Slapping Salesletters Together Slaps Back

My 50-​​page report last week cre­ated quite a stir. Some peo­ple who did not read it may have mis­un­der­stood my point. How­ever, I’m not going to make another blog post ded­i­cated to the grow­ing pop­u­lar­ity of online audio or video. (I prob­a­bly will, but I’ll save it for another time.)

But to sum­ma­rize, while saleslet­ters in prin­ci­ple are not dying — I’ve cho­sen “Death of the Saleslet­ter” as a title to get peo­ple to read the report, among other things — and long copy is here to stay, the deliv­ery mech­a­nism is indeed slowly being replaced. (Granted, we still have a way to go, yet.)

By the same token, a cer­tain type of saleslet­ter is indeed dying.

The gar­ish, poorly writ­ten, mul­ti­col­ored, sus­pi­cious, con­fus­ing, long-​​winded saleslet­ter is def­i­nitely on its way out if it isn’t already. And many of these let­ters have a lot of copy not because they need more copy to make the sale but because they are pur­pose­fully long for a vari­ety of reasons.

(Less-​​than-​​skilled copy­writ­ers will have a ten­dency to add more copy with the thought, or in the hope, that more copy is what’s needed. That is often not the case. It’s more often due to bad copy, pure and simple.)

The prob­lem is not being long to cover all the bases and give the reader as much infor­ma­tion as is needed to make the sale. The prob­lem is, copy­writ­ers are lazy and often “pad their copy” with use­less con­tent — use­less in that it’s irrel­e­vant to the sale, and not nec­es­sar­ily to the reader or the offer.

(Mea culpa. I’m def­i­nitely guilty of this, too.)

Yes, copy­writ­ers are lazy. Just because you talk a lot let alone write a lot doesn’t mean you can sell. “Ugly web­sites are dying,” as John Reese once noted. So too are lazy copy­writ­ers. (My friend and copy­writer Craig Per­rine calls them “junior mint copywriters.”)

Con­trary to pop­u­lar opin­ion, the hard­est part is not in the writ­ing but in the edit­ing. Here’s the thing: it’s harder fig­ur­ing out what NOT to say than it is what to say. And that, my friends, requires skill.

If you were a sales­per­son in front of a prospect, and if you had all the time in the world, nat­u­rally you would say as much as you can. (Keep in mind, there is also a prob­lem with “overselling.”)

Long copy is impor­tant because you would sell far more effec­tively if you had an hour to sell than if you only had 10 min­utes. But sim­i­larly, you don’t need an entire day, either.

And now with the “ping fac­tor,” which I talked about in my report, your read­ers’ envi­ron­ment on the web is plagued with more dis­trac­tions and choices than ever before. So you need to be good not only at get­ting their atten­tion but at keep­ing it, too.

I remem­ber when I took pub­lic speak­ing coach­ing, and my men­tor said that you should always charge your heav­i­est fees for the small­est speeches. For exam­ple, you would charge more for a one-​​hour keynote than you would, say, a two– or three-​​hour presentation.

At first, this baf­fled me. You’d think, the shorter the pre­sen­ta­tion, the lesser the fee. Right?

But then I real­ized that writ­ing a shorter speech is def­i­nitely far more dif­fi­cult because you still have to con­vey the same mes­sage in less words, and ulti­mately get peo­ple to take action with less words, too.

Copy­writ­ing essen­tially has two major func­tions: know­ing what to say and know­ing how to say it. The for­mer requires a lot of research and dig­ging. The lat­ter is a lot eas­ier. That’s why I always pre­fer rewrit­ing or cri­tiquing copy.

But given the changes we’re expe­ri­enc­ing, know­ing how to say it is going to become sig­nif­i­cantly more dif­fi­cult over time. And thus, it will require a lot more skill to do, too.

Just as choos­ing what not to say is a skill in itself, you also have to skill­fully choose the right words to do the job.

Saleslet­ters that have the high­est con­ver­sion rates aren’t those that are longer. Or to be more spe­cific, they are not con­vert­ing because they are long. They are con­vert­ing because they are pithy — even if they are, by all appear­ances (and for some peo­ple), long.

When I said saleslet­ters are get­ting shorter, I didn’t mean “short.” I didn’t mean a two– or three-​​paragraph saleslet­ter as opposed to a two– or three-​​paged one.

I meant shorter than most long-​​scrolling, long-​​winded saleslet­ters that never get to the point, and are there­fore too con­fus­ing or labor-​​intense to read because they are clumsy, poorly writ­ten, and slapped together with­out any care or concern.

Brevity has a lot of power.

Jim Rohn said it best:

“For effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion, use brevity. Jesus said, ‘Fol­low me.’ Now that’s brief! He could be brief because of all that he was that he didn’t have to say.“

In the same sense, what I want you to real­ize is that your saleslet­ter can sell for you as much as the words do.

(Aside from tar­get­ing your audi­ence and cre­at­ing a pow­er­ful offer, this also includes your appear­ance, the qual­ity of your con­tent, the method of your message’s deliv­ery, and above all, your cred­i­bil­ity, i.e., the proof you bring to the table.)

Addi­tion­ally, by brief I don’t mean to be abruptly short or terse. My friend and top copy­writer David Garfinkel wrote an effec­tive arti­cle on the sub­ject of the dif­fer­ences between being con­cise and being curt.

My friend and top copy­writer Peter Stone said it best: “Write fear­lessly, edit ruthlessly.”

In the final analy­sis, I believe 2007 is going to be the year where we will see more and more mar­keters writ­ing far more effec­tive copy. They will tell bet­ter sto­ries, edit their copy far more effec­tively, project a higher qual­ity and believ­able sales pre­sen­ta­tion, and embrace the power of engage­ment and “sam­pli­fi­ca­tion” on the Internet.

Thence the point: copy­writ­ers should think about mar­ket­ing, sales­man­ship and under­stand­ing human behav­ior, not just writ­ing. Copy­writ­ing is going to be increas­ingly impor­tant. Con­se­quently, copy­writ­ers who are skilled and ver­sa­tile are going to be even more in demand than ever before, too.

If any­thing, this should be a wakeup call to get off our anatomies and get bet­ter at copy­writ­ing. The power of copy lies not in the power of using words but in the power of choos­ing words. And it all boils down to under­stand­ing human behav­ior.

Oppor­tu­nity is poud­ing at the door. Are you listening?

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

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