I’m sure you have seen those ugly long online sales letters. You’d be surprised how well those pages perform in regards to sales. But in 2012 long text based sales letter are OUT! From now on it is all about the video sales letter.

Your business needs to go ahead and add some video sales letters to your site. Below is my 11 step action plan for implementing video sales letters into your business and web presence immediately.

1. Buy Keynote or Powerpoint.

I prefer to use Keynote for creating my video sales letters. Keynote is only $20 and it is one of my favorite pieces of software. Of course you can use Powerpoint too if you have a PC. (I absolutely love Keynote so I created an entire video training series about using Keynote in your business.)

2. Practice Creating a Few Sales Letters.

One great this about video sales letters is that while they can include shot video, they can also be 100% text based. This allows you to create them in your boxers with your 5 o’clock shadow, feature important screenshots, and keep production cost low.

Try these two practice video sales letters:

1. Do a general intro of your website. This video will ideally be on the homepage. It will be 1-2 minutes long. In the video introduce yourself and introduce your business.
2. The second video you need to make is a product specific video. No matter what your business I’m sure you offer different types of product. Well now is your opportunity to pitch your product. Explain why the visitor must buy the product immediately.

Creating these two videos will be a fantastic learning experience.

3. Upload Your Practice Video to Vimeo.

Vimeo videos tend to look more professional, in my humble opinion. Once the video is uploaded go ahead and practice embedded the video somewhere like your blog or a Squidoo site.

PRO TIP: The video needs to autoplay. Meaning when someone hits the page the video plays automatically. These video sales letters can be super powerful BUT if the user never clicks the play button you are screwed. Therefore avoid this issue by making the video autoplay.

4. Write Your Script for the real deal.

Anyone can create a video sales letter. But the pros write detailed scripts in order to make their videos super powerful. There are tons of articles about the “perfect” formula. Here is one. I recommend being yourself. Avoid using industry jargon or marketing-speak. BUT do read a few articles about the successful sales letter formula.

5. Create Your Homepage Video Sales Letter.

The goal of this video is simple. MAKE THE VISITOR TAKE AN ACTION.
Anything will help. You are just trying to reduce your bounce rate and get the person to scope out your site. Grabbing their email would be ideal.

6. Edit using iMovie or ScreenFlow.

You may or may not need to edit this video. If you do I recommend using iMovie or ScreenFlow. I personally use ScreenFlow.

7. Embed your sales letter on your homepage or landing page.

It’s show time. Embed the sales letter video and make sure to select the autoplay function when grabbing the Vimeo embed code.

8. Write the Script for Your Sales Page Video.

The first video is to get people engaging with your site whereas the second video is all about SELLING PRODUCT. This video can be shorter than the homepage video and tailored to the product you are pushing.

9. Create the Product Sales Letter Video.

By now you are a pro so just create it.

10. Embed it.

Enough said. (remember the autoplay) When embedding a video sales letter on your sales page, I suggest placing a buy now button directly below.

11. Add other sales videos throughout your site.

You can add a video on your About Us page, Contact page, or anywhere throughout your small business website. Maybe get creative and do a webcam video of your pretty face and integrate that with your text based sales videos. The sky is the limit here. Humans are used to seeing faces and hearing voices so video sales letters are much more intuitive than text based web pages.

Author: Matt Smith     Matt Smith on the Web Matt Smith RSS Feed

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This article originally appeared on Future Simple – Small Business Software and has been republished with permission.

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