long sales letter - targeted to myspace crowd

[David]

Hi all, this is my first post to this sub forum.

I've got a sales letter that needs to be long enough to keep me out of trouble with the MD MVA and I fear it's too long for the short attention span of my target market.

Maryland Vehicle Insurance Violation

MYspace crowd... and other similarly slightly dysfunctional types and unfortunatly I belong to that last group myself.

The attention span of my target market is likely to be very short.

However if I leave out too much / edit out too much I might be getting myself into trouble with the State Government.

Product targeted to irresponsible people, probably more young people (younger than me anyhow)

codependents/ addicts will also fall into this demographic:

addictions are symtoms of codependency, codependency is a disease of immaturity...

People who failed to pay their bills is what I'm talking about here.

(and God I wish I didn't fall into this category but the shoe fits )

Should I shorten this?

What do you all think?

thanks in advance

[colmodwyer]

Hey David,

The first two thirds of your page is jibber jabber to me; I'm not the market granted, but I think you should start off witha nice big headline stating in plain English exactly how your site will help the visitor.

I have no idea what you are talking about... Is it getting caught driving a car without insurance?

I think If you re-work it too, so that your body copy starts off here...

"I’ve found a legal loophole that helps/prevents you etc"

That's an attention grabber right there.

Also I wouldn't go around saying that it's your visitors fault... At least not so blatantly... Remember you've been there, you feel their pain and know just how easy it is to slip up etc etc After all they needed their car to get from A to B and now they have to pay the big bad Gov/DMV (or whatever) a few grand...

Well that's hardly fair is it? But have no fear, Davey Boy's here and he's fighting for the little guy (for a nominal fee)...

For a start, re-structure it a bit and get on their side more I think... There's A LOT to be done with the formatting too mind.

Colm

[Bruce NewMedia]

well, shortening it per se is not the problem. The copy reads like a boilerplate section out of the Maryland Drivers license bureau or something similar.

It takes reading down to almost the LAST few lines to realize you are selling access to a LOOPHOLE (legal appparently).

I suspect few if any visitors will get that far.

You might try coming up with a HEAD like:
"Attention Maryland Drivers Stuck With A Maryland Insurance Violation Fine.
"Heres a Completely Legal Way to Get Back On The Road Fast"

Then you would insert sales copy that sells that proposition.
______
Bruce

[David]

Originally Posted by colmodwyer

Hey David,

The first two thirds of your page is jibber jabber to me; I'm not the market granted, but I think you should start off witha nice big headline stating in plain English exactly how your site will help the visitor.

Colm

Thanks Colm,

After thinking about this I'm also realizing that I posted my question about the length of the sales letter prematurely.

The first 4 or 5 posts to a blog are not for human consumption anyway.

They're fodder for GoogleBot to digest.

You've got to RANK first, before you worry about sales letter length.

... about the "it's YOUR fault" line...

the State of Maryland is surely going to investigate me if I'm offering a way to circumvent Ceasar getting rendered what is Ceasar's.

I sought to NOT look like a charlatan if possible.

What I'm describing is exactly how I'm getting legal tags on MY old pickup


I also see that the SEO trick I just learned from Yaro Starak, using h2 tags rather than just <strong> tags did make the formatting too large in some places.

thanks for the input...

I'm now thinking that I'll leave these posts pretty much the way they are, they're going to degrade in Google soon anyhow.

What they are (now that I've thought about it) are decent back links to a conventional website with a real webhost.

I'll use your suggestions for a sales letter in subsequent posts.

Thanks a bunch, I needed some input

[David]

Originally Posted by brucerby

well, shortening it per se is not the problem. The copy reads like a boilerplate section out of the Maryland Drivers license bureau or something similar.

It takes reading down to almost the LAST few lines to realize you are selling access to a LOOPHOLE (legal appparently).

I suspect few if any visitors will get that far.

You might try coming up with a HEAD like:
"Attention Maryland Drivers Stuck With A Maryland Insurance Violation Fine.
"Heres a Completely Legal Way to Get Back On The Road Fast"

Then you would insert sales copy that sells that proposition.
______
Bruce

Thanks Bruce, you're probably correct about few vistors getting down the page that far.

About the boiler plate MD MVA regs... I'm afraid of looking like I'm offering a way to cheat the State of MD and I'm not... that's what I was thinking when I added all that anyway.

...also, the only people who would be interested in this (I was thinking) are people who already knew damn well why they cant tag a car...

and they were kicking themselves in the a* just like me.

