Copywriting In The English

Earlier today, I was perusing my favourite sub-forum, Copywriting, and offered a few suggestions to a fellow Warrior who had asked for a critique. One of the issues that came up was that the sales letter, top to bottom, was written in English that was disjointed and far from fluent. The guy was selling an IM product, and the poor grammar and mistranslated colloquialisms killed his letter's readability and, probably, its credibility.

It doesn't have to be like this. I've seen firsthand how clumsy sentence structure and word choice can actually enhance, rather than detract from, how credibly your message comes across.

Reading back the above paragraph, I feel I should point out that I don't mean to educate or lecture here. This is not about me trying to cement some sort of status. Far from it - I just want to share my own personal experiences with second-language communication, coupled with a few (hopefully helpful) observations.

The world we live in being what it is, those of us whose mother tongue is English can count ourselves incredibly lucky. I include myself in this category as, de facto, English is indeed my first language. My grasp of its vocabulary and stylistic nuances far exceeds even that of Hebrew, its closest competitor.

From what I've learned by watching others, succeeding in international business while speaking English as a second language is a little like a non-US resident getting a merchant account -- it's not impossible, but getting there is harder, and you have to pay more.

My dad, while able to communicate at a level of clarity far above the bare essentials, is not fluent in English. Nonetheless, wherever he goes he is admired and respected by those who surround him. He exudes a quiet confidence that states "I mean business" and, even in English speaking communities, his counsel is often sought.

My opinion is that he achieves this kind of respect because he never pretends to be anything he is not. His short blunt e-mails, rich in malapropism, get their message across perfectly clearly. He uses words only when he knows what they mean. And his unapologetic attitude projects a clear message: "I may not have style, but I have substance."

Observation? Writing in poor English doesn't have to detract from your credibility, but a number of conditions must be met:

1. You must never try to mask your shortcomings. That means, don't try to be too fancy. Trying to come across as fluent when you're not is like going into a duel blindfolded. Not only are you unable to aim, but, once you fire, you can't even assess how far off target you are.

2. The nature of your product must not depend on good English. My dad owns a manufacturing company. If he was selling literature analysis courses, things might be different.

What about the IM product I mention at the start of this post?

Depends. In theory, if it was all about marketing principles, persuasion, and the mechanics of article marketing, SEO, PPC, etc. - there should not be a problem... except that:

3. You must account for your disadvantage right from the start. As David Ogilvy said of the antiques dealer and the scratch - I believe the principle applies to the messenger as well as to the message. Without this, you will be seen as sloppy and unprofessional. People will evaluate your English as they would a native speaker's, and they will conclude that you are nothing more than an unintelligent hack.

Irrational? Prejudicial? Yes, possibly. The worst part is, even once you've established that you're not a native speaker, shallow minds will still not accommodate your grammatical errors, let alone congratulate you for attaining such a high level of foreign-language aptitude. No. They will still, perhaps even subconsciously, nurture their original thought. That is why it is important to get it out of the way right from the start:

"Hello, I am Gil-Ad. I am from Israel and not natively speaking English, but my message is important for you to read if you want to be losing weight quickly..."

Perfect? Hardly.

But therein lies your advantage - people don't want to deal with the slick marketer, who talks in the booming infomercial voice and clearly just wants their money. They want to deal with the ordinary guy, the underdog, the Ukrainian who can barely speak English who makes it big in IM; the "Desperate Housewife" who discovers how to lose weight.

The marketplace is filled with hyped-up sales copy written by non-copywriters who just emulated their competitors' hyped-up sales copy, also written by non-copywriters, who, too, emulated their competitors...

Don't emulate. You have a potentially golden opportunity here to establish yourself as "not a slick marketer"... as you know, anti-guru is the new guru...

Just don't be fancy. Keep it really simple. Substance over style.

Gil-Ad