One truism in the direct mail world - if you have a targeted list of hot prospects and a good product is “the more you tell, the more you sell”.
One very successful promotion in the late 80’s involved full page, all text (except one small corner photo) lead generation ads with a toll free number going to another message and opportunity to leave your name and address. You got a 16 page 8.5×11 mini book with a real crisp dollar bill on the cover letter to get your attention. The same booklet was remained 2 times in the next 30 days. It sold a $500 information course for financial professionals. It made millions.
The burning question is: Does this kind of logn copy apply online as well as off line? Does it need to be adapted?
Perry Marshall gives his experience online.
Just got this email from James Stevenson on whether long scrolling web pages are effective for selling, or if shorter pages are better. His question and my reply…Perry,
I appreciate your articles on the value of long copy. I’ve written long copy that generated $30 million in purchase orders from one ad that ran once in a magazine.
However, if I am to believe Jakob Nielsen, people don’t read long copy on the Internet. They may download it (as I do) and read the printed page. I wonder if you or any of your guests would address this issue.
-Jim Stevenson
Jim,
The average web visitor on the average day visiting the average website does not, on average, read long copy.
He or she stays a minute or two and then leaves. Even fewer people print it out and read it.
However… the non-buyers are not the people who count. Because many of those who BUY from you will read every word. Or they’ll skim most of it and read the sections that are most important to them, until their questions are answered.
Ebay is a case in point: On Ebay you can see the exact contents of every auction page. After the auctions are finished you can see how many bidders there were and the closing price. If you wanted to, you could conduct scientific comparisons of the same product sold a dozen different ways by a dozen different people.
You quickly see that long copy almost always gets more bids than short copy; the more you tell the more you sell, as long as the ‘telling’ is highly relevant information. You’ll also notice this is just as true of antique chairs and flat-screen televisions and automotive parts as it is for info products and other traditional ‘direct marketing’ items. People appreciate every bit of description and photography that might help them make an informed decision.
Even a simple comparison on Ebay would be 100% scientific, certainly as scientific as anything Nielsen might tell you.
On the other hand, consider a Google ad, which is 120 characters max. Overture and MSN ads are a similar size. Why that size? Because billions of clicks worth of experiments have shown that this size is the right size ad to generate one little click. No more, no less.
So what’s the real deal?
The right amount of copy is whatever amount of copy that gets your visitor to take the next step, whatever that step is.
If it’s a small step, it doesn’t take much, maybe 150 words. (Or maybe only 120 characters!) If it’s a big step, a major purchase, it usually takes a lot. If it’s a huge step it might require somebody to get on a plane and go see the customer.
But whatever you do, don’t cheat your customer of any information she needs to make an informed decision. Answer her every question and tell the whole story.
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