The Long Sales Letter Is Dead
The Long Sales Letter Is Dead
Yes, another one of these threads. But I felt compelled to make one because I feel the previous incarnations of the "long sales letter is dead" thread all suck and don't really push the buttons that need to be pushed.
The way people responded to the previous threads, anyone would think the thread-starters are naive newbies who have yet to grow their copywriting molars, while the smug thread-responders are long-in-the-tooth, battle-tested copywriting legends.
A Prominent Copywriter Called It
The fact is, Michel Fortin called this half a decade ago in his classic "Death of the Salesletter." Here are the juiciest parts:
| There are several things to note, here. First off, salesletters are not dead. They never will be. They are here to stay. However, what I am referring to are not salesletters as a sales process, but specifically long-copy, long scrolling web pages, particularly in their current state. |
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Are infomercials salesletters? I mean, can you put a long-copy written salesletter on television, and force viewers to read it, to buy your product? Of course, not. You probably could, but you wouldn't put up a long-copy salesletter on TV because, obviously, it would be nonsense for a variety of reasons. [...] So if you don't put a salesletter on TV, then why put one on the web? |
| For example, I'm seeing long-copy salesletters losing their effectiveness, and shorter copy starting to outsell them. As a proponent of long-copy salesletters myself, you can imagine how much of a wakeup call this was for me. And if you're a copywriter or a marketer, it should be your wakeup call, too. |
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When you're faced with a 5,000, 3,000 or even a 1,000-word salesletter, reading anything that long, particularly if it looks anything like a salesletter, seems incredibly daunting -- even just scanning through it can be exhausting. Shorter salesletters are more effective. That is, pithy, brief, to-the-point copy is showing better results in split-tests than the converse. But be careful, here. When I say "shorter" copy, I don't mean less copy. What I mean is, less textual copy. Salesletters offering even more content but delivered in other ways are actually outpulling long-copy salesletters with endlessly scrolling text. |
The Naysayers Probably Haven't Even Tested Their Direct-Mail Wisdom On The Web
As one example, take the oft-repeated claim that the P.S. is one of the first things a prospect reads.
Sure, nobody disputes this in the direct-mail world. But have any of the buffoons parroting this claim actually tested it on the Web?
I doubt it.
Try this experiment: Take any of your long sales letters that have a P.S., and use scroll-tracking software to see what your visitors do. I guarantee you won't find them scrolling to the bottom of the page to read the P.S.
Saying a P.S. is a good thing to have is one thing, but the rationale generally given is a direct-mail rationale that simply doesn't apply to the Web.
Money Talks
Look at the best-selling Clickbank products, and you'll find the vast majority of them now use video sales "copy."
Eben Pagan's flagship dating product now uses video sales "copy."
So Who Are The Naysayers Anyway?
Good question!
In my experience, the naysayers usually fall into one of four categories:
- People selling Internet marketing products. This is probably the only niche where long sales letters stand a chance against multimedia sales "copy." Why? Because it's a kind of self-reinforcing circle jerk. The prospects are usually just as conditioned as the authors to believe that long sales letters are the ultimate sales weapon, so when they see a long sales letter, they immediately decide they like and trust the author. And because the prospects "know" that people read long sales letters, guess what they do: They plod through the damn things almost as a stand against cognitive dissonance! It's also why a WSO sales letter can get away with the same old ridiculous scarcity tactics and other hackneyed tactics: Nobody believes them, but the author "surely" knows what he's doing, so the product must be great!
- Copywriters who have written for the Web but who get their testimonials and such before the bottom-line results are even in. How many testimonials have you seen that don't even mention ROI figures? The ones that do are probably just made up, anyway. Yes, I'm saying it. I'm going there. I'm mentioning the hush-hush fact that copywriters just make up testimonials. The public knows it, and we know it too, but we like to pretend we're all ethical little "Dear Friend," "order before midnight" marketers, don't we?
- Successful direct-mail copywriters who haven't written a damn thing for the Web. Don't laugh. I had this debate with a guy who claimed to be making a fortune with long sales letters. In a more polite version of "put up or shut up," I asked whether I could see some of his work and perhaps learn a thing or two from it. To his credit, he showed me some of his long sales letters and produced convincing earnings reports. The catch? He hadn't written a damn thing for the Web but was making pronouncements on Web best practice!
- People who haven't written a damn thing for the Web OR for anywhere else. Yes, it's a sad fact that many of the people trying to make the case for long sales letters on the Web are phonies. Maybe that's too harsh a term. What happens is a lot of people read the classic copywriting books, have all these dreams of making it big off info products or whatever, get involved in all the marketing forums to bounce ideas back and forth to fuel their excitement, and start parroting "time-tested wisdom" before they've written a damn thing. It's so easy to treat a marketing forum -- or any kind of forum, for that matter -- as a textual Second Life, where you get to role-play your character as an online success story.
Final Words
Thanks for reading all this. I know you love your long forum posts as much as you love your long sales letters.
Skype: Coreygeer319
Len Bailey
Copywriter/Consultant
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Cheers,
Winston
The Beginner's Doctor