A Short Primer on How to Write Copy (Part 7: The Guarantee)

The guarantee is entirely option. It is not a necessary part of a sales letter.

That said, it is, however, occasionally useful. The guarantee can act as a final push, spurring an undecided prospect into the action of buying. Whether a guarantee is worth providing depends on you, your product, and your method of delivery.

Reasons to Provide a Guarantee

1. Builds trust between the company and the prospect.
2. Might push an undecided prospect into buying.

Reasons NOT to Provide a Guarantee

1. You don't have the time or resources to validate making a guarantee.
2. You predict a guarantee will hurt profits (usually not the case, but sometimes happens--see the next point)
3. You are afraid of scams. This rule usually only applies to online products. For example, citizens from third-world countries might download, get a refund, and keep the digital product. Guarantees that offer more than 100% of the money back could even break your bank in such cases!
4. You don't have an easy way of making good on a guarantee. Usually this is not the case for digital products.

Should You Add a Guarantee?

As you can see, there are more reasons NOT to add a guarantee than there are to add a guarantee. However, in most cases, adding a guarantee will increase sales to an extent that outweighs the loss due to refunds. In other words, adding a guarantee should be the default (unless you are familiar with split testing, which can objectively tell you whether the guarantee is worth it.

Anyway, should you decide to add a guarantee, don't stress too much over how to write a guarantee. The only thing you need to do is get across the facts that

1. There is no risk in buying your product (e.g., the buyer can get all his money back should he dislike the product).
2. You are confident in your product (if you weren't, you wouldn't have the balls to offer a guarantee--that's the implication, anyway).

As long as you can get these two points across, you needn't stress over how to write the copy for a guarantee. In most cases, stating the guarantee is as easy as placing an image of the guarantee next to the order button or in the order form.

The only hard part here (if you can even call it hard) is deciding on whether you want a guarantee. Anyway, here's an example of what a simple guarantee could look like:

Click for part 8 of How to Write Copy.