- Phone Calls Can Kill Your Copywriting Business
Recently, a coaching client asked me about dealing with prospective clients over the phone.
This copywriter understood the importance of communicating with prospects and answering their pre-sale questions. However, like me, he preferred to avoid the telephone and asked me if his strategy was sound.
Free consultations are often a necessary step in securing clients in your early days as a copywriter before you’ve established your expertise and developed a reputation.
It’s natural that potential clients want to get a feel for your style and standards with a “getting to know you session.” Quite often, they will want to do this via a phone consultation with you.
I’m a big believer in opening the lines of communication, and I also like to pick up the phone to speak with a client when writing copy.
But before a client hires me, I prefer to remain off the phone. Why? Because the telephone can be counterproductive and even hurt your business.
As much as you can, give your prospects what they want without giving in by restricting these pre-contract consults to email.
No matter how green you are to the copywriting field, you do not want to open the Pandora’s Box that phone consultations represent. Phone calls should remain a privilege open to paying clients alone.
While this policy may deter a handful of potential clients from engaging your services, they will undoubtedly be clients that would have represented major hassle and headaches down the road.
Allowing phone consultations before your client has committed to your services can do more than eat up your time, it can have a huge impact on your bottom line.
Potential clients who insist on phone consults tend to ask a bazillion questions and often abuse the privilege as an opportunity to use the calls as a free critique of their copy.
In general, most clients won’t use the phone for the purpose of extracting free information from you — at least, not at first.
But in many cases, if you’re trying to land a copywriting project you will have the inclination to give more on the call than the norm.
It’s only natural. You want to strut your stuff and show your prospective client that you know what you’re talking about. After all, you’re trying to sell yourself.
However, clients will often see this as a gift, not as a marketing gesture. Many will tend to take advantage of your “good nature.” Albeit without any ill-intent, they may do so in subtle and involuntary ways.
If you succumb to their inquiries, you may end up talking yourself out of a client by giving them all the information they need to complete the assignment on their own.
I believe that phone consults are, more often than not, simply an excuse for not taking action. They are typically requested by people who aren’t ready to buy.
In fact, people who insist on a free phone consultation can generally be lumped into two categories:
- The first is those that are techno-challenged, uncomfortable with using email.
- The second category consists of abusers, freeloaders, and tire-kickers.
To eliminate the first group, you may want to have your prospect fill out a questionnaire beforehand (which they can fax, if need be), or hire a third person to screen and handle your pre-sales calls for you.
Aside from the ability to qualify your prospects for you, a third person will always sell you better than you can sell yourself. These gatekeepers will also increase your perceived value, too.
You can quickly and effectively eliminate the second group from the equation by charging for pre-contract consultations. You may, as I do, offer a discount equivalent to the fee as a credit towards future service if they decide to move forward.
While a prospect insisting on a phone call may be innocently asking for more information, in my experience phone consultations are indicative of a high-maintenance client.
Asking for a phone consultation sends up immediate red flags for me, and it should for you too. More often than not, they are trying to squeeze information from you — whether they intended it or not.
If they abuse your time with long or repetitious phone calls, and they get past the phone without the information they sought and still choose to hire you, you will find many of them will tend to be of the scarcity mindset.
They will be the type of client who will nitpick you and nickel-and-dime you as well.
Alternatively, you may find that they are very insecure. If so, they will continue to be insecure during your time working with them.
This means you have to take two to five times more time to explain and educate them throughout the entire project. It’s not often worth the extra hand-holding and reassurances that go into satisfying the needs of a client like this.
So protect yourself, your business and your sanity by eliminating the option to begin with. The few clients who cannot be deterred from a phone consultation should be willing to pay for this premium service.
Those who don’t are likely not worth your time or bother. For every potential client that has an issue with this policy, there will be ten more willing to honor and respect your no-phone policies.
Placing strong and clearly defined limits from the start of the relationship by not taking phone calls will attract better, more qualified clients.
The clients gained through this simple screening process will be more inclined to value your time and respect your talents. You’ll find that you will be able to work on more satisfying projects for more appreciative clients.
Plus, refusing to work over the phone increases your perceived value — the value of your services and your time, and, above all, the value you place on your clients.
You are positioning yourself not only as a copywriter who values her time, but also as one who respects and values your client’s time, too.
This concept is no different than any other relationship in which a “hard-to-get” strategy is used. By not being available over the phone you increase the perception of your credibility, authority and higher demand on your time.