I feared that if I didn't explain it in detail enough the friends and family of those with this $3/ $4,000 fine with no statue of limitations might not see that this is what thier loved ones could use to get this monkey off their back.


hmm, perhaps a sales letter shouldn't be all things to all people.

thanks for the input, both of the very useful replies given have made me think I should repostition a catch phrase/ sales pitch line at the top and limit the what is a insurance fine part.

Perhaps a T.O.S. would suffice to get the State of my back?

bury the exact specifications of the law deeper in the sales letter and include it only for the people who need more convincing?

hmm, that sounds like a 'page' in a wordpress hosted blog, I've been using blogspot hosted blogs that do not include pages, only posts.

thanks to both of you for the insight!

[Habitat]

People on myspace do not want to read that much. Try shortening it and power packing it with information

[indexphp]

When you say that it is for the Myspace crowd... how exactly do you figure? Myspace is just a website that has tons of users (who you can advertise in front of) and nothing more.

Your market is people in Maryland who are having problems with their tags.

[David]

Originally Posted by Garrett Aren

When you say that it is for the Myspace crowd... how exactly do you figure? Myspace is just a website that has tons of users (who you can advertise in front of) and nothing more.

Your market is people in Maryland who are having problems with their tags.

Yup, you're correct... I guess I'm social profiling the way the police is said to do.

All I know of MySpace is what I learned over a year ago when all the WSOs were for Friend blaster type scripts...

... all I see when I walk into the Frederick Public Library to use the internet is young people on MySpace looking for a date or someone of the opposite sex to hook up with.

..and lastly (this kinda turns me off from myspace a little) when I download .jpegs from my camera to upload to flickr I can see in the temporary user storage provided the pics of people's private parts that they uploaded to MySpace.

I'm not saying all this to denigrate young people or to prostelize victorian sexual values... it's just that I eat at the soup kitchen with these same folks, I used to do drugs with them... they aren't the brightest star in the night sky

Unfortunatly I know a bit more about them than I wish I knew:

They tend to (euphemistically speaking)

• take things that don't belong to them
• have little or no remorse
• have a somewhat damaged sense of right and wrong
• if they get a fine or a ticket or otherwise get caught... the only thing they're sorry for is getting caught

I used to do drugs with them - Crack Cocaine Addiction Recovery


it's Victim Behavior to not pay your bills and get pissed off because you got caught not paying that bill.

What do I know about this behavior? http://victimbehavior.blogspot.com


I'll shut up know before I completly alienate my target market...

It takes one to know one

[indexphp]

You're not making much sense to me, David. I don't think Social Profiling is the way to go. If I were you, I'd go to the Google Keyword Tool and type in "Maryland Tags" and any related phrases you can think of. Market that way.

[David]

that's a good idea I'd not thought of... got my head buried too deep in social bookmarking and what to put in front of who and what angle to use in light of how they got there...

the MySpace part of my Warrior post was just a way of trying to illustrate that I figured that this product would only be of use to dysfunctional people and I see dysfunctional people using MySpace

...that said there's probably tons of functional people using MySpace I just haven't seen them from where I am.

[erinwrites]

If you are aiming at grabbing the short attention span, put the most important stuff at the beginning: Your headline, why your loophole is useful, how to purchase/find out more (a note about the link being at the bottom of the page could probably suffice) and then put in all of the legal stuff that you feel you have to put up but are pretty sure your visitors don't want to read. It isn't always a question of length. Sometimes it is a question of layout.

Also, there are probably plenty of people who didn't get tags reasons that aren't deceptive (who hasn't thought "I'll do it tomorrow" about something and then realized a week and a half and the deadline had passed?) so instead of playing to the lower, deceptive level, you'll probably do better playing to the "correcting an accident" level. Remember, you're trying to sell something--most people won't buy if their seller treats them like less than they think they are. Selling isn't about your perception of someone, it's about the person's perception of him/herself

P.S. I use Myspace all the time to keep in touch with friends and family and I have never flaunted my naughty bits there (eughh...the idea gives me the euugghhhh)

[David]

Ok, Thanks to all of the very good replies I've shortened the sales letter and made each post to this blog shorter and included the pointers you guys suggested.

Is this better?

MD Auto Insurance Violation Loophole

hmm, blogs rotate the copy so...
here's a url for the specific shorter version incorporating what you all suggested:

Car insurance fine in Maryland MD Auto Insurance Violation Loophole

Thanks.. and please tell me if there's something else I'm missing or doing too much of

(damn, this WF membership was the best thing my Dad could have left me when he died... I'm gonna be able to leave my kids something significant now)