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Written by David Garfinkel
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Long Copy: A Consumer's Perspective

Long Copy: A Consumer's Perspective

Consumer confusedI’m going to tell you why long copy is here to stay, no mat­ter what Michel Fortin and John Reese tell you.

And when it comes to guys who keep their ear to the ground and their eyes on the num­bers (and test results), no one has my greater respect than those two guys.

Yes, atten­tion spans are dwin­dling. Yes, it’s becom­ing more and more an audio-​​visual world on the Web.

But let’s look at the whole ques­tion from a consumer’s point of view.

Con­sumers have no time — right? Con­sumers are impa­tient — right?

Con­sumers want to get to the bot­tom line and make their pur­chase and move on to watch the Simp­sons or have a beer or sneak off into the bed­room with their honey or grab the potato chips out of the cup­board so they can watch six hours of TV, right?

All stereo­types. Some may be true.

But I can’t believe I’m the only dis­cern­ing con­sumer in the world when it comes to cer­tain pur­chases, and in fact I have some pretty solid proof that I’m not.

Dis­cern­ing con­sumers need spe­cific information.

And spe­cific infor­ma­tion requires copy long enough to give it to con­sumers — all of it.

This week­end I had an expe­ri­ence as a con­sumer that drove the point home, big-​​time.

I’m a second-​​time buyer of video equip­ment. The first cam­era I bought was nice, but it was the size and weight of a brick and dif­fi­cult to stow away into a suitcase.

My needs for a new one were very spe­cific. It must:

  1. Be small
  2. Be light
  3. Use mini-​​DV cassettes
  4. Have a jack for an exter­nal microphone
  5. Be able to mount on a tripod.

That sounds rea­son­able, but there don’t seem to be too many mod­els in pro­duc­tion today — at any price — that have all of those characteristics.

I finally found one (the Sony DCR-​​HC96) after sev­eral hours of jock­ey­ing back and forth between three Web sites and Google searches.

I ended up read­ing a 140-​​page man­ual online, sup­ple­mented by sev­eral dozen user com­ments on ama​zon​.com, to get the infor­ma­tion I needed.

Long copy? Web 2.0? You bet. The 140-​​page man­ual for this prod­uct is longer than any sales let­ter I’ve ever seen (even Michel’s for Traf­fic Secrets!). But I couldn’t have got­ten a key point I was look­ing for with­out read­ing a cou­ple of the more detailed Ama­zon comments.

Just in case you think I’m alone in my need for speci­ficity, I found sev­eral Ama­zon com­ments from own­ers who had spent 10 times the effort and time research­ing mini DV cam­corders, includ­ing sev­eral trips to stores.

One, who had pur­chased another model, admit­ted to hav­ing bro­ken down in tears when it didn’t per­form as promised.

What does this have to do with long copy?

Sim­ply this.

If Sony and its ven­dors had imag­i­na­tively antic­i­pated what I (and prob­a­bly sev­eral thou­sand other finicky con­sumers) were look­ing for and had arranged user-​​experience and feature/​benefit infor­ma­tion in an easy-​​to-​​access way (and no one ever said long copy has to be the typ­i­cal scroll down a sin­gle page that we’re all so used to in the info-​​marketing field)…

… Then Sony would be sell­ing a LOT more of this camera.

Now the chances of Sony or any other Global 1000-​​type cor­po­ra­tion even con­sid­er­ing the ques­tion are more remote than Don­ald Trump decid­ing to go for the shaved-​​head look.

OK, fine.

But for the rest of us who are writ­ing copy, think about this les­son very carefully.

Long copy is by no means dead, or an imped­i­ment to sales.

Brain-​​dumped sales pre­sen­ta­tions may have gone the way of the eight-​​track tape, but don’t kid your­self that peo­ple mak­ing pur­chase deci­sions don’t need and want the nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion (espe­cially expe­ri­enced buy­ers who are com­ing back for an improve­ment on what they already have) to go ahead and order.

Peo­ple do.

Give them what they want. You’ll get a higher response rate.

By the way — you might be won­der­ing why I went through all the mis­ery I described to get the info I needed to buy.

It was because I have a client, or a series of clients, so mas­sive and lucra­tive that it was worth the effort. Clients that dropped out of the sky totally unex­pect­edly. Who will need a setup exactly like the one I cob­bled together through all this detec­tive work.

Don’t count on your cus­tomer being as moti­vated as I was to find the infor­ma­tion that wasn’t read­ily avail­able. Nor­mally I wouldn’t have been.

Expend the extra effort and your mar­ket will spend the extra money.

I’m sure of it.

About the Author

David Garfinkel is a highly sought-after copywriter with an uncanny knack for distilling complex, core copywriting concepts and strategies into practical steps that anyone, regardless of skill or experience, can easily follow, apply, and duplicate. It's no wonder he's known as "The World's Greatest Copywriting Teacher." For more, visit David's blog at World Copywriting Institute.

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Category: Contributions
Tags: attention, camcorder, consumer, copy, copywriting, john reese, marketing, Michel Fortin, psychology, result, selling, sony, testing, web 2.0
This post was written on Wednesday, July 25th, 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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  • This is spot on David.

    I went through the exact same experience myself a couple of months back buying a video camera....except mine was more lengthy and involved trying to buy off two different companies whose advertised product turned out to be different from what they were going to supply.

    One good sales letter from the right company would have saved me many hours of painful research.

    And that's one vital often overlooked part of long copy...that you're providing a genuine service to your clients by letting them know exactly if what you're offering is a perfect fit for them and exactly how it can benefit them.

    Kindest regards,
    Andrew Cavanagh
  • Bingo David! Consider me leaping out of my seat to second your opinion. Nay, your proof. And I'll give you some more to back that up...

    Look, I know that anybody who says we're overloaded these days with pitches, pushes, and inputs is dead-on correct. The irony of a world filled with time-saving devices has been that we took all that time we were saving and oversold it elsewhere for an even tighter, faster, more dizzying lifestyle.

    But if anything, a world that's overrun with irrelevancy places even MORE value on good information, not less. What's more, products today are more complicated and even abstract than they've ever been, especially in the realms of technological toys and info-based products.

    And in that vein, long copy that INFORMS and ENTERTAINS... about products that NEED some introduction and explanation... not only CAN work well, but has and does and will continue to. The best performing sales letters I've written in the past 12 months -- and we're talking $1 million + in gross sales for each, including multiples of that -- were all longer than... wait for it... 24 pages. Yep. 24. One was 32 pages. And I don't think I could have sold that particular product better by cutting a single syllable.

    By the way, I don't think what I'm saying here or what you've just said so well David, really runs completely counter to Michel's message. Because one thing that Michel addressed in his "obituary" for the long sales letter was this idea of relevancy.

    And that's just it.

    Long copy that's just long doesn't do any product campaign any favors. No more than you do a good job of selling a complex product with a letter that's way too shallow and short.

    The question isn't "how long should my sales letter be." Rather, it's "how much do I need to say to make my promise and my offer completely?"

    And always, the answer is tied to product complexity and the richness of the problem you're proposing to solve for your buyer. The more complex, the longer the letter. The more instantly grasped, the shorter the letter.

    Heed Michel's advice, sure. He's right about video and audio. And right about the importance of staying on point. But don't dismiss long copy categorically. It's a decision the marketer has to make on a case-by-case basis.
  • Hi David,

    Thanks for the great post. I totally agree with you. Many of my Web promotion clients have to be continually reminded that people typing a search term into a browser are not necessarily looking to purchase something immediately. They are usually looking for information first. This is why I usually try to get around this problem by reaching them through blogs or microsites to provide meaningful information and then diverting them to an ecommerce site. I also try and make my blogs as sticky as possible by trying to answer every concievable question that they might have. Sometimes even an FAQs page has helped achieve this. Yes, even something as basic as this has increased my web conversion rate dramatically.

