This article follows on from my previous one, “Adding Excitement To Your Sales Letter – Part 1″ where I outlined the steps you need to take to really get to know your product, customer and opposition before you write a sales letter for your product.

OK, so now that you know what product you are really selling and who you are selling it to it’s time to start thinking about words and emotional buttons to press to make your prospect excited.

I love to use adjectives and metaphors that create pictures in my prospects mind as he reads my sales letter.

Metaphors especially are such wonderful tools to create a mental picture in someone’s mind, take a very common one for instance:

“Like a Hot Knife Through Butter…”

Immediately your reader sees this phrase he subconsciously imagines himself effortlessly running his knife through the block of butter without any effort at all.

There is no need to explain how easy things are, the mental image created in your prospects mind does this for you, immediately he understands exactly how effortless the process you are describing is.

Warning – it is imperative that you know who your target market is and only use metaphors that they can understand and relate to.

Take the above example for instance, if I were addressing my sales letter to people in China and I hadn’t taken time to research my market I’d be very surprised when I found out that this particular metaphor has no effect on them other than to have them say “What is he talking about?”

You see, butter is not a culinary item in China, most people have never tasted it, heck you can’t even buy it outside of the big cities – I live in Nanning, a city of 2 to 4 million people and there are only two shops where you can buy it!

As a side note you can and should use your words and phrases to qualify your prospect to continue reading further – you only want people who are really interested in your product to purchase it otherwise you could end up with all sorts of complaints and refund requests.

Describing words, or adjectives as the grammar purists would call them, are powerful little words that immediately tell you about something.

For instance if I tell you that I met a girl the other day and… you will probably say “Yeah? So what.”

But if I tell you that I met a girl who was so beautiful she should have been a model on the cover of ‘Vogue’ magazine… Immediately your ears perk up and you listen more attentively.

Why?

Well, firstly I have used an adjective to describe the girl and then supercharged that adjective with the allusion to the fashion model. Not only are you creating a picture in your mind of a beautiful girl you’ve met but you also start to think of glossy magazines and picture all the beautiful girls that you’ve seen on the covers.

You start thinking to yourself “you lucky so and so, I wish I’d met her… ”

You want to find out what happened and you’ll really listen to what I’ve got to say – I’ve created a little bit of excitement in my story.

Another way to add excitement to your sales letter is to allow your passion and feelings for your product to come through into your copy.

I received an email the other day with the title:

“As Important As a Bag Of Cobras Sitting In Your Lap”

This was a brilliant eye catcher and practically forced me to open the email.

Now this headline is about emotion, you’re stirred by the vision of snakes in your lap – How much would you like to have a bag of snakes in your lap? Would it get your full attention? – You bet it would!

But if, I add one more word, a word that refers to emotions, it makes the headline even stronger. See what happens to the headline when I add anger into it”

“As Important As a Bag Of Angry Cobras Sitting In Your Lap”

Oh my god, help me, not only have I got snakes in my lap but they’re mean and angry too… HELP!

Now I’m riveted and have to open the email.

Back to the content of this email, I opened it expecting an interesting, important message and I wasn’t let down.

The writer had just been through a bad experience with a former customer and allowed his passion and feelings to be transferred into his writing. You could feel his pain and emotion as you read his message.

You need to do the same when you write your sales letter, use your passion for your product and whatever emotions it triggers in you to get your message across. Since you know your target market well by now it will be easy to write in a way that they can relate to and understand.

Go on give it a try.

All the best,

Stuart.

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Stuart Elliott is a world-class copywriter who has written numerous articles about sales letters and copywriting. Pick up your free copywriting power guide at
http://howtowritekickbuttcopy.com

“The Best Copywriter On This Planet Is Free… No Hired Gun Has More Passion For Your Product Than You Do”

Article Copyright 2006 Stuart Elliott, All rights reserved. You may only reprint this article in its entirety and you must leave this resource box intact.

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