Selling products or services over the Internet is a challenge, especially when it comes to dealing with consumer behavior. Trying to determine what works best selling to people who have no idea what you sell boils down to the hard or soft selling situation. This means, in your sales copy there's an open opportunity for you to test this technique.

Write your sales letter with an individual in mind. 

Go ahead and pick out someone, a real person to write your sales letter to. Doesn't matter if it is grandmother or your next door neighbor. Write your sales letter just like you are writing it to them personally. 

Why? 

Because when your potential customer reads it, then it will seem personal, (soft) almost like you wrote it with them in mind. Too often, sales letters are written as if they were going to be read to an audience rather than one person. Keep your sales letters personal, because one person at a time is going to read them.

Use an illustration to get your point across.

In your sales letters tell a story about your car stalling on the side of the road to illustrate the idea that we must constantly add the fuel of advertising to keep our businesses running. Compare the hype of easily making millions online to the chances of you riding bareback across Montana on a grizzly bear. 

People have read on how getting to the top of an oak tree relates to aggressively (hard) marketing online. People love a good story that pounds home a solid message. Tell stories that illustrate a point you are trying to make. Emphasize a benefit by sharing an account from the "real world." It effectively creates interest and further establishes the point.

Create an interest in the reader from the very first line.

Your first line of the sales letter should immediately create a desire (hard) in the reader to want to know more. If you can immediately get them wanting to know more, you've got a winner.

Make it stand out.

Don't kid yourself. There are hundreds, maybe thousands out there on the web doing the same thing you are doing. How will you stand out among the crowd? Your sales letter must inject personality. It must breathe (soft) of originality. Your product or service is different. It's not like all of the rest. It is unique. Right? Your sales letter must separate you from the competition. It must create a feeling of "You won't find this anywhere else." 

Be believable. 

"Earn $54,000 in the next 24 hours!!!!!" Don't make outrageous claims that are obviously not the truth. You'll ruin your reputation. Let me tell you a simple universal fact that cannot be reversed. Once you have been branded a liar, you will NEVER be anything but a liar. It doesn't matter if you launch the most respectable, honest business available anywhere, people will always have doubt because they remember the crazy stuff you've said before. Be believable. Don't exaggerate, mislead, and stretch or distort the truth.

In conclusion- The BIG SECRET to advertising on the Web is the same secret to advertising anywhere, which is - You've got to get attention, and give readers a reason to respond. There's no law that says that you have to look exactly the same as everybody else. There is no law that says that you have to say the same things everybody else says. Hard or Soft - Just Say It!

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