The S in pastor stands for “solution”.
Once you have established the problem, made the reader feel worse about the problem, now you want to show them that there is a solution to the problem and how lucky they are that you are able to provide it for them.
The T in pastor stands for “testimony” or “transformation”.
This is where you want to tell the prospect what the solution has done for you or others like them.
The more testimonials, the more comfortable someone will feel about making a purchase.
The T can also refer to “trust” because this part of the letter helps you to establish trust with the prospect.
The O in pastor stands for “offer”.
This is where you tell them about what you are offering that will alleviate their pain or solve their problem.
This is usually where you tell them what that might cost, but not always.
Sometimes you will use a sales letter strictly to get your prospect to sign up for a free offer.
The free offer is designed to build more trust with the prospect and to establish you as an expert in their eyes.
It can also be part of the weeding process, where the person may decide that what you have to offer is not for them and that’s ok too.
It’s important to understand that the better you know the profile of your ideal customer, the easier it will be to weed out those who do not fit into this category.
The R in pastor stands for “response”.
When you put your offer out there, you want a specific response from the prospect.
The response may be to go to a website and fill out a form, make a purchase or a plethora of other responses that you have predetermined as the next step for your prospect to take before becoming a customer.
Russel Brunson, the founder of Click Funnels, describes the way people purchase similar to a ladder.
If you can get people onto the ladder of purchasing from you, then it is far easier to get that same buyer to move up the ladder to an eventual larger purchase, if they end up being the type of customer you are seeking.
I know this may sound crazy, but as I said earlier, you do not want every type of customer that you can acquire.
I can assure you if you take too many customers that don’t fit what you are seeking in a client, you end up frustrated, stressed out, overworked and sometimes downright pissed off that you have to deal with that type of person.
Using a ladder sequence is a way of eliminating people who will not be your ideal customer in the end.
If you follow the PASTOR sequence and build a lead magnet, you can begin attracting prospects very quickly.
I help business owners to create a direct response customer acquisition system that allows them to attract their perfect customer.
If you would like to learn how to use LinkedIn to attract your perfect client, you can sign up for a free webinar I am doing on Thursday. For details click here.
To your lifelong prosperity,
David Mulvaney