200-Proof Marketing

I’m not going to tell you what I’m thinking just yet. Read below first then I’ll explain…

“One must be able to express himself briefly, clearly and convincingly, just as a salesman must. But fine writing is a distinct disadvantage. So is unique literary style. They take attention from the subject. They reveal the hook. Any studies done that attempt to sell, if apparent, create corresponding resistance.”
Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins

Now go read this Chapter of Gary Halbert’s Boron Letters: http://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com/Boron/TChapter18.htm

Did you read all that? Did you find the similarity in the two? If not, keep trying before reading on…

If you notice both texts are from Copywriting legends and both say that you shouldn’t make it obvious you are trying to sell something.

If it looks like a blatant Ad from the start, people are likely to ignore it and move on. That makes perfect sense, because I do that quite often.

I’m guessing the typical internet sales letter has become a “Blatant Ad” and my stats are reflecting this.

On one of my niche sites, over 90% of my visitors spend less than 10 seconds on my sales pages before leaving. Yet that site still averages a 3% conversion rate.

That’s just screaming to me that something is up. Either the stats aren’t reliable, I have a horrible headline, or people can easily tell it’s a Ad and leave before reading anything.

The current thinking is that at the very least people will read your Headline before deciding whether to stay or leave. Then if you’re headline is good they will be interested and keep reading.

People are told the Headline is there to get attention (which it is), so they think they should make it stand out even more. Why not make it BRIGHT red, or make it enormous? Because that might be telling the customer “THIS IS AN AD, PLEASE GO AWAY!”

In theory something that doesn’t look like an Ad but instead a piece of helpful information should draw people further into the copy, thus increasing sales. I’ve found corresponding proof of this by looking at some successful copy of the past.

So I’m going to potentially create a little stir and say “All the Guru’s are doing it wrong!”

I can’t prove it yet and I could be completely wrong, so I’m going to run a test on one of my niche sites.

I’ve already rewritten the sales page so it looks more like a helpful article at first than a Ad, and I should have the test up and running in a few hours.

Update: I forget the exact results of this test but I know it inceased my conversion rate.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 18th, 2006 at 11:00 pm and is filed under Internet Marketing, Testing & Tracking, Test Results, Copywriting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.