    In addition, I have become almost immune to the type hyped up copy that we see in every other sales letter for Internet marketing products. Somehow the marketers seem to think that the louder they scream, the more sales they are going to make. I'm smarter than that. I happen to think that copy used by sites like http://www.centerpointe.com are is persuasive in driving the points across. The use of language is so skillful, that I am sold. One of clients, who is an NLP trained high performance business coach in the UK, commented that the Centerpointe copy was "naughty" because it sends you into a trance in a very subtle way. It's informative, credible and believable. You don't feel bullied into buying the product due to some limited time offer or element of scarcity. You are sold because the facts speak to your heart. And of course, after 10 gentle calls to action punctuating the long sales copy, it's really hard to resist. (:

    Regards,
    Sharon Vaz
  • John,

    I agree with you -- and David -- 100%. I posted a few blog posts to clarify my position in my white paper. I didn't mean to say that long copy is dead. I meant that long-winded (poorly written) long salesletters are.

    I think the operative word here is not "short" is better but "pithy" is. And that was the message I was trying to convey.

    Like so many people pointed out when I released my report, I had to use a 50-page report to prove my point. :)

    That said, copy is indeed getting pithier. It's not so much the length that's at question, here. It's the delivery -- both in modality (i.e., medium, audiovisual, etc) and in connecting well with your market.

    Like I said many times in the past (and David can vouch for me on this), there's a MASSIVE difference between long copy and long-winded copy. We've seen the latter hit critical mass lately, and fortunately, more and more copy is becoming pithier, stronger, more precise, and more economical.

    (And by "economical" I mean saying everything that needs to be said in the least amount of words. If that requires a 24-page salesletter, so be it.)
  • Sharon, excellent point!
  • Deb
    I've gone back and forth on this subject myself. In the Internet Marketing world, long sales letters are 'de rigueur' and I've slogged my way through a boatload of them. Now, unless my attention is fully engaged, I skim, scrolling down to the bottom line = price and the PS. IMHO long sales letters suck.

    However...

    Notice (because I finally made the connection myself) that I said "Unless my attention is fully engaged." There are some marketers who are masters at captivating me. I have to guard my wallet when it's especially thin to avoid purchases I cannot afford.

    So I've been forced to conclude, despite my opinion about long sales letters, that they are effective when well-crafted and a boring pain-in-the-posterior waste of time otherwise.

    I'm interested in David's idea that there are other ways to structure these sales letters. Do I see another product in the offing and a long sales letter promoting it in the not-so-distant future? I have mixed emotions about that, but if someone can improve upon our sales letter model, I say that it's long overdue.

    Deb
  • I am glad to see that I am not the only person who has a hard time buying electronics because those companies are so focused on everything but giving me good information.

    And that to me is the purpose of an effective sales letter: answering your prospects' specific questions.

    Thanks, David!
    Scott
  • Even with the audio and video starting to make it's way to the web, you still need to make it a longer presentation, almost like a info-mercial.

    Tony Robbins, Gunthy-Renker, Carlton Sheets; They are all still on TV in 1/2 commercial format, selling their products.

    People still have to be convinced, longer than 30 seconds.
  • David,

    I must agree with you and not begrudgingly.

    Nearly every element of direct response placed before the public will fatigue. From the color of headlines to graphic elements -- repetition is the death of an ad. Or, as Dan Kennedy aptly states his case; boredom is the death knell of advertising.

    Beside the fact that ubiquitous video websites, ultimately are economically not feasible due to 1. transiting costs 2. capacity, video is not the answer, because people are simply going to read a script that sounds like the same substandard copy they would have published, but in a different format.

    Consumers are not more skeptical, I believe. They're not more discerning. They're tired, exhausted and worn thin by the irrelevant, "Howler Monkey" (Robert Stover) copy that's fed to them hour after hour (check your in-box - am I exaggerating?), day after day. They're numb to the same old thing.

