Long before I ever even heard of the phrase copywriting (the skill of writing an effective sales letter), I owned a massage therapy center for a lot of years.

I’d put out massage marketing that would routinely pull 3-5% response rate even with novice mistakes like using my business name as a headline. I have a few pieces in my personal collection from that center that pulled as high as 15% and were not well written.

At the time, I didn’t realize how badly most marketing does. As a rule of thumb, the marketing industry considers a 1-2% conversion rate to be a successful marketing campaign.

How did I pull off such great conversion rates?

It wasn’t writing great sales copy because I didn’t know how.

I didn’t have to have a catchy slogan. Or a graphic designer creates a killer look to the marketing.

In fact, most of my marketing was printed on the Brother laser printer I had in my personal office.

I was making a great offer to a well-targeted audience. Frequently that audience was people who were already clients of the center.

Here’s the main point: Making a killer offer to properly targeted prospects is most of the battle. And if the prospects are already sold on your service, then it’s even easier to make the sale.

Strong sales copy is actually the 3rd most important factor. Get the right powerful offer to the right targeted prospects and you can still see a great result – even if you write sales copy poorly.

Because massage is a very physical demanding profession, it’s important to make a strong offer without giving away most of your potential income.

Too deep of a discount and you’ll feel like you’re working for pennies instead of dollars.

You don’t want to do free massages either… unless it’s part of a lead generation plan. Then you’re only doing short 10-15 minute sessions like offering 10 minutes of free onsite chair massage at a convention.

The right offer doesn’t have to be money off either. You can offer free upgrades like a free hot stone massage upgrade or a complementary music CD or candle.

You need to make the right offer to the right-targeted prospects. At the very least, people who enjoy professional massage and have the financial means to pay for it.

It’s sounds obvious but a lot of massage therapists still make the same mistake: Not everyone is a prospect for your services.

Lesson learned: Get your offer down cold and make it a tremendous offer. Offer to the right prospects – or your existing client base. Everything else frequently will fall into place from there.