Humans HAVE TO develop a resistance to commercial advertising and sales pitches.
Put it another way - if you said “Yes” every time someone offered you something to buy, pretty soon you will have spent all your money, and you’ll end up broke, bankrupt and starving!
That’s why it’s been a copywriter’s job to find ways to “get under the radar”.
It’s been our job to look for tactics where we can slip past people’s natural defences, their natural aversion to being “pitched to”, and sneaks into the soft fleshy part of their brain where we might be able to get them to make a buying decision…
RULE #1 OF SALES COPY: Don’t Make Your Ad Look Like An Ad
But SO MANY people are screwing this up online.
For a long time, I defended long form sales letters…
“They look horrible… They sound horrible… They’re blatantly obvious sales pitches…
…Yeah, but they sell well!”
And let’s face it - they HAVE sold well…
But do they sell the best?
Is there something that could sell better?
Step back for a minute - where did long-form salesletters come from?
They came from the direct marketing industry. The OFFLINE direct marketing industry.
They used to be delivered via post into people’s hands - and were read like genuine person-to-person letters.
It was a way of getting through the brochure-mail and junk-mail, and actually GETTING READ - because letters get read, whereas advertising mail lines the bottom of people’s budgie cages or is delivered straight to the bin.
This is why they were sales-LETTERS.
Long Form comes into the picture because you NEED 16 pages to establish a rapport with someone who you’ve never met with before.
Advertorials were born in a similar way.
Direct marketers’ ads weren’t being read in newspapers - so they came up with another strategy. They hid their sales pitch inside what looked like editorial - what looked (on the surface) to be a genuine article.
Long form sales letters worked really well in the infancy of the internet…
So did the split testing strategies behind sales letter creation…
But nobody really thought about the “why?”. People just blindly followed the advice of “Pro Copywriters” who assured everyone that long form was the way to go online - based on their 30 years experience offline. (This is the same reason EVERYONE has Red headlines… one copywriter said red headlines work the best, and within a month, every sales letter online suddenly had red headlines).
The problem is, people are becoming “immune” to online sales letters.
Via email, people are “spamming” sales letters that arrive… Via web pages, people are having a quick look, then hitting the back button.
And the reason is simple…
THE FUNDAMENTALS BEHIND GOOD DIRECT MARKETING ARE BEING FORGOTTEN
Copywriters are just blindly following what everyone else is doing - without thinking about WHY.
Copywriters are using slang and informal language in ALL sales letters… When it was originally used as an early NLP-style tactic to mirror and build rapport with targeted markets - weight-lifters, body-builders, people with a self-defence interest, cage fighters - people who use slang and informal speech normally.
Copywriters are using long-form styles that “turn off” their targeted customers instead of engaging them… Instead of fighting for attention with long form sales letters, copywriters should be engaging prospects by using writing styles that their prospects engage with - blogs, article sites, news sites, Wikipedia, video sites…
Copywriters should still squeeze before a sale - but they don’t need to use churn-and-burn strategies to hassle prospects into buying, or go away… Old-school copywriters used to have a high cost of attaining and then contacting leads - it was buy or die. Profit or lose money. Each lead cost so much more to gain, and so much more to contact.
Today, we have the luxury of communicating with our prospects online for free - so we can afford to invest into building life-long buying relationships with clients.
We don’t need to be take-take-take, pitch-pitch-pitch, sell-sell-sell as copywriters. We CAN give away value too to engage prospects.
This is the next generation of sales copy writing - particularly for the online marketplace.
We’re fighting for attention in the most distraction-riddled medium that has ever existed - the internet.
The copy writing war-cry for online marketing is not “BUY OR DIE!”
The new war-cry is now “ENGAGE!”
Are you engaging your prospects? Are you giving your market what it wants?
Are you slipping under the radar, using the same common technology, common writing styles, and common language used by your market? Or are you trying to jam your prospects faces into the much-hated long form sales letter?
Watch this space…
Copywriting is changing.