The mature client will assume that, if you value your time that much, then you will value the time you will spend working with them, too. They will appreciate it more.
Bottom line, having a no-phone policy with non-clients increases your worth through the concept of scarcity and the odds of landing the client who truly wants to work with you on your terms.
After all, you’re a copywriter, not a telemarketer.
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- Are All Business People Dishonest?
Seems I’m ranting a lot these days, and a little more opinionated than the norm. Perhaps it’s my broken back, which is killing me, that’s making me more sensitive or irritable. I don’t know.
But something someone recently said in my copywriters forum irritated me. And it’s not what this person said specifically, but the mindset behind it that’s bothering me.
In a thread about an Internet marketer who was recently arrested (yes, it had something to do with forced continuity, but it had more to do with refusing refunds and avoiding customers than it had to do with forced continuity itself), one member said:
“There is NO such thing as an honest business man. (…) Ask any accountant.”
Now, I have no clue as to why this person said this. And my opinion here is not about this person specifically. Again, it’s about the thinking process that some people have when they make such assertions.
Personally, I believe this view of business people is skewed, off, and wrong. It’s destructive, too.
In fact, copywriter Marcia Yudkin said it best. In her reply, she said this gem: “I feel sorry for you. That is a terrible philosophy to hold, hurtful to you and hurtful to the honest people who deal with you.”
Well said.
I know what the original commentator was trying to say, but I wouldn’t have said “dishonest.” I believe the word choice is wrong because of the implication. Are all business people really dishonest?
Saying it that way can be easily misconstrued. And it can also be easily misinterpreted, too.
That’s the power of words. That’s what makes us copywriters, too.
We choose our words carefully. The words we use can be incredibly powerful — both good and bad.
If “dishonest” is referring to communications, I’ll be the first to admit that we do exaggerate from time to time. We try to put our product in its best possible light. We focus more on the benefits than we do on the downfalls.
But you know, that’s not reserved to business people only.
We do it when we try to explain a movie we love to our friends. Or when we bolster our ego talking about a great deal we got at the local store. Or when we court a potential life partner.
It’s human nature.
Words have emotional impact. Even with the most logical, analytical people out there. Our choice of words can make or break the sale, whether the product is good or not. Just as words can make or break relationships, court cases, even wars.
For example, real estate agents will say they sell “homes,” not houses. Dentists will say they create beautiful “smiles,” not “teeth.” We tell stories to communicate a product’s purpose or brand. We use words that paint vivid mental pictures.
(I recommend Seth Godin’s book, “All Marketers Are Liars.” By the way, Seth is referring to the power of telling stories in marketing.)
But to say all business people are dishonest, and even implying that one should ask any accountant, is a terribly skewed vision of the world. And I’m speaking generally, not just about business itself.
Business people do try to make maximum profit with every transaction, and they will try to do it at the least amount of expense.
That’s business.
The difference is, the honest ones will do so at the service of others, while the dishonest ones will do so at the expense of others.
Making a profit can be seen by a lot of people as “dishonest.” I’m a capitalist through and through, and I believe in win-win. I don’t see anything wrong with mutually beneficial transactions, which is what business is and should be, in my opinion.
We sell products and services that benefit our customers. But just as much as we are responsible not to mislead, lie, or deceive, customers are just as responsible for their own lives, their own decisions, and their own actions.
What I have a problem with is, some people do see any kind of marketing, or any kind of selling, as dishonest.
And for some reason, that bothers me.
For example, in the same vein as “all business people are dishonest,” some have said, in the recent forced continuity debate, that all marketing is unethical.
They say that a product should sell by itself based on its own merit. And that marketing and selling (and to that I would add copywriting) exist because it’s the only way to sell a poor product that can’t sell itself.
Oh, really?
If so, then we must be all psychics, because we should know about all the good products in the world. We should rely only on word-of-mouth — we all have friends who will tell us what we need to know, right?
And we should all buy everything that “is good” (even though “good” is subjective and personal) solely because they alone merit our attention, our patronage, and our money.
Forget about life getting in the way.
Forget about competition.
Forget about our innate fear of loss.
Forget about the state of the economy.
Forget about the need for marketing to help better decide how we spend our money.
And forget our natural proclivities to want to be secure, to procrastinate, to avoid making bad decisions, and to save our money to buy only what we need — not what we want. (Goodness forbid we buy what we want, not what we need!)
