“When the locomotive starts to chug from a standing start, it really works hard. The amount of commitment and energy that the train must exert is monumental. But once the train starts to move, the next few feet become easier and the next few even easier. So it is with copy.”
Joe Sugarman, The Adweek Copywriting Handbook
I’ve been writing a lot of advertorials lately.
This is for a client based out of Bangkok, who sells physical products online.
Their funnel works as follows:
Prospects first see a video ad on Facebook which demonstrates the product.
They then click through, and are taken to an advertorial (that’s where I come in).
If they like what they read, they click through once more to the sales page, where they get a chance to buy.
And here’s one recent lesson from this project:
It has to do with a first-person, story-based, blog-style advertorial I wrote for a neck brace.
The first version of the advertorial was profitable, though barely so. The client asked me to come up with another version, to see whether we could increase conversions. I told him to simply test out two small changes:
1. Swap out the current headline for a Gary Halbert-style classic along the lines of “The Amazing Direct Mail Secret Of A Desperate Nerd From Ohio”
2. Insert a new lead that immediately offers a discount, with a link to the sales page (only then followed by the current story lead)
My client tested these two things out.
The new headline seems to have made quite an improvement, and is beating the old control by about 30%.
The new lead however, is underperforming the old control.
It seems that, even though prospects already know what the product is all about (thanks to the long video ad on Facebook) and are largely sold on it, they still need to read copy, and a lot of it, to get fully convinced to buy.
It was worth testing.
Now that the results are in, however, it’s really a reiteration of some old-school copywriting principles.
Very much along the lines of what Joe Sugarman, who ran a direct marketing empire that included such classics as BluBlockers, talks about in the quote up top.
You’ve got to get people reading.
You’ve got to get the train moving.
And only once it’s full steam ahead can you break through the last bit of buying resistance that’s holding prospects back.
Anyways, enough about advertorials.
Onwards and upwards to sales emails.
If you haven’t yet signed up to get a free copy of my upcoming book on email marketing, perhaps this post has stoked the old steam engine enough to get you interested.
If that’s the case, here’s where you can sign up: