Sell by using a 20 Page Booklet

Long sales letters are one of the most effective forms of direct advertising. The truly interested prospect wants as much information as she can get before buying.

Before you mail off your next five-page sales letter, think about replacing it with a sharp, good looking 20-page booklet (one sheet makes four pages). Both take only five sheets of paper, cost the same to print, and can be mailed with a single stamp.

People get sales letters all the time and think nothing of tossing them in the trash. A booklet looks and feels more valuable and expensive. This is especially true if you pack it with valuable information the prospect will want to keep for future reference.

They are simple, and very easy to make…

Take five sheets of paper, fold them over like a book, and you’ve got the template for your 20-page booklet. Many word processing programs will allow you to set the words… and nearly any word processor is suitable for booklet making. Some even have templates, but they are also easy to create for yourself so you can use them time and time again.

Use a heavier, colored card stock paper for a nice looking booklet cover. Staple on the center-line (staple points face inward) for a binding and cut/trim opening edge even with an inexpensive paper shear.

Note: For “content” information booklets, I like to use about 10% of the inside space for discreet advertising. The idea is like my ad sponsored “Christmas Recipes From Around The County” booklets I produce. I insert 10 business card sized ads for local merchants (one on every other page) in the recipe booklets. I also add a full-page ad on each inside cover and a “premium space” on the back… which I sell for a lot more money than the other, smaller ads.

If you find yourself with some extra space, small line art graphics makes a good filler – as long as you don’t use too much of it. Something like these are good:
…be sure to have them printed in black and white… unless you are doing an expensive booklet for a client, and they pay the color up-charges.

I normally have a local printer print, fold, staple and trim 500 copies of the booklet, then I have the local churches distribute them for free. I also place a few in the more popular city restaurants as “a favor” to the owners too. The last time I did this, I cleared better than $2,000 for about 4 hours work in total.

I also do this for other local companies. I do about 1,500 words of pure content related to their business, and sprinkle in a good number of ads (many are “textual”) for their products or services. With minimum runs of 1,000 copies, I charge ‘total cost of printing’ plus $2,500 labor for a 1,000 piece job lot, and $500 more per 1,000 additional copies and/or re-runs of the same materials. No job has taken me more than 12 working hours, including sales ‘face time’ to get the order. I have MANY repeat sales because these booklets are a very popular sales promo item, and are very much in demand in a savvy, knowledgeable marketplace.

Hint: My best customers are banks and credit unions. They not only do huge orders, they order often too. Reason: They like to have “exclusive” materials for promoting their banking services. I provide it… no problem.

These are followed by service businesses of all kinds. Can you imagine your plumber handing you a booklet (or you picked it up with the Sunday church bulletin) about how to clean your own sink drains? And… who are you gonna’ call when it’s more than you can do?

I thought so.

Be sure to include one or more pages with order forms that customers can tear or pull out and mail.

And if you do this for other companies, be sure to put your own contact info in the booklet. I like to put it on the inside back cover. This is where curious prospects are most likely to first look for who did this booklet. Naturally, you want them calling you. Right?

Another hint: These make great black and white (or color) catalogs too. 20 pages with 4 to 6 items per page, you have an ‘up to 120 items with short descriptions’ catalog for your, or your client’s products. I have done many of these, both for myself and my company, and for a number of clients for my business “Old Nikko’s Business Solutions.” These services are among the hundreds of things I do for my consulting clients.

A funny (sorta’) story: The first time I did this, as a kid, I wrote a whole info-booklet about fishing for Walleyes (12 pages then) out by hand on sheets of paper. Once done, I very neatly copied them to mimeograph masters and mimeographed 50 copies using the school mimeo machine. I sold the booklets for $1.00 a copy, and sold out in less than 2 hours as I remember it. I took that $50.00 to a printer in town and had him run 200 more for the fifty bucks. Those sold out in a few days, and I took all the profits and did it a third time, and he did a deal – 800 copies for my $200.00. After about 10 days of after-school work, I pocketed $800 cash and called it a success. In those days, and for perspective, an adult guy working in the factory made about $60.00 or so a week.

I bought a 1932 Ford Coupe with the cash, fixed it up with a rebuilt V-8 engine, and had enough cash left over for the rest of the school year and to fund my next “mini-project.” Oofda!

Not just another pretty face and a 175 pound bag of wind, eh?
Hunger, determination and creativity wins hands down, every time!

The only real “skill” you need is to be able to sell the advertising… and if you sell the way we at The ECN suggest, even that’s an easy thing to get done.

[Some folks call these Pamphlets... but a rose by any other name, and so on. Either way, they can make you a lot of cash, and make it quickly. You can also sell more ads too, but be careful to not over-do it. Too many ads, your booklet "retention" falls rapidly.]

In one of the next “nutshell” posts, I’ll talk about making up a sample booklet, “take one” display, advert BB, and etc. – and using that to make your selling job even easier… I may even throw in a short sales script too.