    Of course there are answers. I mean, we're not going to simply pack it in, are we? No!

    A few suggestions I'm offering you for those small hours of the morning and other pondering moments:
    -Increase your level of vocabulary so you can nuance your copy.
    -Write with precision, to the extent that you're not leaving any gray area in your reader's mind. Lobbing, "Get Rich Quick" over the lip of the mailbox won't do for a proper sales pitch, any longer.
    -Proof, cred, and all the rest are well and good, but sit down with your reader and say hello. To illustrate this with a ridiculous example, suppose you sit down with a member of your family. The one you care about most..."GRANDMA, IF YOU DON'T HIT THIS SEMINAR, YOU'RE A BIG-TIME LOSER...AND HERE'S MY PROOF". See what I mean? Now, grandma may not be able to wield an iron skillet as she once could, but she can still trash your pitch as deftly as any ninja.

    In short, two of my clients are newly-minted millionaires as of may because of long copy.

    Dead? Not even sniffles.

    --Peter
  • Michel,

    These are my favorite kinds of discussions on hot issues... where we can all agree but get fired up at the same time ;)

    You wrote:

    "Like I said many times in the past (and David can vouch for me on this), there's a BIG difference between long copy and long-winded copy. We've seen the latter hit critical mass lately, and fortunately, more and more copy is becoming pithier, stronger, more precise, and more economical."

    This is a key and savvy point.

    And I hope I made it clear in my own (maybe long-winded!) post above, I'd vouch for you on this too. In fact, not more than two weeks ago -- hope you don't mind -- I stood in front of a roomful of 200 or so will-be web marketers and cited you directly on exactly this insight (full credit with a URL mentioned ;).

    Of course, I know you and David are both fans of classic ads. You can see the same exact trend toward pithiness there too, if you look back over a long enough span.

    Ads in Victorian times were Victorian in style. Ads in the '20s and '30s matched the language of those times. And I'll bet we could all pick an ad written in the 1950s out of a lineup, too. Words used got smaller. Sentences got shorter. Ideas got tighter.

    And not just in advertising, but everywhere.

    In fiction and film. In newspapers and magazines. In everyday conversation. Today, we're in the age of the sound bite. So we're seeing, more and more, sound-bite thinking inside of advertising.

    On Deb's point, I'm probably unique, but I've found some really short ads a boring pain-in-the-posterior as well. And it's always come down to this same point... not so much the length of the ad, but the relevance to what you're selling.

    (Here's an apples and oranges comparison: How is it that so many infomercials are long sales letters that seem to work... yet, when the Budweiser folks spend millions on a 30-second Superbowl spot that shows a gassy Clydesdale pulling a sleigh, it's clearly a colossal waste of money?)

    Anyway, good discussion.
  • I do tend to agree that in certain circumstances long sales letters are a good thing. However, I also know that I tend to get impatient when I've already decided that I want to buy whatever it is and I have to hunt for the buy button and the price. I do like the people that have the cut to the chase option in the sales letter. I like being able to just go on and buy the item without having to sit through a whole lot of song and dance by someone trying to convince me to do what I have already decided that I was going to do.
  • Wow. I had no idea this would hit such a nerve.

    But so often, you never really know before you do...

    Here's something to consider. I'm ABOUT the most impatient person you'd ever want to meet, and you probably don't want to meet me when I'm at the end of my patience.

    But I have the patience of Job when I'm on a quest to get information... relevant information... pithy information... information to keep me from making a decision I will regret or a decision that will frustrate me.

    Although I tend to be at the extreme end of the distribution curve, most people are like me.

    That's where multiple buy buttons or compartmentalizing a sales letter on the Web (think of taking a magalog process of presenting information and putting it into an appealing, natural-seeming online format) comes into play.

    To get back to my original example:

    Once I had settled on the camera, I didn't need more than the model number and the price for the extra battery. I wan't interested in the unique memory feature that kept you from overcharging it. I just wanted the battery. I was sold on it. So forcing me to read long copy to buy it would have been counter-productive.

