Using Social Proof and Closing Your Sales Letter

Another thing you can use in your sales letter is social proof.  Social proof could be testimonials, pictures of things that have happened etc.  Until recently, social proof was considered absolutely necessary on your sales letter.  Again for cold traffic, I believe that social proof is helpful.

Sometimes if you have a lot of testimonials your sales rates can double or triple.  Sometimes they can go down.  One of the reasons they can go down with testimonials is if the person that’s giving the testimonial is not typical of the person that’s going to buy – then the testimonial can hurt.

For an example, let’s say that you’re in the Legal niche and you offer a “do it yourself” home legal kit with 100 forms in it.  Those could be a Will, Birth Certificate, etc.  But if your first three testimonials are from attorneys that are telling you how easy it has made their life, then the lay person that’s thinking about buying it may be thinking, “Oh, this is for attorneys, it’s not for me.”

Let’s just say if you were selling a “start your own business” for homemakers or for moms who stay home and that’s your target market.  Then your sales letter has a few billionaires that are endorsing you, that could hurt your conversion rate.
I believe just like everything else, testimonials need to be split tested.  There’s another problem that has recently occurred with testimonials.  That’s a standard of proof that the government requires.  I cannot go into that too much as I am not an attorney, but you can go online to find out what you can legally do or not do.  The bottom line though is that the government does not want you to put testimonials on there that are not accurate.  Some people put fake testimonials and fake picture to make it look like you’ve got such a wonderful product.  There are a lot of laws now that surround the use of testimonials.

In my opinion because I market to warm traffic and not cold traffic they already trust me so social proof doesn’t make that much of a difference.  For me, I’m not saying that’s the case for you, so for myself, why fight the legal battle if I don’t have to.

The next thing that you need to do is have a call to action.  That’s pretty much it.  You can add a few more things if you’d like, but don’t over complicate this.  That’s your basic sales letter outline!  Remember to write in your voice – it’s important.