Obviously, that’s wrong. At least to me, it is.
My opinion?
(Here comes the rant.)
In my experience, people who think all marketing is unethical or that all business people are dishonest are usually people who feel everything should be free.
Now, I’m not trying to start a political debate regarding capitalism versus socialism. I’m talking about people who have a sense of entitlement, especially those who whine and complain all the time.
People who bitch about businesses exploiting them are just as much trying to exploit businesses themselves by always trying to find, or haggling for, a good deal.
This is called “projection.” (I’ll come back to this in a moment.)
People who feel that they deserve great products and great customer service (which is a given and expected) but for the least amount of money possible.
People who feel they should get the most by working (or paying) the least.
These people who have a sense of entitlement blame others all the time, never take responsibility for their own circumstances, victimize themselves constantly, and whine all the time about how unfair the world is.
To them, not only are all business people dishonest and all marketing unethical, but also everything costs too much. They automatically assume that all marketing is a scam, and that they, in turn, will do their darnedest best to scam businesses, too.
They will suck them for freebies. They will never buy anything. They let coupons and deals dictate their lives. And they will be the first ones to pounce on any mistake a marketer makes — such as a grocery store accidentally pricing an item too low.
They’re the ones who think, “if it’s that good, then it should be cheap… Or free.”
They try to get the most by paying the least (now tell me, how different is that from the business owner who tries to make the most profit with the least expense?).
People who make such assertions should look in the mirror first.
In a recent blog post, one of my favorite authors and speakers, Larry Winget, talked about banning one of his blog commentators who was toxic, always negative, and went out of his way to badmouth Larry.
This person was so incensed, even to the point of going on Amazon and giving every book Larry wrote a bad review.
In that blog post, I commented that, if only the bad commentators would put as much work into, well, working on their own success, I betcha they wouldn’t find the time to bitch.
They would be too busy being successful.
Larry once noted that the hardest thing one can and will ever do in their lives is to look at themselves in the mirror and say, “It’s all my fault.”
These “bad commentators” aren’t looking in the mirror as they should be. And I would venture to say that people who don’t look in the mirror expect everything else to be one. (That’s what I mean by “projection.”)
Remember the old Einstein saying that, when your only tool is hammer you see every problem as a nail? It’s the same idea, here.
That is, when these faultfinders blame others, they are projecting their own self-loathing onto others.
Similarly, what I found is that those who whine and complain are usually the ones who aren’t happy with themselves, and feel the need to blame others.
And they put a lot of work, effort, and even money into dragging other people down, or into whining about how bad things are (e.g., how broke and tired they are, or how scammed they’ve been).
Why don’t they spend all that energy and money on getting ahead instead? Or dare I say it, into starting a business, and — here’s a novel concept — marketing and selling themselves?
Go figure.
In Larry’s program, “Success is Your Own (Damn) Fault,” he quotes the Sanborn Maxim, which goes: “The customers who are willing to pay you the least will always demand the most.”
While that might be true in terms of money, I think it’s the same with everything else.
For example, “The people who are willing to pay you the least respect will always demand the most.” (And I believe they’re the ones who deserve it the least, too.)
I agree that there are some business people out there who are dishonest. Thinking that all of them are honest is just as skewed as the converse.
But that kind of thinking can be a lot more hurtful and damaging than the simple comment “there is no such thing as an honest business person.” Damaging to oneself as it is to others.
In conclusion, let me quote something Michelle MacPherson said, a marketer I admire a lot, which sums it all up beautifully:
“If you don’t take responsibility for your own actions in life and instead hand that responsibility (in the form of blame) to someone else, you have no power (you’ve effectively given that power to someone else, since it’s ‘not your fault’). If you have no power, you’ll never have success — you’ll just spend your days blaming others for your lack thereof.”
Thanks for listening.
P.S.: What do you think of the new blog design? Just a larger font, more whitespace, and less “busyness.” It’s based on your feedback, which I appreciate immensely.
Related posts
- Breaking My Back Promoting New Product. Literally.
Here at the Big Seminar in Atlanta, the same question seems to pop up over and over again. I walk with a cane now, and people keep asking me, “Michel, What’s wrong? Are you OK? What happened?”
I don’t blame them. My wife told me I was turning as white as a ghost, so we’ve decided to go back to our room to take some time — and pressure — off my spine.
