Long Vs Short Sales Copy July 5, 2008
Posted by janey in : business success , trackbackFor those that aren’t aware of exactly what sales copy is. It’s the words, or script (if video) of a sales page. For as long as I have been creating sales pages, capture pages, email auto responder I have been exploring the question that I think comes up in every marketers mind at some point or another. Is it better to write long detailed copy or keep it short giving just enough information to keep the prospect curious? What I have found is somewhat of a boring and usual answer. It depends. I know that it sounds like a cop out but it truly is not, when to use long copy vs short copy is most certainly a science. There is no doubt about that and you want to pay very close attention and be careful not to use either in the wrong place it can be devastating. What I have found through my own testing is that understanding this and using it skillfully can be the difference between 1 sale a month and 10. Its important to note that when I am referring to sales.. I’m referring to my own business where I sell a high end product that goes for 3,000. So 10 sales a month is not to shabby. Its amazing how a much a combination of learning and testing can really change your business.
So here was my personal thought process when trying to figure out if I should use long or short copy. I’m not sure if you can really relate to this or not but my guess is that on some level every new marketer can. After sitting at my computer for a total of about 2 hours attempting to create my very first sales page the conversation in my head sounded some what like this “long? Short? Long? Shot? Long? Short? Short is good because it will generate curiosity and probably get more people to opt in… but all the people that opt in will be unqualified.. ill be spending my time talking to people that aren’t really interested. Long copy would be better because I could qualify the people before they join and only spend my time talking to quality people.
It is important for me to explain that at this point in time I was completely burnt out on calling leads. I was learning to market because I was taking a Giant step up in the evolutationary process and attempting to learn how to create my own me specific targeted leads for cheaper. I don’t care how good you are on the phone or how thick your skin is, calling 200 semi targeted leads a day for over a year will burn almost anyone out.
So I decided to create a long page that would brand me, explain the business and the benefits of joining me vs my competition. At the end of the page there was a place for the person to submit there name for more information. My game plan was to advertise it on using a combination of myspace and Google ad words. So I spent the next month and a half working hard creating my page. Hired a designer, did a photo shoot with my girlfriend who is a professional photographer, I even paid a copywriter 2 thousand dollars to go over the copy that I had wrote and make it better. I was so excited and proud of my creation. This was sure to make me thousands more than I was making. Once everything was tight and ready I launched my sorry excuse for a marketing plan. The results sucked. One the ad words side it was costing me about $25 bucks a lead when it should be costing me about $3. Looking back it was because of a number of things from the long copy to a poorly set up Adwords campaign.
I had no freaking clue what I was doing. It took me way longer than it should of to let go of this project. So I put it on pause and really started to analyze what was wrong and to started putting a plan together to fix it. The problem was I was too emotionally attached to my project. I was judging it based on the fact that I thought it should work and not the fact that it wasn’t working. There was a HUGE lesson learned here and it cost me thousands of dollars. Don’t be afraid to cut bait on anything that is simply not working. Look at your work from a completely none biased stand point.
So once my campaign was paused I dealt with one problem at a time. Again since I was so emotionally and financially invested in my page I refused to believe that was the problem. I bought a e book by Perry Marshal called “The Definitive Guide To Google Adwords.” This was a huge eye opener and here I learned exactly what I needed to do to change my Adwords campaign. I got my campaign fixed but I was still not even close. My results got much better though… I went from $25 to about $17 per lead. Wile this was a major improvement I was not quite where I needed to be. On top of that I wasn’t getting the most important thing.. SALES! Sometimes we get so caught up in the marketing of things that we forget our end goal.
This is when I went back to the question. Long vs Short? Maybe my copy was too long and people where getting board with it and would click off before they submitted there information. I started to really think about this… what do I do when I see long sales pages. I never read them. Ah ha that’s it no body reads long copy… that is why I’m not making sales. Long copy sucks. I mean common if I don’t do it than no body does right? Well wrong… and Ill tell you why in a little bit.
Our egos are a funny thing and it seems that more often than not they lead us to believe that the world revolves around us. Be careful not to make general decisions like this based on what you do with out testing it and see what the majority does. I know its hard to believe but you might just be the minority sometimes.
So here is what I did next. I shorten my page big time. There was only a headline, about 100 lines of text.. a brief 2 minute video a offer for a free report and opt in box. I then used my new improved Adwords campaign and my myspace marketing to drive traffic to this page. The results were much better. With my Adwords campaign I was generating leads for about 8 dollars now. There was a lot more people opting in. However we still were not there yet. The problem again was the leads where not very qualified, I got a lot of wrong numbers and I still was not getting very many sales.
So if short copy doesn’t sell and long copy doesn’t sell than what’s the solution? That is the million dollar questions. It’s a combination of both. Using short copy to grab attention create and generate interest, resulting in a opt in and using a long copy sales page with a series of auto responders to deliver the necessary information to qualify, brand and pre sell your self to your prospect before you make the call or to even sell your product on auto pilot with out a call.
That’s exactly what I did and it started working. I used the same short opt in page and campaign I was talking about before. Keep split testing until I got my conversations up to where they needed to be. My cost per lead when down to about $4 dollars per lead and I started using a long form sales page on the back to sell and give them most of the information before they called me. This was great. Most people started calling me before I started calling them. I didn’t have to spend a lot of time on the business because they already knew everything about the business before they called me. Most days I just sit in my office and work on other things wile my phone rings and the sales flow in. Just this small realization made ALL the difference in my business. Not only am I making A LOT more sales but they are coming with A LOT less effort.
I can hear the critics “but Ryan long copy doesn’t work. Its boring and people don’t ever really even go through it. People now a days just don’t have the attention span for it”
That is a huge miss conception. Let me tell you why. People watch long things all the time. Think about it the average movie is 2 hours long. They have the attention span for that. I hate to say it but its not that long copy is bad its just that your copy is un interesting.
There is something to learn from the movies. When wringing your copy tell a story. Remember facts tell and stories sell. Target your audience and speak directly to them. If you can master that and the people are sincerely interested in what you are saying you can keep there attention for at least 2 hours. I guarantee it. Although it probably shouldn’t ever be that long. If it is you are most likely over selling but that will have to be another discussion
Spend your time on this and make your copy as entertaining, and interactive as possible. Incorporate media like videos, pictures and audios. If it is a sales page with a lot of writing than split up the writing and weave some media into it. My next project is going to be a entire sales page video with no words on the page at all. It looks like the video will be about 35 minutes long and will deliver all of the information my prospects need to discover that my product will defiantly benefit them.
If creating a video sales page keep the visuals moving constantly. Don’t just sit in front of your web cam and talk to it. Change camera angles and scenery. Work in pictures, and background shots. Maybe even use some Camtastia and Powerpoint. What you use isn’t really that important as long as its appropriate to your presentation what is important is to constantly engage your viewers by constantly changing the content.
In a nut shell what I have found is that there is a time and place for both short and long copy. The trick is testing and finding out where and if it works for you. For me it worked best by having short copy on the front to grab attention and create interest and longer copy on the back to actually sell the product to the now interested person. It the end the length is not important as long as you are effectively getting your message across and keeping your prospects entertained.
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