Copy Is Not About Selling, It's About Serving

If you’ve read my report, The Death of The Saleslet­ter, then you know that many of my “pre­dic­tions” (I’m using quotes for a rea­son) were based on actual test results. Many of them were made by, or done based on tests from, John Reese.

John is one of my men­tors. He’s not only a multi-​​millionaire but also a vision­ary. And lately, John has proven this to be true. Recently, he released a fas­ci­nat­ing report enti­tled The Rebirth of Inter­net Mar­ket­ing, which I highly encour­age you to down­load and read — if you haven’t already.

While John touches on many aspects of the trends affect­ing Inter­net mar­ket­ing (such as adver­tis­ing, con­tent, author­ity sites, and more), for me the most salient point is, with­out ques­tion, the decline in long-​​copy saleslet­ters, and the increas­ing pop­u­lar­ity and ver­sa­til­ity of video-​​based salesletters.

How­ever, there are a few things to note.

Busi­ness man­age­ment expert Peter Drucker once said: “The truly impor­tant events are not the trends. They are changes in the trends.”

In other words, it’s not how trends affect sales copy that’s impor­tant. It’s what they tell us about how peo­ple digest it (and how they want to digest it) that is.

In “The Next Infor­ma­tion Rev­o­lu­tion” (Forbes, August 24, 1998), he stated that we are mov­ing beyond the mere “col­lec­tion, analy­sis, and pre­sen­ta­tion of data,” to under­stand­ing the mean­ing and pur­pose of the data.

In fact, Drucker said that trends most often are just fads. In my esti­ma­tion, impor­tant trends — those that affect how we under­stand and serve mar­kets bet­ter — are the ones worth spotting.

Why? Because trends teach more about our mar­ket and their behav­ior, than they do about mar­ket demand or opportunities.

In other words, what’s impor­tant is what we can learn from these trends, how they affect the way we serve mar­kets, and how we can use them to serve (and sell) more effectively.

Again, it’s all about human behav­ior and sales­man­ship, which will never change. Peo­ple shape tech­nol­ogy and allow it to flour­ish — and not the other way around.

New tech­nolo­gies will come and go. Some will flour­ish and expand. Oth­ers will even­tu­ally fall by the way­side or out­right fail.

But any new tech­nol­ogy — like video on the web, for instance — is not the result of a new trend. It basi­cally allows trends to take form. It allows users to receive, col­lect, and act upon the data in the way that best suits them.

Tech­nol­ogy is a facil­i­ta­tor, not an insti­ga­tor. It allows users to affect the way busi­nesses serve and per­suade them, rather than let busi­nesses dic­tate how users should respond to, and buy from, them.

That said, I want to make some­thing clear: copy will never change. That is, good, com­pelling, per­sonal, ego-​​driven copy (the user’s ego, not the author’s) will never change. And long copy will never die, either.

But the spammy, garish-​​looking, gaudy, long-​​scrolling saleslet­ter is on its last legs. It will always be around, I believe. But peo­ple will invari­ably see through them, if they don’t already. And they will do so par­tic­u­larly because of the con­trast cre­ated by other forms of con­tent deliv­ery and the value they create.

Let me be more specific.

These long saleslet­ters will always work. And in some mar­kets, they will work bet­ter than oth­ers and are more appropriate.

But to me, such saleslet­ters are akin to “smash-​​and-​​grab” jew­elry thieves. They come into the mar­ket with their long, hypey, over-​​the-​​top copy, make as many sales as they pos­si­bly can, and then stag­nate or die — forc­ing the mar­keter to come up with a new prod­uct to sell to keep cash­flow at a sus­tain­able level.

Long, hypey saleslet­ters are like drugs. They give the mar­keter a tem­po­rary high with an injec­tion of new sales. But after a while, they come down from the “trip,” which forces the mar­keter to change, tweak, test new copy, or cre­ate more of the same “one-​​shot prod­ucts” to stay afloat.

For a grow­ing num­ber of peo­ple, this is no dif­fer­ent than the snake-​​oil sales­men of days gone by who drove into a new vil­lage, sold as many of their con­coc­tions as pos­si­ble, and then skipped town before peo­ple real­ized their “amaz­ing cures” were worthless.

