Public perception of long form sales letters?

Most of the comments on that blog are negative. It wasn't supposed to be scientific, just trying to get some thoughts here from the group.

I'm in sales and have been selling for over 10 years. I have an interest in marketing and pursuasion, and long form sales letters have always been "baffling" for me. I've never been able to fully understand how exactly it's been so successful for so many people when so many consumers seem to view it negatively. I personally have always seen long form sales letters as shady pitches by scam artists. Seems like a lot of people out there share the same perception.

Now, being someone who's got something to sell on my own now, I've taken an interest in long form copy since it seems to be the prefered method of selling information online. I'm trying to wrap my head around it. I've never been able to understand how the "Dear friend" or "From the desk of..." approach could possibly work for anyone. The mile long sales letters are usually annoying, ridiculous, and I've never once ever believed a single testimonial written within one. Testimonials are great - when they aren't being hustled by the very company selling the product being pitched. (This is why yelp and amazon.com reviews are so effective.)

I've been thinking for some time now that the main reason why any sort of long form copy "works" is mostly based on 2 things. One, the customer is DESPERATE. Two, the niche itself is HOT with a lot of demand. Funny how you always see long form copy in the same niches....weight loss, making money and dating. All hot niches that will probably always be hot niches with lots of demand.

But what really confuses me though, is the negative perception of long form copy and the fact that it still "works."

It shows that people hate to be sold to....

...but they still like to buy.

You don't write a long sales letter just for the sake of it. You write it as long as it needs to be in order to get the message across and get the sale.

If that means only one side is required, or 50 sides are required, then that's what's required.

Aaah you young man leave way too much money on the table. I have a client with a $47 ebook that does a quarter million bucks a month with a long sales letter.

Many of my clients do 6 figure launches with $47 ebooks and longcopy. In fact I've never seen an infoproduct do 6 figures in a day or two without a longcopy sales letter, hybrid longcopy/video letter or longcopy video.

Well said.

It is irrational, I agree. But - there are people who do. I guess they simply just are not our target market.

Yes sir, I have.

Heh. Very true. One of the comments on that blog was actually saying that all marketers should do is simply present what the product is and it's benefits like you mention and that if it's a good product, then good products essentially sell themselves and that would be enough info for them to buy. That is just not how the buying process works at all for most people - even if they think it is.

"Some Thoughts On Sales Effectiveness and Copy Length"
(aka Long Versus Short Copy)

In my experience in measuring the effectiveness of hundreds of
online sales letters, I have found that sales efficiency drops off
dramatically after 5 to 8 pages of sales copy text.

I know, some of the "big boys" claim they can ALWAYS outsell a
"short" letter with their own long copy. Yes, some "magalogs" do
well, especially for newsletters.

But I would like to know, for example, if a well known marketer
actually EVER TESTED his "million dollar day" sales letter at
50,000 words, at 10,000 words, and at 3,000 words?

One well known marketer last year offered a "preview" of his
course --- the preview was a mere 7,000 PAGES LONG! Are these
people kidding? I didn't read much more than that to get a college
degree.

I recently actually read one sales letter that was more than
55,000 words "long." That's a NOVEL, not a sales letter!

This situation did get out of hand in my opinion. I have sold more
than $750,000 worth of a single health-related course --- using
about 1,280 words on a single sales page.

A few remarks may serve as "food for thought" for some of the
newer marketers who are trying to make up their minds on this
great issue.

Here's my reasoning on how the "long versus short copy" issue got
started, and why it is where it is today.

"In split run tests, long copy invariably outsells short copy." --
"Ogilvy on Advertising", 1980 or so.

There is a very famous ad that launched the whole "long copy"
issue --- it has come to be known as "the Rolls Royce ad".

David Ogilvy was the one (or his ad agency) who developed that
first "long copy" campaign. It ran under the now-famous headline:

"At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce
comes from the electric clock."

The ad contains about 580 words. THAT was long copy in those days,
a full display ad page, either magazine or newspaper. That
contrasted sharply to what was standard ad copy then. Those days
most ads were 1) newspaper display ads of around 1/4 page or less;
2) catalog copy, up to about 50 words.

So the Ogilvy was indeed a classic; the ad sold out the entire
U.S. inventory of Rolls Royce automobiles when it ran. That's a
remarkable feat.

I agree that in skilled hands, longer copy ads will usually easily
out pull, say catalog bitlets, classified ads, or quarter-page
display ads, etc. -- up to around 250 words.

But it is wrong to claim, as so many "guru" copywriters do today,
that IN EVERY CASE long copy will out pull short copy.

Some copywriters even want to make $50,000 and higher "wagers"
that their "long copy" will beat anyone's short copy. Geez.

I have written direct mail copy for many very famous clients over
the past 40 years -- including all of the State Farm insurance
agent direct mailing pieces for several years (thousands of
letters sent to many millions of recipients), plus American
Airlines, Texaco, Caterpillar & many others.

