The "One Thing" or "The Top Ten List"?

In today's Early to Rise newsletter, copy writing expert Michael Masterson writes about the importance of focusing on ONE IDEA in your ad, book, essay, etc.

He says he's gotten the best feedback from essays that have this singularity of focus.

And, that when he's written essays of the "Top Ten List" variety, the results have always been "disappointing".

On the flip side of this, one of my favorite internet time wasters is the humor site Cracked.com. Recently Cracked made the editorial decision to switch to list format for 100% of their daily articles, "Seven Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable", for example.

Traffic and activity in the comments section "exploded" after this switch.

One wonders if Stephen Covey would have gotten even better feedback had he written seven books with one habit each, rather than one book with all seven.

That's not a joke. I'd be interested in seeing the results of that split test. Hard to imagine better results than what he got, but you never know without a test...

Most of the "free reports", white papers, or autoresponder email campaigns that I've written have been of the "list" variety. But I'm thinking that next time I'm writing one of these, a good split test would be...

"The One Secret of..." vs. "The Seven Secrets of..."

Anybody tried this?

Is the Customer Always Right?

I subscribe to email newsletters from most of the top copywriters. Got one today from a big name guru who mentioned a survey he'd run recently.

He said that one of the respondents asked for longer, meatier content while another praised him for his short and to-the-point emails.

Guru then went on to explain how you can't please all the people all the time, so focus your efforts on those who like you and forget about the ones who don't.

I disagreed and told him so. Here's our email correspondence with the guru's name removed...

ME: hmmm....well, I agree to a point.

But, if "(name of his subsriber)" is subscribing and taking
the time to answer a survey, I wouldn't exactly call him
someone who "doesn't like you".

A better response than "so what" would be list segmentation.
Offer a shorter version for those who want a shorter version
and a "meatier" version for those who want that.

jf

GURU: In theory you may be right.

But segmenting the list is so logistically difficult, it only
makes sense for major segments.

For instance, I might segment my list into "copywriters" vs.
"Internet marketers."

Not sure I would segment into "prefers short copy" vs. "prefers
long copy" and then have to prepare two different editions of
each e-newsletter.

ME: yes, I would only pay attention to (subscriber) if the
survey showed that he was part of a "significant segment".
BUT... His segment wouldn't have to be THAT significant
numerically. If it turns out he's part of a substantial
group who...

• wants meatier content
• clicks on every link
• hangs out on webpages for a long time
• reads every word
• fills out surveys
• BUYS STUFF

that sounds like the kind of person (group) you might want to
make an effort to please...and I don't think that would be very
hard to do: "Click here for the full article" kind of stuff.

Bottom line, of course: do people like '(subscriber name)' BUY A
LOT OF STUFF? If not,ignore the crank.

jf


What do you think?

Shoving it in the Face of "Image Advertising"

Read almost any direct mail or internet marketing guru and eventually you'll hear them tear into "agency advertising" or "image advertising". The rant is always about how the RESULTS from these advertising forms (Tv, radio, etc.) are not TRACKABLE. There's nothing to hold them accountable. It's fluff and entertainment. Not REAL advertising.

And nothing makes them pull their hair out more than the hype over Super Bowl commercials.

SalesGenie.com seems to have taken this position to a perverse and expensive extreme. SalesGenie's CEO created Super Bowl adverstisments that were intentionally borderline racist and, by all agency standards, bad for SalesGenie's image. Here's one...



From Salon.com: Vin Gupta, founder and chairman of Salesgenie.com, conceptualized and wrote copy for the ads himself. While other brands battle for accolades, Salesgenie.com isn't phased by boos and jeers from the audience. "It was judged to be the best by the real pros," says Gupta. "Our ad was one of the few to feature a call-to-action, driving more than 25,000 people to the Salesgenie.com Web site. If it positively impacts business like it did last year, we'd be thrilled to be the worst again."

Summing up the difference in perspective, a PR expert wrote, "While the ads may attract visitors to the company's website,Salesgenie.com isn't helping its image."

I have no idea whether the strategy worked again or not. Did they get a lot of visitors to their site again? Did they sell a lot of leads again? I don't know.

What I do know, is that if they DID get lots of visitors and sold lots of leads, do they really care how bad it is for their "image"?

Should anyone care?

Thoughts?

John
LogosMarketing.Net

Split Testing "readability"

My friend and AdWords guru, Perry Marshall, had an interesting idea about the "readability" scale I mentioned in yesterday's post.

What about split testing readability? Write one sales letter or landing page at grade level "9" readability and then write another that comes in at "6.5" or so.

I'm betting that the "6.5" would work better in most markets but, as with anything in copywriting, you never really know unless you test.

Has anyone out there tried this? Let me know.

John Fancher
LogosMarketing.Net

I Guess I'm Not a Pretentious Copy Writer After All

So, AWAI's recent email blasts mentions the "readability" tool in Microsoft Word. It's part of the spell/grammar check tool.

It will tell you at what grade level your document is written.

Copy writing experts suggest that you should shoot for a reading level of "8.5" or lower. Not because people are stupid - well, not JUST because of that! :-) - but because a low-grade reading level indicates that the copy is direct, concise and easy to understand.

I've been checking my stuff over the last couple days and have yet to score over "7.1". Most of my stuff comes in at 6.5 or so.

I'm simple! Yippee!

John Fancher
LogosMarketing.Net