Does this mean that direct mar­keters are snake oil sales­peo­ple? Not at all. Loud, long-​​scrolling copy has sold many a great prod­uct — and will con­tinue to do so. They will always have a place.

But for long-​​term, steady, sus­tain­able suc­cess and growth, these devices will fal­ter more and more over time — or be per­ceived as snake oil sales­men by an increas­ing major­ity of peo­ple. The copy will there­fore need to work harder at com­mu­ni­cat­ing proof, cred­i­bil­ity, and trustworthiness.

This need was always exis­tent. But it’s moreso today, espe­cially on the Inter­net. Why? Because the Inter­net is indeed dif­fer­ent. And this is the point I was really try­ing to con­vey in my own report.

After John Reese released his report, one per­son defi­antly men­tioned that “the video-​​based saleslet­ter is ludi­crous,” that “noth­ing beats clas­sic paper and pen,” and that “video buffer­ing times are too slow,” which will deter the eas­ily distracted.

I agree in part. Par­tic­u­larly the bit about dis­trac­tion. But my answer to his state­ment is, you don’t use clas­sic “paper and pen” on TV or radio. And osten­si­bly, you shouldn’t. The Inter­net is just another medium, true. But it’s not a direct mail medium.

Granted, it used to be at first (since browsers were once only text-​​based), and still is to some degree. But that’s chang­ing. Why? Because the Inter­net is grow­ing up. (Call it “Web 2.0″ or what­ever you want. It doesn’t matter.)

In fact, this is the same thing with buffer­ing times: the increas­ing pen­e­tra­tion of broad­band and new video tech­nolo­gies (i.e., Flash and bet­ter com­pres­sion) will make video even more flex­i­ble and faster-​​loading over time. In fact, it’s here already.

(If you want to see where video is going, check out this web­cast from Adobe. While this video shows upcom­ing ways of mon­e­tiz­ing videos, I’m more intrigued by to the use of videos to mon­e­tize copy — and how videos are becom­ing eas­ier to use and more versatile.)

As for the point about being a dis­trac­tion, it’s exactly for this rea­son I believe that video is more pow­er­ful than long-​​scrolling, “pen-​​and-​​paper” copy.

I called this the “ping fac­tor” in my report, The Death of The Saleslet­ter. We are dis­tracted on the Inter­net, and moreso these days because of the grow­ing pop­u­lar­ity of tech­nolo­gies that allow for more inter­ac­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and con­tent delivery.

(Think instant mes­sen­gers, blogs, RSS feeds, emails, alerts, wid­gets, appli­ca­tions, push tech­nolo­gies, multi-​​tabbed browsers, etc.)

For exam­ple, if a salient point that might clinch the sale hap­pens to be in the mid­dle of your long video, it can be eas­ily over­looked when peo­ple are distracted.

That’s why I believe long infomer­cials on the web don’t work, just as much as long copy on the web doesn’t work — or work as good as it used to. The web is not another direct mail medium, just as much as it is not another TV or radio medium, either.

Entirely video-​​based saleslet­ters on the web will be coun­ter­pro­duc­tive. They still need copy and mech­a­nisms that allow those videos to be digested, and above all, small enough to appeal to the eas­ily distracted.

Small, pithy, bite-​​sized videos, audios, even copy (e.g., shorter para­graphs, copy clus­ters, and visual aids for eye grav­ity), that are used to com­mu­ni­cate, sup­port, or empha­size key points in the saleslet­ter, are best.

(With respect to videos, smaller sizes also increase loading-​​time speeds.)

To be clear, John Reese did not claim that saleslet­ters should be entirely video-​​driven. In fact, his report offers a few exam­ples of how they work best with, or accom­pa­nied by, writ­ten copy.

In the end, remem­ber that video, audio, and text all use copy. It’s all copy. It’s not the copy that’s chang­ing. And it’s cer­tainly not human behav­ior. It’s its deliv­ery that’s changing.

Bot­tom line, say­ing that clas­sic “paper and pen” on the web is the only way to go is anal­o­gous to say­ing that 8-​​track tapes is the only way to lis­ten to music.

About the Author

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