Are You Also IMMUNE To Sales Pitch?

That's why so many copywriter mentors will advise you to write out a bunch of successful ads by hand.

By doing that you let the concepts sink in, whereas if you just read it you'll get the same response as you just did Activ'.

Quite often as I read some sales pitch I find myself thinking "Oh grief" and trying to skip past all the "can you imagine yourself.." or "I remember, it was a Thursday, about 9.30.." Yeah, whatever, dude..

But stop.

Because getting immune is the worse thing you can do as a buyer, if you want to be a great seller.

By all means smile, chuckle, giggle even, snort out loud with an embarrassing squelch of snot - but learn. The question is where do you draw the line? For me "From the desk of.." and "Who else wants.." are 2 places I just won't go. But they both still work.

I just can't use them, at least without crying.

What actually irks me is when you get the false scarcity but you can't help wondering - are they actually that stupid that if something's really popular, they'll quit selling it?

My rational brain says "Of course it'll still be available, probably cheaper too if I wait for the 8th autoresponder.." Yet it's there, itching in the back of your head - perhaps they ARE that stupid..?


B.

I'm not immune to all sales pitch, only to the kind I'm regularly exposed to.

Tyrus

Starting every word with caps is so well proven you'd be plain silly not to.

Pull up a chair, I'm feeling all helpful for some reason...

Have you ever seen one of those hideously typed passages that is actually readable, despite being typed so awfully?

Whr the spllng iz so awefull nd ta wdz shodnt mke cents - butt do?

There's a reason for that. Your eyes and brain simply do not look at every individual letter. Instead you read by the SHAPE of the overall word.

Look at these three headlines:

GET YOUR BENEFIT HERE!

Get your benefit here!

Get Your Benefit Here!


Imagine drawing a line along the top of the one in all caps. Dead straight line, right? No shape whatsoever, so hard to read.

Now look at the second one. You have to actually read the thing, for it to make sense.

The 3rd one however, barely needs reading. Not because you've already read it twice, but because the shape of the words make them instantly recognizable.

In fact if you submit an article to a professional publication and you don't use header caps they'll return it. Annoying as heck, cos the bastds won't usually say why, just "Please read the guidelines".

As for red, you're young. You like pastels, especially orange, yellow and blue. As you get older your eyes get tired (simplified) so you like restful green (the human eye uses it as a benchmark against other colors, think "leaves") and red, because it bounces up at you without effort.

There's a difference between the sexes but I don't recall it off the top of my head - but a young woman not liking a bright red headline is no surprise.


B.

From the desk of:
Brian McLeod
Miami, Forida

Dear Friend,

I salute your superior sensory acuity and ability to avoid all those nasty sales tactics
along your daily path of selling stuff to people.



To your success,

Brian

(/snark)

I'm not immune to ANY sales pitch if it's something that I want to buy...

I know the techniques...

"100% Satisfaction Guaranteed"... You may roll your eyes but that's a deal closer right there... Seriously, take a product and test.

All Caps In Headlines: Ever read a newspaper? Magazine? How can you possibly have a problem with that?

As a copywriter, there's things I don't do that others disagree with...

I NEVER use "Dear Friend" and rarely any salutation. I think "Dear Friend" sounds like B.S., even to people who aren't jaded and exposed to sales copy on a daily basis like me.

The effectiveness of the copy, and the approach you should take with it, are all based around the offer and the market.

It doesn't matter what YOU think... It's what customers think.

-Scott

Sure, we can disagree agreeably - but psychology journals aren't exactly known for their own readability . Actual copywriters and marketers, who do in-depth split testing over hundreds of thousands, even millions, of readers, and have been doing since the very earliest posted salesletters, say initial caps.

Lemme dig out a couple of references for ya..

*Bigsofty eases his bulk out of the chair and into his cavernous library. Climbing the creaking ladder he grabs the nearest bright red book..*

Here ya go:

All upper case letters slowed readership by 11.8%, Paterson and Tinker, (1956) compared to initial caps. New York Times Editor Theodore Bernstein challenged that but when he tested found initial caps improved readability by 18.9% (1964). That's from Drew Whitman's Cashvertising. Don't confuse this with dropped caps by the way, which also boost reading rates (using one big letter at the very beginning).

It HAS been shown that initial caps will actually slow down reading over longer strings of text, but

For Headlines And Titles They're Too Well Proven To Ignore.




Maybe they just grab attention more, have more weight and credibility, whatever, fact is, they sell more, which is all that matters.



B.