Failing To See The Happy "Medium"

While some peo­ple have chimed in on the saleslet­ter debate about whether long-​​copy saleslet­ters are scammy, I believe we need to stop and take a closer look at what this whole thing teaches us.

Will this debate ever stop? No. In fact, it’s noth­ing new. It’s been around for hun­dreds, even thou­sands of years. Even as old as right-​​wing ver­sus left-​​wing ideologies.

Push ver­sus pull. Direct ver­sus indi­rect. Adver­tis­ing ver­sus pub­lic­ity. Long copy ver­sus short copy. And now, Inter­net mar­keters ver­sus blog­gers. Nothing’s changed.

The Inter­net is just a new medium in which it takes place.

While old-​​style direct mar­keters will defend their posi­tion that the medium doesn’t change things and the rules of copy­writ­ing still apply…

… The early adopters will fight tooth and nail to pre­serve vir­gin turf from being adul­ter­ated by would-​​be-​​contaminators from the other side of the spectrum.

Brian Clark, a blog­ging copy­writer made an inter­est­ing case that I strongly agree with, in that nei­ther side is cor­rect. Nor wrong.

What Brian com­mu­ni­cated in his arti­cle, whether he intended it or not, is the idea that it has noth­ing to do with who’s right or wrong, but comes down to the fail­ure from both sides to learn from one and other.

In Brian’s own words:

Ulti­mately, it all comes down to pre­sen­ta­tion, and that depends on the audi­ence you hope to reach. Both blog­gers and tra­di­tional Inter­net mar­keters are leav­ing money on the table by stick­ing with con­ven­tion and fail­ing to learn from one another.

Whether or not this debate is valid, it still tells you something.

It tells you that the mere exis­tence of a debate is case enough to ques­tion how things are done, and to take a more care­ful and sober look at how we can use all the tools pre­sented to us to improve the way we reach our mar­kets, write our copy and sell our products.

I believe that it has been overblown by extrem­ists from both camps. While either side is pas­sion­ately defend­ing its posi­tion, I think peo­ple do take extrem­ist views mostly to avoid that one prob­lem we all fear the most:

Change.

In the com­ments’ sec­tion of that same post men­tioned ear­lier, Brian pointed out the fol­low­ing gem:

“[…] I made ref­er­ence to legions of would-​​be online copy­writ­ers mim­ic­k­ing what worked for Michel Fortin 3 years ago with­out real­iz­ing that times change. The only con­stant is change. […] Peo­ple copy what they see work online, but don’t under­stand that what sells a mil­lion bucks in a day for John Reese in one mar­ket may not be the right approach for every situation.”

Beau­ti­fully said.

In this new Web 2.0 where peo­ple can inter­act more, and are more vocal about their opin­ions and crit­i­cisms, we can become bom­barded with dia­tribe from either side, con­fus­ing the issue even more.

Which often leads to paralysis.

Or as Brian Tracy calls “Psycho-​​sclerosis,” which means hard­en­ing of the atti­tudes.

(For the unini­ti­ated, Web 2.0 refers to the idea that the web has evolved from a uni­lat­eral, uni­di­rec­tional, sta­tic medium, to a more dynamic, inter­ac­tive, two-​​way con­ver­sa­tion. For exam­ple, we see this with the explo­sion of blog­ging, social book­mark­ing, AJAX scripts, which are tools that allow inter­ac­tiv­ity on web­sites, etc.)

You heard of the say­ing, “Paral­y­sis by analy­sis.” What’s worse is “paral­y­sis by passion.”

We shouldn’t take every dis­sent­ing opin­ion as gospel (includ­ing mine on this very blog), but see this debate as an oppor­tu­nity to take a moment and ques­tion how things are done, and see what we can learn from both sides to take our copy­writ­ing to the next level.

In my opin­ion, the prob­lem is not the use of saleslet­ters. It’s the per­va­sive­ness of a cer­tain style of saleslet­ter, which can be abused and greatly inap­pro­pri­ate for spe­cific markets.

This “me-​​too” tac­ti­cal approach lacks cre­ativ­ity, pro­fes­sion­al­ism and strat­egy. Because it’s lazi­ness, pure and sim­ple. (And THAT is the root prob­lem that should be debated, not its symptoms.)

I’m not against the use of web­sites with saleslet­ters. (I still write copy for them right now.) But I’m against the fact that so many busi­ness own­ers dis­count other meth­ods sim­ply because they are different…

… And there­fore fail to try them, to lis­ten to their mar­ket, and to make an effort in com­ing up with, or apply­ing, a few changes that can dra­mat­i­cally impact how large of a mar­ket they can reach.

(Or how prof­itable they can become with estab­lished markets.)

I don’t mean that we should dis­count fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of good copy­writ­ing, which, in my esti­ma­tion, will never change — or change so dra­mat­i­cally as to no longer be valid.

Sales­man­ship is sales­man­ship is salesmanship.

But what I means is, we shouldn’t swipe every bloody saleslet­ter out there only on the basis that it worked at one time, for one busi­ness, with one market.

Doing so, we at the same time ignore new prof­itable ideas, fail to dif­fer­en­ti­ate, or avoid think­ing a lit­tle more cre­atively and strate­gi­cally. (And as a result, as Brian Clark so per­fectly said, we “leave money on the table.”)

And this is true with both sides. While there are “scammy-​​looking,” hard-​​hitting, hype-​​filled, “me-​​too” saleslet­ters with bold red head­lines and such, there are also hard-​​to-​​navigate, fancy-​​looking web­sites that require a Ph.D. in Geek 501 to learn how to buy from.

Pro­po­nents of the for­mer bash those of the lat­ter, and vice versa.

We can still take issue with either side, but I believe there is a happy medium. While this debate might ignite pas­sions, some are get­ting swept up in it with­out accom­plish­ing much, while oth­ers are watch­ing qui­etly by the sidelines…

And prof­it­ing.

I think it’s about time peo­ple start see­ing this debate for what it really is, which is a need to evolve to fit a new medium or to sell to equally evolv­ing mar­kets, with­out hav­ing to copy oth­ers think­ing that a suc­cess­ful approach is uni­ver­sally applicable.

If we dis­cover how we can learn from both sides and adapt what we learn to our mar­ket and goals, we could bring our copy­writ­ing to a whole new — and far more effec­tive — level.

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

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