I thought to myself, “Maybe I should take advantage of this downtime to blog about this — that way, more people will know what’s going on.”
You see, I have a broken back. Literally.
Let me back up a little.
This weekend, one of our goals is trying to meet people and network with the crowd to promote our new training system, Success Chef.
(That’s one of the perks of being at a seminar!)
We’re trying to create affiliate relationships with potential partners who can help us promote our new Success Chef training system during our prelaunch phase — we plan on officially launching by late summer.
The prelaunch lifetime membership offer has a few openings available, along with the special scholarship discount we make on the full-length, 70-minute free video.
Plus, I also installed a public blog during the prelaunch, which showcases video previews, case studies, and sample tutorials.
You should check it out, too. In fact, if you want to help us promote it as well (we greatly appreciate it!), here’s where you can sign up to become an affiliate. Success Chef affiliates earn a generous commission, and we appreciate your support.
“Back” to my story.
Some of you may have noticed that I was walking with a cane at the last 2-3 seminars. At the last few seminars I spoke at, I had to sit in a chair while on stage to deliver my presentation. I just couldn’t stand up.
Here’s the thing.
After a serious car accident over 20 years ago where a taxi blindsided me, my back would occasionally go out. Nothing serious. Perhaps once to twice a year.
At first, I was able to tolerate the pain. But as the years went by, the spasms became more and more severe, and the pain wouldn’t go away no matter how many over-the-counter pain medications I would take.
Nowadays, my back seems to go out once a month, and the pain is constant. Oftentimes, unbearable.
So I decided to consult with a doctor, which was followed by an MRI of my spine. (The picture at the top of the blog post is an actual scanned picture of my spine, by the way.)
Last month, I got the MRI results back from the spine center, and it doesn’t look good. Essentially, my diagnosis shows that I have a herniated disc, a buldging disc, and arthritis in my lumbard region.
That explains why I am in constant pain, walking with a cane eight days out of 10. I can’t even sleep at night because it’s too excruciating. The sad part is, it keeps getting worse. The only solution is surgery.
But in addition to degenerative disc disease, they found something else.
Believe it or not, I have a broken back!
(This surprised me, as you can imagine.)
I have what’s called a “PARS Defect” (or “Spondylolysis”).
PARS is a stress fracture where one vertebra is completely “loose”, dislocated from the rest of the spinal column. Any swift movement, heavy lifting, or long periods standing up can force it to shift and pull on a nerve, causing my back to spasm and my legs to go numb.
When my back goes out, it lasts for about a week with almost complete paralysis. I have to crawl my way to the bathroom. Trust me, it isn’t a pretty sight.
The good part is, I’m getting back surgery in late June in Tampa, Florida. They will be using laser to “burn off” the bulge and arthritic tissue, and perform something akin to a “root canal” on the nerve attached to the broken vertebra.
The darn thing is costing me over $30,000! Ouch.
(Remember, being Canadian my insurance doesn’t cover this. But considering how much pain I’m in, it’s well worth it.)
Anyway, my back may be a bit of an obstacle, but there’s something else. Something I wanted to share with you all but didn’t until now because it’s pretty personal.
Since I’m opening myself up, I might as well let it all out.
You see, the last month or so has been pretty challenging for us. My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer last month.
She had her surgical mastectomy a few weeks ago. Her chemotherapy has started, which will be followed by radiation treatments in the summer.
She lived with us for a while so we can take care of her — until she went back to the hospital to have her bandages removed and was able to go back home.
Luckily for me (and her), my wife Sylvie was an awesome support! Her positive attitude and previous experience helped my mom greatly. It made my mom stronger, for sure.
But there’s another reason why we felt the need to do this. Because, at the same time, my sister, who suffers from an advanced form of diabetes and lupus, fell into a diabetic coma and was hooked up to a respirator for about a week.
She’s fine now and back at home with my mom — they live together along with her husband and my two nieces. But at the time, my sister surely wasn’t in a state to take care of my mom.
So having her stay with us for a couple of weeks not only was the least we could do, but it was also a blessing in disguise. Because during that time my wife really made such a positive impact on my mom.
She’s in great spirits and healing nicely.
Nevertheless, as you can see it has been a pretty eventful two months, to say the least.
I didn’t want to just blog about this to let you know, but also to thank you and let you know how much we appreciate you and your help.
Keep my mom and my sister in your thoughts and prayers. They mean a lot to us. You mean a lot to us. You guys are amazing.
