Copywriting the 80/20 Way

Writ­ing copy seems to bring out the per­fec­tion­ist in every­one. It doesn’t seem to mat­ter if you’re writ­ing a short let­ter, long let­ter, emails, or any­thing else. Before you pub­lish your copy for the whole world to see, you want to make sure every word is perfect.

Such care­ful atten­tion is a good thing. Mak­ing a sale is a frag­ile process. Some­times a sin­gle word can make or break your promotion.

Let me give you a real example.

I once wrote dozens of Google AdWords ads for the home­school­ing com­pany I used to work for. In one test, I used the phrase “no sweat” in the body of the ad and pit­ted it against the phrase “no prob­lem.” Every word was the same in each ad.

Which Ad Won?

In a mar­ket dom­i­nated by 30– and 40-​​something moms, the word “sweat” was a big turn-​​off. And so the ad that used the word “prob­lem” instead received more than three times as many clicks. All from a sin­gle word that didn’t even appear in the headline.

Had I not con­ducted the test, I would have never known the outcome.

Here’s why I bother to share this with you in the first place:

Test­ing trumps per­fec­tion­ism every time.

You can spend hours pol­ish­ing copy. You can put in every ounce of effort you pos­si­bly can. You can be a per­fec­tion­ist with a capi­tol “P.” And you’ll still never get the results that are pos­si­ble with split-​​testing.

The 80/​20 Rule

With the recent pop­u­lar­ity of The 4-​​Hour Work­week by Tim­o­thy Fer­riss, you’ve prob­a­bly heard about the 80/​20 Rule.

The con­cept was devel­oped by an Ital­ian econ­o­mist named Vil­fredo Pareto over 100 years ago.

But it was not until Rich Koch began pub­lish­ing books about it in the 1990s that the con­cept really gained trac­tion with busi­ness own­ers and inde­pen­dent professionals.

The 80/​20 Rule is sim­ple. It says 20% of inputs cre­ate 80% of out­puts. Con­versely, 80% of inputs cre­ate only 20% of out­puts. For instance:

• In a house that is car­peted, 20% of the car­pet will get 80% of the wear.
• On a blog, 20% of the blog posts will get 80% of the “reads.”
• In a busi­ness, 20% of the cus­tomers will pro­duce 80% of the revenue.

In any­thing you apply the 80/​20 Rule to, you will find both great lever­age and great waste.

How to Write Copy the 80/​20 Way

Step #1: Write sales copy that is “good enough.”

Let’s assume for a moment that it takes you 20 hours of writ­ing time to write a really strong sales let­ter. So 20 hours are 100% of the time you invest to write it.

Using the 80/​20 Rule, we could say that it takes only four hours to get the let­ter 80% done. At the 80% level of com­ple­tion, we might say that the let­ter is “good enough.” It is not a mas­ter­piece, but it is at a point where it could be used.

Step #2: Split-​​test the ele­ments that have the great­est impact.

Rather than rely­ing on your own instincts and assump­tions to com­plete the let­ter (and wast­ing an enor­mous amount of time and energy in the process), the next step is to split-​​test your “good enough” letter.

A split-​​test is like sur­vey­ing your mar­ket. You give them a mul­ti­ple choice sur­vey with options a, b, and c. Then they tell you — by vot­ing with their dol­lars — which “answer” is right.

Test the ele­ments that have the great­est impact on con­ver­sion first (head­line, open­ing para­graph, etc). All it takes is lit­tle bit of brain power to set every­thing up. After the test is run­ning, your mar­ket will tell you exactly what it wants to hear.

This process, which relies heav­ily on the 80/​20 Rule, is much faster, eas­ier, and often more effec­tive than the tra­di­tional method of writ­ing copy (which is to sim­ply write your “best” copy and let it ride).

To prove that the con­cept of 80/​20 copy­writ­ing works, I’ve been try­ing it out with my own copy projects. Most recently, I applied it to a sales let­ter that sells a report about how to get copy­writ­ing clients.

The results?

That let­ter is con­vert­ing at 5.97% even though I only spent about three hours to write the let­ter, code it, and set up the split-​​test.

Less Effort, Bet­ter Results

Writ­ing copy the 80/​20 way is about get­ting max­i­mum results with min­i­mum effort. It’s about doing more with less.

Don’t waste hours try­ing to cre­ate the “per­fect” sales let­ter. Rather, write a let­ter that’s good enough. Then split-​​test it to suc­cess. Let the soft­ware do all the heavy lift­ing for you.

If you write all your own copy, give this approach a fair shot. I believe you’ll be pleased with the outcome.

If you would like to go even fur­ther, grab a copy of Richard Koch’s The 80/​20 Prin­ci­ple. See how many things in your life you can improve — in addi­tion to copy­writ­ing — by apply­ing the 80/​20 Rule.

About the Author

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