Perhaps you’ve seen this quote:
“All I really want is an unfair advantage.”
It’s by W.C. Fields. Online marketers often use the phrase ‘unfair advantage’ to suggest that their proprietary info is truly unique. All you have to do is plunk down your money and get your hands on it. You will immediately have the inside track you need to burn past the competition.
Well, it just isn’t so. There are techniques that work better than others, but there’s no ‘magic bullet’. Marketing is a never-ending, every day process, and simply realizing this fact can give you more of the power you need to succeed.
Do a little marketing every day, test your results, then do a little more of what works for YOU. Ultimately you will develop your own system, refining it into a high-powered marketing machine you can count on for results.
At Copywriting.Net, we’ve found that using long copy in Web sales letters generates a higher sales conversion rate. Often we need 5-8 pages of text or more to deliver the potent sales message our clients need. This long sales message is supported by direct response formatting, as well as must-have elements people are conditioned to expect in today’s online marketplace. Put together in the right way, they build an overwhelming case for buying our clients’ products and services.
The result? More sales.
“What about selling to people with short attention spans?”
It’s true people demand instant gratification online, and will click away if they’re not engaged in 30 seconds or less (wouldn’t you?…)
Which means, we as marketers must first recognize and respond to the Web as a direct response medium, where in a sense we make multiple offers throughout a Web sales letter via buttons, testimonials, text links, interactive forms etc.
This gives those individuals who don’t want to read longer sales copy the opportunity to scan around, until a sentence or headline of must-have information jumps out at them.
Remember, you don’t need to begin right away with long copy on a sales page. Test this approach on one of your site pages:
Create a 2-3 sentence paragraph, which links to your full sales letter posted on a separate Web page. Once people click through this ‘headline’ to the information you most want them to read, you are preaching to the converted. You’ve got them, and if your sales message is on target, you’ll hold their attention as they go through your long copy sales letter in detail.
Expand this approach by creating multiple mini-headline links, all pointing to the same long sales text. Test to see which generates the best response, do more of what works and drop the rest.
Scott T. Smith of Copywriting.Net. Generate MORE sales with your Web site copy and print marketing communications. For a FREE writing analysis visit http://www.copywriting.net or call Scott at 1.800.798.4471 (toll-free in the US).