Now, as my friend John Reese always says, “Back to work!”
(In my case, I might have to take that sitting down.) 
Related posts
- Follow Me and Become a Fan!
Short post. In fact, it’s a short post about short posts. Looks like I’ve been hit by the Twitter bug. Follow me on twitter: twitter.com/drsuccess.
It’s also added to my Facebook profile. So as I “twitter,” it updates my Facebook status. If you’re a Facebook member, add me as a friend and follow me there: profile.to/michelfortin. Finally, Sylvie and I have a “Facebook Fan Page.” Won’t you become a fan? Go here: companies.to/licorice.
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- Forced Continuity: A Different Perspective
Preamble: In response to some excellent rebuttals as well as countless comments I’ve received on my previous post, “The Real Sinister Side of Forced Continuity,” I believe some people are missing the point of my argument, and I want to clarify a few things.
I’m not a lawyer by any stretch. But as a copywriter and business owner, I do know the rules enough to know that there’s a difference between “optional continuity,” “forced continuity,” and “hidden continuity.”
Optional continuity is self-explanatory. Forced continuity is a very common marketing practice (I’m not a fan of it, but I don’t mind it). In fact, there’s nothing wrong with forced continuity in and of itself.
What’s wrong is when it’s used in a wrong way.
The real problem, I believe, is that good marketers, including marketers using “forced continuity” in an ethical and legitimate way, are getting a bad reputation because some marketers unscrupulously misuse forced continuity.
The lack of transparency is the real culprit — such as hiding it or disguising it. Especially when it’s done on purpose. That annoys me. Because it’s no longer an issue of misuse. It’s out-and-out abuse.
But what bothers me more is how it affects us all. And it affects us all, both customers and marketers alike, in more ways than you think.
Forced continuity is nothing new.
The vitamin industry uses it all the time. I’m told Anthony Robbins uses it, too. Popular products like Video Professor, Columbia House, Time Life, Audible.com, and tons of others use forced continuity in some way.
(One of my students reported to me that the infamous “Girls Gone Wild” videos do it, too. Though, he added, “Believe it or not, I don’t know that from experience.”)
Forced continuity, done right, can be legal, ethical, and tremendously profitable. As long as it’s clear and transparent. There’s nothing wrong with forced continuity.
The fine line is when some marketers try to hide the forced continuity, or use hidden continuity. It’s not only bad business, it’s also illegal.
Worse yet, when marketers cross that fine line by using deception (like skillfully hiding it or burying it in tiny print) just enough so their forced continuity offers are “borderline legal,” is something I personally despise.
When you’re clear and above board, and you don’t try to hide it, to me that’s fine. I’m speaking from a customer’s standpoint, not a marketer.
I love having choices. And I love making them when my choices are clear to me.
Some people buy products for the premiums alone. Just as some people will be forced into a continuity program to get their hands on the main product alone. It’s an offer like any other.
You either buy it or you don’t.
But either way, it’s still a choice.
However, when you’re hiding or disguising a continuity program, you’re removing that choice from your customers. That’s the kicker.
Borderline or not, misleading or not, or ethical or not is not the point I want to focus on. Clarity and transparency are simply common sense. Period.
What I’m concerned with mostly is the bad reputation the lack of transparency creates. It’s hurting the good marketers, as well as non-hidden, ethical forced continuity offers from legitimate marketers.
The bad taste it leaves in people’s mouths creates a negative impact on our industry that affects us all. That’s the real sinister side of forced continuity.
It’s when marketers abuse forced continuity.
My point is that poorly done or hidden continuity offers affect us in more ways than one. We lose more than just our credibility. We lose more than just our customers. We lose lifetime customers.
Let me put this in a different perspective for you.
Obviously, our customers lose, too. But they lose more than just in the transaction itself. They lose a lot more than you think.
To me, selling is part of serving your customer. Selling is customer service, in other words. You are offering them something that can enrich their lives or their businesses. And so you owe it to them to make that offer.
As copywriter Brian Keith Voiles says so often, “Remember that you are a blessing in their lives.” So you owe it to your customers to make them offers — products, services and solutions that will help them.
On the other hand, not selling them is a disservice.
When you fail to make an offer, you are cheating your client. To that I would add, selling them in the wrong way (or against their will) is just as bad if not worse.
