I started reading Murder at the Vicarage a few days ago. It’s written by Agatha Christie, the first of 18 Miss Marple books.
The story starts out with the middle-aged vicar and his much younger, chatterbox wife. They’re having a discussion at breakfast. Then some guests arrive. There’s more talking. There’s a quick location change to the den, and other characters come in. More talking, some gossiping.
This goes on. There’s characters, light dialogue, then more characters. 20 pages in, and there’s still no murder, not even a darkening on the horizon. And yet, I keep reading, like millions before me.
Why?
I guess a couple or three reasons:
1) There’s the promise of a murder mystery. It’s right there on the front page, in the title of the book.
2) It’s all written in an easy, fun, and yet clever way.
3) It’s got something that I, and all other people, want to hear more about. In this case, that’s human faces, and the unique quirks behind them.
Maybe you won’t agree with me, but I think you can apply all 3 of these points to sales copywriting as well. 1) and 2) are pretty obvious, in terms of how you can port them from Agatha Christie to a sales message. Although it might be surprising, you can also port the tabloid appeal of 3) to a sales message directly.
For example, there’s this giant promotion written by Dan Ferrari. It has the headline,
“The Stars of Silicon Valley and Hollywood are using this ‘Millionaire’s Secret’ to Look, Move, and Feel Like They’re Aging in Reverse”
The lead paints a scene, involving Goldie Hawn, Sergey Brin, and Moby, all lounging around a cliffside Los Angeles mansion, listening with rapt attention to the talk of a mysterious doctor who is revealing the secret of eternal youth.
And you know what? This promotion killed. It literally tripled the response compared to the previous control (and this promo is for Green Valley, an established direct response company, so the previous control was certainly solid). The end result was that the company ran out of inventory and had to stop running the promo until they could restock. I think that qualifies as murder on the sales page.
What’s that?
You want a light and breezy mystery for your Tuesday evening?
And you’re tired of Miss Marple?
Say no more. I got you. Check out this million-dollar Dan Ferrari page-turner instead:
https://greenvalleynaturalsolutions.com/GEN/CA/Genesis-B-telos95.php