Tags:commercial advertising copywriter Copywriting copywriting 2.0 copywriting secrets direct marketing natural aversion sales pitchesPopularity: 55%
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8 responses so far ↓
1 Gavin Allinson // Apr 28, 2008 at 4:37 pm
are you going to suggest any specific tactics or strategies.
the sale should be done by the time the person gets to the sales letter.
Gavin
2 Brent Hodgson // Apr 28, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Still trying to find the “best” strategy… but so far, I’ve seen a few “good” strategies.
Both are used by affiliates…
In one case, product reviewers talking specifically to a problem (often with video), addressing how to solve that issue, and then offering a product which solves the problem…
In another case, article marketers are doing essentially the same thing.
Formatting also (I believe) makes a big difference.
I don’t want to be pushing one particular strategy until I uncover what works best…
Sales letters are fundamentally flawed when it comes to SEO because of the human-review element, and fundamentally flawed for online conversion because in most cases they don’t engage and keep people on the site long enough to actually “sell” effectively.
Brent
3 Gavin Allinson - Outsource Success // Apr 29, 2008 at 2:22 am
The approach that Frank Kern uses and the good old Product launch formula seem to work i reckon, even if they have been over done in the internet marketing niche.
I’m sure that would do well in other niches, people are already sold before they even see the sales letter from what i can tell.
Gavin
4 John Sadler // Apr 29, 2008 at 3:42 am
Brent, I really like what you are saying about the passing of the long sales letter. I am recently come to online marketing and the ‘engage’ mantra sounds right to me. It also resonates when you say about using multimedia and approaches to building trust before a sale can be made. I look forward to reading future posts from you :o)
5 N. Mann // May 1, 2008 at 9:48 am
Brent,
What the devil is wrong with you? You got a screw loose in the head?
I’m a copywriter as well, but I don’t go around spewing facts to other copywriters like that. So long as all these chumps are swearing by oversized, red text and obvious ad-copy, real copywriters like us get to work for corporations which shell out large sums of cash for real copy.
You’re giving away the secrets of good copywriting (although, it’s sad that it’s a secret that long sales letters are a joke that most users will pass by). I find it hard to even run across those types of copy because they are a nightmare for effective SEO.
I know you’re trying to do the writer-community right, but sometimes, you have to let the failures sink because they were too lazy to think for themselves and do research in their field. They’re probably the same types of people that would pay large sums of money to a company whose website looks like trash.
To Brent: I completely agree with this article and will check back here to see what else you got to say. It’s an old idea among all writers: cut the fat, leave the best text. Make every word count, etc et al ad nasium.
To the other copywriters: Keep writing long sales letters. All the cool kids are doing it, and Brent and I want the big money.
6 Dave L // May 2, 2008 at 3:07 am
Don’t forget key motivators… .. and on the web, put a photo in your articled with key engagers in the caption.
7 Brent Hodgson // May 2, 2008 at 12:23 pm
@Gavin - You’re right. People get sold before they even hit the sales letter…
But one of the best tools for that are the 3 r’s: reputation, rapport, relationship.
Two examples of this:
1 - the conference I went to this weekend was sold on the back of 6 vague bullet points on what the seminar would be about… and the ticket price was $5,000 per head.
It’s because of the relationship Ed Dale has with his list that he can do this…
2 - A long time ago, I screwed something up. I accidentally put a sales page (placeholder) live before the sales letter was finished…
All the page said was “coming soon” beside a tiny product picture (too small to read).
A few dozen people stumbled on that page… and 2 people bought!
In this case, the web-site owner also had a great rapport and relationship with his database.
@John - Thanks for your feedback! Multimedia (video) is something I’m wondering more about recently after seeing how Ed Dale uses it at the conference this weekend.
@N. Mann - lol! I’m happy to give away value. Thank-you too for your feedback.
8 Agent A // Jul 4, 2008 at 8:50 pm
It’s nice to see we’re not the only copywriters who think like this. Although, as Mr. Mann says, that makes you a competitor. We’re watching you.
Agent A
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