Short Or Long Copy: The Best Sales Letter Strategy And Why
by: Robert Boduch
Short copy or long copy? That is the question.
Imagine yourself face to face with your prospect. Your goal is to make the sale today, in order to put food on the table and pay the bills. If you fail to close the deal today... you'll have to go to bed with an empty belly and ignore the growing stack of bills for another day.
Do you limit your efforts... or do whatever it takes to close the sale? Would you use short copy or long copy?
You’ve got to be willing to put yourself on the line. Pull out all the stops to get the deal done. If the health and well being of yourself and your family were at stake, wouldn't you use every tool in box to influence, persuade, and win the sale?
Of course you would.
The same principle applies to sales copy. Long copy delivers a more complete presentation than short copy. Long copy does a more thorough job of selling. Long copy provides more information to the interested prospect.
Say what needs to be said to close the deal -- and nothing more. If you're selling a $5 item, you might only need a paragraph of catalog copy to reach your objective. A $500 item would probably require longer copy -- depending on the market circumstances.
What about a $5000 product? Could you sell it with only a page of copy?
Truth is... unless your prospect has been pre-sold in some way, it's going to take a major sales effort to “sell” them on your higher ticket item. You can’t introduce your product with a few words and expect to write up the order seconds later. Here, long copy is definitely more effective than short copy.
After all, you're trying to convince someone who doesn't know you, your product, or service... to part with a substantial amount of cash.
If your life depended on making the sale today, it would only make sense that you'd use all your powers of persuasion to the maximum degree. To do otherwise would simply be too risky. You’d be giving up without giving it your best shot. I’m not talking about “pushing” product to the point of being annoying. That doesn’t help anybody.
What I’m talking about is taking as much space as you need to sell to your particular audience.
Sure people are busy. Yes, they have plenty going on in their lives. But your solution could impact their lives, not just today, but every day in their future. So it's up to you to sell them on you and your product. It's your duty to convince them that buying from you is in their best interest. So give it all you've got!
Use your space wisely. But never make your sales letter longer than it needs to be, simply because someone suggests that “long copy outsells short copy”.
In the interests of generating maximum sales, omitting a single item could be costly as it could prove to be the determining factor that tilts the buying decision in your favor.
Sell prospects on all the benefits. If you exclude any single benefit, it may be the very benefit that would have closed the deal today. Leave it out and it could cost you dearly. Delivering short copy that leaves unanswered questions could never be as effective a long copy that delivers all the important details.
Someone once said your sales letter can never be too long, only too boring.
Every paragraph... every sentence... in fact every word has to lead the reader on to the next. Fail to do that and your prospect will quickly click away. But hold her interest and feed her desire and chances are, she'll read every word. And that's your best bet for converting leads into orders.
What works best in your situation can only be determined by testing. Try varying lengths of sales letters and watch your results carefully. That's the only way to determine with certainty the best copy length for your market.
More Resources at www.makeyoursalessoar.com
About The Author:
Robert Boduch is an author of dozens of best-selling books, reports and articles on the art and science of selling. A free newsletter targeted at anyone interested in selling more of anything is available at www.makeyoursalessoar.com
info@makeyoursalessoar.com
March 2006
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