Bringing direct back into direct response

Today I want to tell you the number one problem my copywriting coach kept pointing out about my sales copy. If you avoid this problem in your own sales letters, your response will skyrocket, particularly if you are selling to cold traffic.

To set it all up, let me tell you a couple personal stories:

Around 2004, my friend got a job in Boston. I went to visit him. We wound up at a house party, standing next to two girls from Harvard.

My friend leaned over to the girls. “Are you guys best friends?” he asked. “Here, let’s find out.”

And then he gave them the “best friends” test. He’d read about it in The Game, the book by Neil Strauss about the pick up artist community.

The “best friends” test is an indirect way to start talking to girls. “Girls will blow you off if you hit on them right away,” the indirect school of pickup says. “So you gotta snake your way into a conversation.”

Sure enough, the best friends test worked. The Harvard birds loved it. We talked to them throughout the evening. “Do you live far away from here?” they asked at the end of the night.

“Very, very close,” my friend answered. But let’s leave that story, and let’s fast-forward about ten years:

I was walking down the street with another friend when I noticed a girl. I ran up and stopped right in front of her.

“Excuse me,” I said, “I was just walking with my friend when I noticed you. I thought you looked very nice and I wanted to meet you.” The girl’s eyes widened. We talked for a few minutes before I asked for her number. Later, she became my girlfriend and we stayed together for a couple of years.

You might call this a direct way to start talking to a girl. “Girls always know if you’re hitting on them,” the direct school of pickup says. “You might as well man up and own it.”

Which brings us to the topic of copywriting, and that lesson from my copywriting coach. He would scroll down through my sales letter, down to about page four, and he’d say, “This is the first place where you’re giving me a really hard, direct claim.”

His advice was that, all throughout the headline and lead, all claims need to be “on the nose.” As in, imagine you’re a boxer. Don’t feint… don’t bob and weave… don’t go for body shots to soften the guy up. Instead, hit him straight “on the nose” with hard, direct claims that he has zero chance of missing or misunderstanding.

I bring all this up because of my post yesterday. Looking back on it, I see I was asking when indirect persuasion makes sense, and when direct persuasion might be better.

But I didn’t express myself well. It sounded like I was questioning the indirect approach. So a few people wrote in to say that indirect persuasion definitely does work and that it’s very powerful.

No doubt. Indirect persuasion works. But so does direct persuasion. Sometimes people need to be told how it is, without vagueness, indirectness, or room to make their own interpretation.

The lead of a sales letter is one such example. At least according to my copywriting coach – but he should know, after all the millions he’s racked up writing sales letters for cold traffic.

What about other situations? I don’t know.

For meeting girls, there are some guidelines when it makes sense to be indirect, and when direct. But in many cases, either approach could work. It’s also a matter of personality and preference.

Maybe it’s the same with direct vs. indirect marketing. But I don’t find that answer satisfying. I’m still hoping for a better model.

So if you have a “best friends” test which tells you when to go indirect in marketing and when direct is better… then hit me up. I’m just standing here, swirling my drink around, hoping somebody cool will talk to me.