Lately, I’m see­ing a lot of posts in pub­lic forums and blogs these days about peo­ple get­ting sick and tired of see­ing “crappy,” “hypey,” used-​​car, Ginsu-​​like, looooong copy.

Some of them come from guru-​​bashing naysay­ers who hate mar­ket­ing, which I always take with a grain of salt.

But some are intel­li­gent, mature, and com­mon­sen­si­cal. They are inter­est­ing because I believe that, while neg­a­tive feed­back does have its place, it’s often misplaced.

Here’s why. They blame long copy when all too often it’s not the copy’s fault. More impor­tantly, it’s not because of the length. Let’s get some­thing clear off the bat: long, Ginsu-​​like copy does work. It has always worked. It will always work. And it’s here to stay.

But (and it’s a big “but”)…

Read the rest of this post or share it »

One of the most pop­u­lar threads on my now defunct dis­cus­sion forum for copy­writ­ers was one started by my friend Dean Jack­son.

If you don’t know Dean Jack­son, he is a Toron­ton­ian, a real estate mogul, an infor­ma­tion mar­ket­ing mil­lion­aire (author of many pro­grams, includ­ing the highly suc­cess­ful “Stop Your Divorce!”), and a darn-​​fine copywriter.

This post was extremely pop­u­lar for a num­ber of reasons.

In it, Dean shared his quick-​​and-​​dirty for­mula for writ­ing saleslet­ters really fast. Of course, I’m a big fan of Robert Plank’s Speed Copy Secrets. But this for­mula is a great short­cut if you want to write a bare­bones saleslet­ter in less than an hour.

Above all, the idea behind this for­mula is to get you to start writ­ing. Too many mar­keters and copy­writ­ers get stuck at the begin­ning, such as at the head­line, and they fail to get any trac­tion. They often blame it on “writer’s block.”

Accord­ing to Dean, this for­mula has helped him write sev­eral million-​​dollar saleslet­ters for him­self and oth­ers. With his gra­cious per­mis­sion, I’m reprint­ing it here on this blog, along with some of my own edi­to­r­ial com­ments and tips…

Read the rest of this post or share it »

One of the most ven­er­a­ble and com­mon ele­ments of good saleslet­ters, fol­low­ing the head­line, is the post­script or “P.S.” at the end.

The end of every great sales let­ter should be capped with a strong P.S. We are often told that the P.S. is the sec­ond most read part of a saleslet­ter, because after read­ing the head­line many peo­ple tend to scroll or jump to the bottom.

It’s like the “sec­ond head­line,” so to speak.

This is par­tic­u­larly true when we know that most peo­ple tend to read the head­line or the “Dear Friend” salu­ta­tion, then turn to the clos­ing of the let­ter to see who signed it or who is it from. Partly out of curios­ity. Partly to jus­tify read­ing it in the first place.

Includ­ing a P.S. in your copy may not always be nec­es­sary. I’ve seen some great, proven saleslet­ters that did not have any post­scripts at all. But if you do include one, don’t add it just for the sake of adding one. Make sure it does the job.

In fact, you shouldn’t use a P.S. the way it’s sup­posed to be used…

Read the rest of this post or share it »

Many things are pos­si­ble in adver­tis­ing which are too costly to attempt. That is another rea­son why every project and method should be weighed and deter­mined by a known scale of cost and result.

Chang­ing peo­ples habits is very expen­sive. A project which involves that must be seri­ously con­sid­ered. To sell shav­ing soap to the peas­ants of Rus­sia one would first need to change their beard wear­ing habits. The cost would be exces­sive. Yet count­less adver­tis­ers try to do things almost as impos­si­ble. Just because ques­tions are not ably con­sid­ered, and results are traced but unknown.

For instance, the adver­tiser of a den­ti­frice may spend much space and money to edu­cate peo­ple to brush their teeth. Tests which we know of have indi­cated that the cost of such con­verts may run from $20 to $25 each. Not only because of the dif­fi­culty, but because much of the adver­tis­ing goes to peo­ple already converted.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

Michel: The sec­ond law will never believe any­thing at first. And the third law is peo­ple will never do any­thing at first. So the three steps, I call it the three P’s. Pull them in, prove your case, push them back. And copy, when you should pull them in, the head­line, peo­ple will scroll down a web page.

So you’ve got tons of things that you can do to pull them in. Head­ers through­out the copy, the story. Prove your case is of course cred­i­bil­ity and proof and all that stuff, and your offer and value buildup and guar­an­tees and tes­ti­mo­ni­als. And push them to act is of course ask­ing for the order, mak­ing the offer.

Read the rest of this post or share it »