We did the very first one-million copy catalog mailing in the US,
back in the 1950s -- the Foster Gallagher Christmas Catalog. At
the time it was the largest single mailing ever dropped by a
private mailer. So we did a LOT of testing. I still do.

My point is that it is simply NOT TRUE that long copy ALWAYS
outsells short copy. It needs to be defined more precisely to have
any meaning at all. How short is short? And how long is long? That
is the question.

Although I believe copywriters who say they have in fact tested 8,
12, 24 and 32 page magalog style offers, I do not believe all of
the people who repeat this mantra actually do test all of the long
and short permutations.

If it were true in EVERY CASE that long copy outsells short copy,
then BMOC, Boardroom, Phillips, Rodale and all the others would
ONLY send 32 page and larger packages. And of course they do not.

I know we have ads that repeatedly sell more than a million
dollars with just under 5,000 or so carefully-crafted words of
direct sales copy.

There HAS TO BE some upper limit ... because according to the
claim ("longer will ALWAYS outsell shorter") --- would mean
literally that a 14,000 page sales letter would ALWAYS outsell a
10 page sales letter. Who would even test it? Who would even write
it!

I can say for myself that I am terribly WEARY of trying to chop
through what is best described as truly mediocre copy (most all of
the copy I encounter these days), to see "if" there is even a
product there. Or do they only want me to "pre-register? Or sign
up for teleseminar? Or pre-sign up for a workshop? Or ...
fuggedaboutit!

In fact, we recently tested and re-wrote an e-book ad for a
client. The original ad they were using was about 8,000 words. The
author objected even to this length, and we reduced it to 5,000
words. Some more tweaks brought it down to about 3,500 words,
which produced the best sales numbers.

At least in this case, "shorter outsold longer." It was tested,
and proven.

Today video has entered the copy mix with hurricane-like force. I
don't think anyone would suggest that a video of 3 1/2 hours of
yapping (the reading time for a 25,000 word sales page) would
outsell 20 minutes, as one example of the extremes involved.

In fact infomercials -- which pretty much define state of the art
video sales tactics, are fixed at around 2 minutes. Some find more
complex or expensive items needs up to 10, 20 or even 30 minutes -
- almost like a full TV "show".

I can surely agree with another marketer's recent remark to me
that Makes real sense: "The real key is focusing on what's
important to your market and giving them the high points." Well
said.

Hakim Chishti, Director
Advanced Marketing Institute
"Home of the FREE Headline Analyzer"
http://www.aminstitute.com/headline/index.htm
"More than 1 million headlines
tested in the past 12 months"
=========================
Permission to reprint happily granted, if you will please
leave sig intact. Thanks.

The snippit testi video is something I've been using for my clients for over a year now. The way I like em best is when the snippits are very short, almost teasers of longer testimonials used later in the letter.

I like to see 5-7 testimonials in no more than a minute.

Wow... where do you people get some of this drivel? No one makes a decision to buy most products in a couple seconds. In fact I've never heard anything like that.

Maybe the tidbit you're *******izing is that you have to grab a prospect's attention in the first 7 seconds or you'll lose him.

But in no world is anyone buying anything other than penny candy based on 2 seconds of visiting a website.

And yeah... there is certainly a need to convince some people for 2-5... 15... even 25 pages sometimes to buy.

It amazes me sometimes how people speak about things that make no common sense at all... and do it like it's nothing.

2 seconds is a joke... Even 7 seconds isn't about deciding to buy it's about deciding whether or not they're going to read any further and maybe buy at some point.

1 or 2 seconds.

Hmm, if that was the case, we would be looking at alot of sales pages with just a headline and alot of empty space :rolleyes:.


Bill

Easiest 2 seconds of my life.

Now I'll just sit back and wait to get rich.

GeorgR, I expect you'll be my first customer, since you're obviously sold so easily?

Those of us who use long copy use it for a reason.

...I'm not too into kicking myself in the a$$, so if
spending hours researching and writing long copy
didn't pay off I'd probably have stopped it by now.

I guess I could be a masochist without knowing it
though. Hope not.

David

Great response!

Personally long / short....

I think the debate exists because the general public is exposed to so much bad copy that after seeing so many bad long copy sales pages they've associated :

Long copy = Crap Sales page.

The real factor is whether it was good copy which is rarely seen today. When people are exposed to the good stuff, long or short, they barely notice they are even reading a sales copy letter because they don't feel like they are being sold to.

Those defending long copy understand long sales copy frankly because they are the ones writing the good stuff and see the real results.

I think the debate is not whether long or short copy works.

It's whether copy works...and yes it does when it's done right. Long ...short...that's like arguing over the exact size of font...

ie.Big letters work better than little ones; it's all about context.