Innovation in Direct Marketing Copywriting
Happy Monday everyone...
Over the past few months, I've been studying a lot of the online resources of Carlton, Kennedy, Sugarman, Halbert, etc....Lots of the stuff I've found through resources here on WF and doing online research. Over the weekend I picked up a hard copy of Ultimate Sales Letter and have been studying in depth. A few thoughts keep recurring as I've been doing my research, and they are even more pronounced as I get deeper into Kennedy's book.
One question I wanted to pose to the forum for the experienced copywriters...from a technique standpoint, it doesn't seem much in the way of direct marketing copywriting has changed in 20-30 years. Many of the letters included in Kennedy's book and many shared here on the forum are decades old. And these are the same techniques being used today...In fact, it seems the recycling of many of these same ideas and theories has resulted in the sales letter style and format being basically unchanged since these guys first revolutionized direct mail marketing nearly 40 years ago. Kennedy states specifically in his book -- Don't be creative in your execution. These ideas are what works. Use these same premises, hooks, and concepts in your own writing. Of course the real effectiveness of a sales letter comes from the research and knowledge you must have of a client's target market and how your client's product or service can help them. Which is basic salesmanship.
But when I see the same style, approach, tone, of sales letters in 2012 as the same letters I'd see when I was a kid 20 years ago, I have to ask some questions....
Haven't consumers become immune to these sales methods? I mean, I have the most recent edition of USL, and Kennedy is still talking about how effective it is to use the Post-It note method of "Hey, thought you'd want to see this -- J." Don't people know by now that there is no "J," and thus dismiss the credibility of the marketing material straight away? A lot of the selling technique revolves around a "hard sell," -- Kennedy actually discusses the value of "intimidation" in sales letters as it's "what experienced salespeople have used for years." But over the past 20 years or so, haven't consumers as a whole become turned off by the "hard sell?"
When I spent 13 years in face to face, business to business sales, we went through countless yearly seminars and training for the next "big" sales process or technique. Of course they were all variations on the same ideas. Discover problems. Probe deeper for the hidden effects of such problems. Reveal your service in a way that specifically caters to those problems and then get the prospect to identify with your company as the answer to their problems. Ask for the sale. If you don't get it, you didn't ask the right questions. Never were we taught any tricks or gimmicks that you'd see in the 60s, 70s, 80s of direct sales. We were taught that the culture of buying had changed, and so we used a consultative approach to solving problems.
Now I know you don't have the luxury of asking questions and probing in sales letters. That sales approach doesn't translate into copy.
But if we can all agree that the consumer's approach to buying and sales in general has changed over the past 20 years or so, hasn't direct marketing copy evolved in any way to address that?
I know the time tested techniques work. I know many on the board will say, "well, these techniques make my clients millions of dollars right here in 2012."
But I'd be remiss not to ask if there's been any real change in the DM approach, especially over the past 10 years or so as the population demographic has changed so rapidly. I frequently read things like, "these techniques will ALWAYS work," but won't there be a point where the diminishing returns of those techniques will force copywriters to adopt a different approach?
As a disclaimer, I realize that these techniques DO work, and I have no intention of reinventing the wheel with my copywriting. But when I look at some successful samples -- many of them decades old -- I do ask myself, "wow, do people really still fall for this stuff?"
Jeremey
Over the past few months, I've been studying a lot of the online resources of Carlton, Kennedy, Sugarman, Halbert, etc....Lots of the stuff I've found through resources here on WF and doing online research. Over the weekend I picked up a hard copy of Ultimate Sales Letter and have been studying in depth. A few thoughts keep recurring as I've been doing my research, and they are even more pronounced as I get deeper into Kennedy's book.
One question I wanted to pose to the forum for the experienced copywriters...from a technique standpoint, it doesn't seem much in the way of direct marketing copywriting has changed in 20-30 years. Many of the letters included in Kennedy's book and many shared here on the forum are decades old. And these are the same techniques being used today...In fact, it seems the recycling of many of these same ideas and theories has resulted in the sales letter style and format being basically unchanged since these guys first revolutionized direct mail marketing nearly 40 years ago. Kennedy states specifically in his book -- Don't be creative in your execution. These ideas are what works. Use these same premises, hooks, and concepts in your own writing. Of course the real effectiveness of a sales letter comes from the research and knowledge you must have of a client's target market and how your client's product or service can help them. Which is basic salesmanship.
But when I see the same style, approach, tone, of sales letters in 2012 as the same letters I'd see when I was a kid 20 years ago, I have to ask some questions....
Haven't consumers become immune to these sales methods? I mean, I have the most recent edition of USL, and Kennedy is still talking about how effective it is to use the Post-It note method of "Hey, thought you'd want to see this -- J." Don't people know by now that there is no "J," and thus dismiss the credibility of the marketing material straight away? A lot of the selling technique revolves around a "hard sell," -- Kennedy actually discusses the value of "intimidation" in sales letters as it's "what experienced salespeople have used for years." But over the past 20 years or so, haven't consumers as a whole become turned off by the "hard sell?"
When I spent 13 years in face to face, business to business sales, we went through countless yearly seminars and training for the next "big" sales process or technique. Of course they were all variations on the same ideas. Discover problems. Probe deeper for the hidden effects of such problems. Reveal your service in a way that specifically caters to those problems and then get the prospect to identify with your company as the answer to their problems. Ask for the sale. If you don't get it, you didn't ask the right questions. Never were we taught any tricks or gimmicks that you'd see in the 60s, 70s, 80s of direct sales. We were taught that the culture of buying had changed, and so we used a consultative approach to solving problems.
Now I know you don't have the luxury of asking questions and probing in sales letters. That sales approach doesn't translate into copy.
But if we can all agree that the consumer's approach to buying and sales in general has changed over the past 20 years or so, hasn't direct marketing copy evolved in any way to address that?
I know the time tested techniques work. I know many on the board will say, "well, these techniques make my clients millions of dollars right here in 2012."
But I'd be remiss not to ask if there's been any real change in the DM approach, especially over the past 10 years or so as the population demographic has changed so rapidly. I frequently read things like, "these techniques will ALWAYS work," but won't there be a point where the diminishing returns of those techniques will force copywriters to adopt a different approach?
As a disclaimer, I realize that these techniques DO work, and I have no intention of reinventing the wheel with my copywriting. But when I look at some successful samples -- many of them decades old -- I do ask myself, "wow, do people really still fall for this stuff?"
Jeremey
Always looking for badass direct-response copywriters. PM me if we don't know each other and you're looking for work.
After all, you're probably following a few hundred people already that aren't doing squat for you.....
- Jack Trout