Sales Letters Are Too Long… Or Also Known As ADSLD
Ray Edwards has written an excellent post addressing the attention span of the online market. He discusses two critical steps a sales letter must accomplish. First Sell the prospect on reading the letter, and second lead the prospect to a desired action.
He acknowledges that the battle to hold the attention of the online market is tough. He calls it Attention Deficit Sales Letter Disorder – ADSLD. And he goes on to give some tips on how to prevent ADSLD.
I like what he has to say, and his tips are awesome. He talks about removing anything that distracts from the sales message, and mentions there is a debate about the length of sales letter. However I think he stops short.
More marketers are starting to discover that making sales letters shorter while still keeping the sales message strong is the way to go. The short attention span of the online audience is the reason. I see more people admit that they will read the headline, the opening paragraph and skim to the price.
James Brausch has said that the average length of a profitable sales page is 1.8 pages printed on his Epson printer. That’s a far cry shorter than the 12, 15, 20 page sales letters you see many marketers have up.
I know that many argue that you need to tell it to sell it. And you would never send out a salesman with the instructions to only say 400, 500 or 1000 words. You tell the salesman to keep talking until he makes the sale.
Not exactly!
I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve watched a salesman talk his way out of a sale. He does a great job convincing the prospect to buy. The customer would give the signal that he is ready to buy. The sale is made. Then the salesman KEEPS on talking, and talking and talking. He can’t stop!
Next thing you know the customer is walking out without making purchase. And the salesman is standing there shocked because he just lost the sale.
So, yes a person can talk too much and loose the sale. And so can a sales letter. Especially in this attention deficit online world.
What are your thoughts about this? I would like to hear them.
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I like this concept. I totally agree that these long, long, long sales letters are a pain in the butt, and probably ineffective. I was reminded of a story, when you mentioned salesmen talking too much. I was buying a car (a Toyota Corolla) and I was in the sales managers office getting ready to sign the papers, when suddenly the original salesman walked in and started doing another sales pitch to me. The sales manager looked at him with a look that could kill, and said, “We already have a deal!” The salesman had been on the verge of making a another offer, I think….
June Campbell
7:41 am
Oh God, that’s a riot. I’m still laughing. I’m going to make a post about it in my blog too.
June Campbell
10:24 am
The only way to know for sure is to test, of course, but this debate will rage on for as long as marketers will try to sell products.
I believe it really depends on the product, the audience, and the pre-selling efforts. If you have a simple product, well-informed audience, and have done a good job of pre-selling, then a short sales letter will have a ton of impact.
For instance, if you watch some of the major launches that include free reports, videos etc. all aimed at informing and pre-selling, I don’t think most buyers even read the sales letter. They know as soon as the bell rings that they want to get to the site and buy.
Great stuff Keith.
BTW. Please consider coming over to Daily Marketing Ace and submitting a tip or two. I’d love to help you share your knowledge.
(You too June!)
Doug Hudiburg
8:36 am
I absolutely hate those sales letters! I’ve never read through any of them and prefer to watch the video instead
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