“Long novels often become best sellers, but even short books of logic rarely do.”
Victor Schwab, How to Write a Good Advertisement
True story I heard today:
Million Dollar Mike Morgan, an A-list copywriter I mentioned a couple of days ago, once wrote a 64-page sales letter.
Mike looked at his creation in horror and thought, “This really is too much. Who the hell would read 64 pages of promotion?”
Back then, Million Dollar Mike worked with copywriting coach David Garfinkel.
David read over the copy, and told Mike to run with it.
Which Mike did. The copy made sales. And afterwards, at an event where he was speaking, Mike actually got to talk to some people who bought the $1k product his sales letter promoted.
“Let me ask you something,” he asked all the folks who had bought. “Did you actually read that whole sales letter?”
All of the buyers did. The whole thing. One even read it twice.
It’s often said that a sales letter is never too long, only too boring. But here’s the problem with that:
If you’re writing to the wrong person, then no matter how long or short your sales letter, how entertaining or deadly dull, you won’t make the sale.
And if you’re not an actual prospect for what you’re selling, you can’t tell whether they will be bored or not.
So what do you do?
Well, you rely on the fundamental basics of direct response copywriting, which have been more or less proven over the last 100 years. And you apply them to your sales copy, blind if you have to.
If you need a primer on these fundamental basics of copywriting, specifically as applied to sales advertorials, then check out the following: