A marketing friend recently shared with me that a health-oriented launch he ran, complete with videos, an email series, and lots of excitement…had been a huge disappointment.
Does that mean that launches don’t work?
Does that mean that videos don’t matter?
Does that mean that people think every email they receive is spam?
No, not at all.
But it can point to a very simple problem that many people have with their marketing. Here’s what I wrote in my email reply to him:
One of the very common questions I get about internet marketing is “How long should my sales letter be?”
I actually got this question again just last week.
I was talking with one of my private consulting clients who told me that he recently read in a marketing book that a sales letter ought to be about as long as one printed typewritten page. I don’t recall the name of the product or “expert” he was quoting from, but it seemed to me that anyone who knows what they’re talking about with marketing knows that ‘short’ is not the answer.
Neither is ANY specific length. Your letter needs to be as long as it takes to tell your story. No more. No less.
The reason WHY your sales letter should not be artificially shortened touches on a few important marketing lessons that you need to know and remember.
For example, you might believe that
I’ve got a question for you: If YOU could get JOHN CARLTON on the phone, what would you ask him?
As you probably know, NOTHING sells unless someone writes some copy. Whether you’re speaking that copy on a video, or pasting it into an autoresponder, or writing a sales page or squeeze page…copy is critical.
It makes money for you.
Like it or not, if you want to sell your stuff, your number one job is to get your audience to understand why they should spend their hard-earned money and give it to you.
Now, you can call that influence, inspiration, persuasion, convincing…whatever you like. But the bottom line is that no one buys unless they understand why they should buy. That’s what writing copy is all about.
And there are WRONG ways and RIGHT ways to write copy.
And there are SLOW ways and FAST ways to write copy.
And there are HARD ways and EASY ways to write copy.
Writing copy the wrong way might not only lose a sale for you, it might even chase away your best customers.
John is a master of writing GREAT copy the FAST and EASY way.
So I’ve arranged to get about 45 minutes of John Carlton’s time, and he’s going to
John Carlton is one of the most ripped-off and copied copywriter on the planet, both offline and online. That’s because what he knows and teaches about copywriting makes people buy, and makes sellers rich.
It’s not hype. It’s just the way it is.
John says he can teach anyone how to write any kind of copy you need — sales letters, adwords ads, autoresponder messages — all of it.
Most people would pay thousands of dollars to learn from John, but John is giving away his Simple Writing System Express Course for free.
I know John personally, but I still signed up for his free course because
I recently came back from an event where I got to hang out with some of the most brilliant minds in marketing, internet and otherwise.
Over the next few days and weeks, I’ll share more about what I learned, what I discovered, what I figured out from these brilliant people, and what some of them even managed to learn from me.
For example, here’s something important I learned.
I had the very good fortune to spend some time with my friend Perry Marshall. Now, if you don’t know Perry, let me clue you in a bit.
Perry is known worldwide as THE authority on Google Adwords. Although he started his business life as an engineer, and then as a salesperson for an engineering company, Perry’s passions are actually music and theology. In fact, he’s got websites about these passions that he fiddles with when he’s not showing his students how to 10x their businesses with small tweaks of their marketing tactics. (Check out Perry’s free Google Adwords course, if you’d like to experience the way Perry thinks, writes and teaches.)
Anyway…
Leave it to Perry to relate a Bible quote to Marketing. I don’t recall the exact quote, but it was something about how
I thought I’d pass along this little tidbit of marketing wisdom that I’ve suspected for a while, but that was reinforced and proven a few times recently.
You need to know this, too.
I’ve recently been watching the webinars that Marketing Experiments conducts. Wow, they sure do put a lot of effort into figuring out what works and what doesn’t work in online marketing.
My only gripe (and it’s not really a gripe) with them is that they are more focused on the larger, corporate marketer than they are with the online entrepreneurs — marketers like you and I.
David Garfinkel has a new post on his blog about the FTC’s crackdown on testimonials. David’s copywriter’s perspective is unique…and his concern (and mine) for you and your business is real.
Read what the FTC is up to on David’s blog.
-Mark
All last week, John Carlton made his case — rabidly supported by famous top marketers (who had learned from John themselves) — that he could take almost anyone…
… and lead them through a simple, step-by-step process…
… that can make you as independent, and as powerful, as anyone else in business.
How?
By learning how to write everything you need written to attract, persuade and win over vast mobs of buyers. To smoothly turn you into a killer salesman-in-print.
And this can happen for you… no matter how much trouble you’ve had trying to write sales messages in the past.
Click here: Simple Writing System
John has broken the code on delivering the most potent skill any biz owner can have. Using a simple checklist, and a little smart, hands-on coaching.
Yesterday, he opened the doors on his Simple Writing System at-home mentoring program. Where you can get that smart coaching…
… in an interactive online teaching process that has worked like crazy to produce jaw-dropping results across the board.
There are still spots in that program left…
… but I’ve just learned that today is the last day to grab one.
So I strongly urge you to
My colleague John Carlton (the legendary writing expert) has just posted something I believe you’ll want to check out right away.
David Garfinkel ("the world’s greatest copywriting coach") and I had a terrific teleseminar Tuesday night about speed copywriting techniques.
For some people it wasn’t so great, because they could not get on the call. And one guy wrote to David to say that he couldn’t be on, because it was 3am in his part of the world.
Alas…
It’s a good thing we recorded the call.
It will be up until at least Friday night, so go listen now, if you would like to learn more about how to swipe copy (and write faster and sell more stuff)!
www.davidgarfinkel.com/speedcopy-mark
To Your Success,
–Mark Widawer