Long form sales letters.. WTF?!

Because newbies fall for it all the time.

Well.. thing is that I have no idea why the hell does it work for them!!

Are people these days THAT stupid that they click on anything that has hype
surrounding it?! or do they just have 4hrs of free time and patience to read
though each long term sales letter and search for the "gems" which are the
"what it'll do for ya" of the sales letter?..

The have to answer all the possible questions (objections), all people have about the product as well as many other things - they need to convince everyone they possibly can by emotion and logic.

I'd much rather be told what the product includes (a list of features)

The worst insult a marketer or copywriter can get is APATHY.

When people read your sales letter you want them to REACT.

If they don't love you or hate you then you've failed. Judging
from your reaction I'd say that those long sales letters have
done their job.

-Ray L.,

You can bet they've done more then enough.. I'm sick and tired of ALL long
term sales letters to the point that if I come across a page which is remotely
considered "long term" or has any of the characteristics of the "sales letter form".. form...
which we all know -- toodles for that site! xP

part of the reason is a phenomenon called "heuristics" -
I'll let you research it for yourself and then you'll be
a more informed marketer.

..AIDA??... w00t?!!

hum.. but how a mass of words and an unclear header can drive to any of
these mentioned above?? exept maybe Action -- clicking on the back button..

p.s. @Loren Woirhaye: I don't think a long form sales letter has much common sense to it.. twisted sense.. maybe.

And they're off ... again.

Imran, what's the record for the longest number of days between "Long sales letters suck - because I don't like them" threads? 3? 4?

(Happy) Hanuka,

I agree. Get to the goddam point. We don't all need a back-story. We don't all need convincing.

Backlinks? Sure, I need backlinks. How much?

Don't sell me the tale about how your wife was about to leave you because no ******* was linking to your website. It wears thin after a coupla years.

Steve

And that's the bottom line. I lived in New York City for over 10 years an never
visited the Statue of Liberty, while many a tourist did. As far as I'm concerned
I could go anytime so that brochure advertising the Miss Liberty doesn't even
get read by me.

When people are tired of a marketing message it is because they are not the
target audience.

-Ray L.,

Wrong section. This discussion belongs in the Children's Corner.

Hey everyone, this is my take on the topic:

The 'length' of a sales page has nothing to do with the quality of the copy and the proper use of psychological triggers.

Here are my top three simple techniques for successful sales copy writing, using psychological triggers:

- Story Telling
- Proof of Value
- Sense of Urgency

Jared

To be honest, it doesn't matter if you like it or not.

It's a numbers game. If it's converting the customers they
want to target, (which is obviously not you) then it's an
effective sales letter.

Anyone who doesn't know the answer to this question needs to do one thing and one thing alone to finally understand this 'mystery'...

Do this and you'll understand:

Go and listen to Gary Halbert's Conference Call he did with Michel Fortin. He explains it perfectly there. You can get if for free on Michel's Blog.

Also do yourself a favour and listen to ALL of the call.

I've listened to it over 20 times...

Best Wishes,

Kenneth

It's not really about "oh I'll create a long sales page cos it converts better", with that being true, one can't just create any ole long sales page and expect it to convert...

The object behind a long sales page is to tap into every possible mind process that each of us have. What may interest me after reading a paragraph or two, may not for you and many others. So by creating a large sales page you get to tap into every mind and trigger their mind to click that buy button.

I don't have the patience for long sales letters. When I was new I read them, and I read A LOT of them. Now it's fairly simple.

1. What are you selling?
2. What does it do?
3. How much?

The faster you answer those the better. And the price better be somewhere easy to find too. Not some small font red colored afterthought, but clear and easy to read.

I know from Marketers that I've dealt with that no one starts off planning to write a looong sales letter, heck I never knew I could write a 20 page sales letter myself!

However, it does take a lot of paragraphs to use psychological triggers, answer the potential objections of readers, use social proof, etc. to get them excited to buy your product, especially when the salesman is just text. Think about the salesman that knocks on your door and takes up half an hour of your time - he's a long form sales letter on legs!

Generally speaking, what I've found is that the bigger the price tag, the longer the sales letter. After all you are not going to jump for your credit card to pay $5k after reading 500 words on a coaching programme, whilst 500 words may be enough to convince you if it were a $20 product.

I appreciate all of your answers, really, but one must understand that
the marketing characteristics of a long sales letter form isn't written in stone,
and the marketing sleazyness that comes with it surely wasn't foreseen on
the time of it's cretion( or was it? :/ )

People follow shallow marketing phenomenons(long sales forms, BIG red texts,
"1 spot left" notes, luring with a story and etc..) because they are being
poisoned by current day IM coachers which teach newbies how to teach IM(ultimately)
and how to sell themselves, usually in an over-used manner...

The result -- every day I'd assume that a couple of internet marketing coachers
rise and dozens more(if not hundreds) choose to follow the way of the IM coacher -- and what they teach? Corny IM techniques offcourse!

The end of things is quite obvious: The internet gets polluted everyday
with crap(not the good type..) just because people refuse to take their
current IM knowledge and convert it for something better(or at least not bad)..
But rather than doing that, they follow like sheep after a greedy shepherd..

@Paul Myers; Although I am flattered that you took the time to investigate
into my profile and turn a mild pun sower.. it doesn't give you the right
to insult the intellegence of us both by calling me an IM newbie or a troll(yes,
I'm talking to you, Mike Hill, too.)

Why the sudden hostility tho? *one of those, ain't ya?*

You should know better not to call one a newbie just because he doesn't
support sleazy internet marketing tactics.. that's one of our worst
steriotipes afterall.. which costs quite largely for all the IMers as one.
Why the **** would you reinforce it?!

And here we go again ...

Can't one counter an insult against himself anymore without being accoused of something else..?

IMO the long form sales letter is dying a slow death, especially in the IM niche with most people so jaded that the smart marketers are moving to video and to multi page sales letters like that used by brent hall

Aye, well I hope it'll die off soon tho.. xD

btw, "long form sales videos" are starting to appear all over.. and if you count the follow-up
sales videos(which usually happens) it can go over an hour of sales video copy in some cases(if not most..)

Thing is.. it's no different than the written version... same made up story.. same unclearness about
what the product actually is... bah!

As Gary Halbert would have said to your comment "I'm going to get a lobotomy and try to lower my IQ to get to the level of that question..."

Mike Hill

Sounds like Rich Jerk style copy...

But he's rich, so it works.

The more expensive the product, the longer the sales letter, copywriters write these long letters to better convince the prospect to act and buy the product, the higher priced items need more convincing compared to the $27 ebook.

Cheers,
Magic