    BUT... if I had been more like my Dad, who had a workshop in our family basement and used to invent electronics equipment, and had years and years of old magazines stacked up, I probably would have liked to have all those details right at hand before I bought the battery... even though that information might have had little or no impact on my ultimate decision to buy.

    So... what's a solution to sell a battery to me, and to my late Dad (if they have a commerical Internet in his final resting place), without creating two different Web sites?

    I think a lot of it is more conceptual rather than technical. If you can give me the basic info I need and a buy button in one screen -- "above the fold" and then have tabs or links or pop-up boxes to go into greater detail on arcane subects some (but not all) cusotmers would be interested in... you've taken care of both kinds of customers without, hopefully, alienating either to the point where you've prevented a sale.

    The key, I think, is to transactionally answer the question: "How can I write the copy and design the site/printing architecture in such a way so that the most impatient, impulsive buyer is satisfied and will buy... and the most granular, detail-oriented, specificity-seeking prospect will be satisfied enough to become a buyer as well?"

    David
  • Raj
    Friends, I would like to share these following links from Early to Rise writer Bob Bly. In short, he has explained this point very effectively.

    http://www.earlytorise.com/2007/06/22/how-the-d...

    http://www.earlytorise.com/2007/06/23/7-ways-to...

    Michel, what's your feedback?

    Raj.
  • Lenny Eng
    I guess the length comes down to the type of product and purchasing situation in the end... very little "information search" generally occurs with consumer products (heuristics come to mind here), a moderate amount occurs with shopping products, and a large amount usually occurs for specialty (eg. Sony Camcorders) and unsought products. The amount of risk also plays a part... generally short copy pulls better for free offers (low risk) however longer copy sometimes works better for free offers when the response requires a phone number from the prospect (higher risk)...

    Love your work David and Michael!

    Lenny
  • ANOTHER reason I *agree* long copy is here to stay is that I do NOT want to take my time viewing videos to get the points I want to SEE in writing. I skip sales videos entirely because they take too much time...not to mention they crash my computer because I have too many other things open. If you can't SELL me in print on what I need then "forget about it"!

    Yes, I understand the web is here and makes multi-media easier but I want to SEE copy to part with my dough!

    When I get emails saying to go look at this video or that...I just trash them as "Time" is our most precious asset. As a speed-reader...I prefer copy! I'd actually like to see a survey on this...because the hype over video is way over-rated to me!

    One other point I'd like to make... if you provide a LOT of copy and then forget to add a phone number for someone to reach you *yes personally* then you also LOSE sales. If you don't have a no-brainer product and it is likely to have questions, then the lack of a phone number will hurt your sales. It amazes me that so many marketers online don't put a phone # or an email to ask questions...that loses their credibility with me.

    BTW, on the video equipment you just bought...did you look at the JVC Everio...wow is that a nice camera and without diskettes...so you just download to your computer and are all set!
  • Cheryl,

    I totally agree with you in regards to the use of videos. I am running a fast cable connection so load time is generally not a problem for me. However I cannot be fussed opening most videos I receive from IM's these days - sitting there waiting for the bits that interest me to eventually come around.

    I must say I much rather click a link and have a sales page jump up. That way I can immediately scroll the entire page and read just the bits I am interested in. After all, isn't that why we created the sales page? As a way to present ALL relevant information for a product, in a format that people can quickly and easily scan and locate just the key points that are of particular interest to them.

    I generally know if I'm interested in a product within about 30 secs-1 minute of landing on the sales page. Video slows down this whole process. You can no longer quickly scan and find the information that is of interest to you. This frustrates the hell outta me and most times will leave me no other choice but to close the video and move on.

    Am I the only one who feels like this???
  • People still want as much information as they can get, no doubt about that.

    If anything is changing, it's simply presentation. Match the appropriate presentation to your target audience (and as Michel has said, that may mean multiple formats), and they'll eagerly gobble down everything you give them.

    Great post David.
  • Yeah I forgot to mention in my last post that although I tend to look at video as a bit of a nuisance these days, there are certain times when it does do a good job at making things clearer or giving a demonstration of a product.

    The point I was trying to make was that you would be silly to use video as your only method of marketing a product. You may think that sounds silly but there are people I have seen who do just that. If you want to use video for any reason on the web ,whether it's promoting a product or just delivering free content, you should ALWAYS have the option for people to instead just read the content. Everyone is different and should be catered to accordingly.
  • In defense of video (not that it can't stand on its own two feet)... I've seen it used brilliantly for the testimonials that accompanied a sales letter. And imagine what you could do, for instance, using video in place of a chart (I use charts plenty in financial writing... video could really drive home a point).

    I know of some travel products, too, where a "video postcard" that comes with a sales letter would work brilliantly. In fact, any luxury-related pitch could benefit. And yeah, if a picture is worth 1000 words... I could see a video being worth 2000 or 3000, if used right.

    Of course, just like when you use a photo or a chart, you would still never want to have a video embedded in a sales page without a caption running underneath.

    I make the case because, really, I think the only important point here is that the decision to use video or not... audio or not... long copy or not... is not something you make arbitrarily. It's subjective. The approach has to fit the product and the audience.

    And in every case, never do you want to bore the audience with more "approach" than you need to make the connection and the sale (this is something Michel and David have already said, just to acknowledge).
  • Well said, John. I agree.

    I think people's appreciation of or aversion to video is the same as long copy. It really depends on the market, the copy, and the connection between both. Above all, the copy needs to be interesting to the reader. (And this applies to video, too. Because it's ALL copy.)

    Some people may be averse to video because the video wasn't good in the first place. So they paint all video with the same brushstroke... just like they do with long copy, since a lot of long copy can be downright boring. (But it doesn't mean it doesn't work or it's wrong in every case.)

    As Kennedy often says, "It's all about message-to-market match."
  • Short copy or long copy? To rephrase this question...

    How long is a piece of string?

    A good answer is what Abraham Lincoln was rumoured to have said when asked how long a man's legs should be.

    "A man's legs should be long enough to reach the ground."

    Remember Gary Halbert's Rolls Royce letter? How many pages was that? I think it was under a page - it sold shed loads of Rolls Royces.
  • Love the use of the Abe quote and the string analogy... but I thought I'd jump in before somebody else did and issue a quick clarification. Though Halbert, who wrote a letter about just about everything, feasibly could have written one about Rolls Royces...

    ...It was David Ogilvy, I think, that you're thinking of. 607 words in a one page space ad that ran in only two newspapers and two magazines. Ogilvy spent three weeks researching Rolls Royces before he came up with the draft.

    The headline, as I'm sure we all remember, was, "At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock."

    Though, it's tough to decide in which category this falls. Because, after all, 607 words might seem like nothing compared to long direct-mail sales letters... but it's practically a magnum opus when it comes to copy used to sell a luxury automobile, especially in today's terms.
  • Hi John

    The letter I was referring to is this one, which Halbert says he wrote...
    http://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com/newsletters...

    Maybe we're talking about two different "Rolls Royce" letters?
  • Paul... wow... right you are!

    My apologies. I don't know how it is that I've never seen that.

    Here's the one I was referring to, reproduced in another Gary H. letter...
    http://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com/newsletters...
  • Hi John

    Thanks. I don't think I've read this other one, so I'll read it and digest it! Thanks again for posting it.
  • Vince
    I suppose it depends on what you are selling. A digital video camera is a pretty serious purchase and takes a lot of research. Cameras are probably one of the most researched consumer products out there. I for sure want to read as much as I can when I am buying something like that. I did the same when I bought my digital SLR and 3ccd video camera. But there are other products that might not take so much sales copy. The lenght of the copy needs to take the product in perspective. Church Assimilation and Marketing
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