Why? Because you’re not only offering a disservice to your customer, you are also cheating them out of all future offers they will not buy because of the previous bad experience, including offers by other, legitimate marketers selling products that are perfect for them and with which they can enrich their lives.
It’s something to think about.
In defense of some of the marketers I mentioned in my previous article, let me switch gears for a moment and give you a few extra insights.
Joel Comm posted a well-worded apology. (Read the copy, and how Joel turned a negative into a positive. I may not be a fan of forced continuity, but I think his strategy contains a great marketing lesson.)
Also, Matt Bacak has removed his offer completely. I spent two hours on the phone with him yesterday, on his way to New Orleans to give a check to Habitat for Humanity. He feels really bad about his mistake and the backlash it created.
And I believe him. Here’s why.
As Matt explained, the strange thing about this whole ordeal was, the ability to opt-out at the beginning was actually a programmer glitch. According to Matt, it was supposed to be easily “opt-outable” from the get-go.
But Matt said that the programmer failed to make the changes (he was actually working on it) before the launch, when some affiliates jumped the gun and started promoting it prematurely before the programmer had a chance to fix it.
(Some people opined that they wouldn’t have apologized if they didn’t get caught. I’m sure that’s true with some marketers out there. And this can be a whole different debate, I’m sure. But I want refrain from it, as Matt and Joel can defend themselves. They’re big boys. They can handle it.)
Nevertheless, Matt got hammered as a result. Naturally. And he got even more hammered because his offer came out at the exact same time Joel Comm did his thing, which compounded the entire issue.
But something else made things worse.
When you add to that the fact that Matt mixed his forced continuity offer with a bunch of upsells one had to listen to and go through before completing their order (which can be annoying), it aggravated the situation.
This naturally gave people more to sink their teeth into.
It’s like the ketchup principle I teach at seminars.
Let’s say a sales professional is meeting you, his prospect, over lunch. His attire is professional, topnotch, and impeccable. His sales and collateral materials are of high quality, impressive, and persuasive.
He gives you an absolutely fabulous presentation. He did his homework, asked you the right questions, and said all the right things to close the deal.
But throughout your lunch encounter, you couldn’t help but notice a tiny ketchup stain on his tie. Nothing significant, but just enough to catch your attention.
Now, tell me, if I were to ask you a few weeks later, “What do you remember most from that presentation with that salesperson?” The first thing that will pop into your mind will be, you guessed it, the ketchup stain.
Similarly, Matt or Joel’s mistakes aside, the upsell offers, which are not real problems in and of themselves, compounded the issue.
In fact, in the flurry of negative feedback I received, what I found was that people were more upset about being forced to go through the upsell offers than they were about being forced into a continuity program.
Like the ketchup stain, everything happened all at once, which diverted people’s attention to, and magnified, the forced continuity offers — or better said, mistakes. The ketchup stain became the elephant in the room.
I said to Matt on the phone, “If you’re going to get a $5,000 seminar for just a buck, putting up with a few ‘commercials’ ain’t bad… But when you’re mixing that with a programmer glitch that forces continuity, you’re bound to freak people out.” And freak out, they did. Rightfully so.
Back to my original point…
My previous blog post had several purposes.
For one, I think that people are confusing the issue, here, between optional, forced, and hidden continuity. I also wanted to express my opinions in an effort to expose different and more important sides of the issue.
I, too, made a mistake because I failed to investigate the offer beforehand, and didn’t notice the error myself. I still would have promoted it, but I would have definitely warned my subscribers about it.
Again, it all comes back down to transparency.
So my post was, in some way, trying to divert some attention away from the ethics of the practice (which is an entirely different debate) to the more important long-term effects of doing it wrong…
… And how some real scammers, who do hide their forced continuity offers, on purpose, affects us all as marketers and customers as a whole — and how it affects us in more ways than one.
I think that bad marketing causes a lot more problems than the backlash from Matt’s or Joel’s mistake. When I said in my previous post that “Joel and Matt are the good guys” and that “we’ve seen worse,” I meant it.
Just last week, one of my coaching students bought a package from a company who has a history of delivering poor customer service. (She didn’t know this.)
After not receiving what she paid for, she asked about the status of her order. The marketer in question outright told to her that, if she wasn’t happy, to stop bothering him and to ask for a refund. So she did.
(This alone is enough to make you wince.)
But what dismayed her most was, he not only outright refused to cancel her order and refund her (according to the credit card company, he allegedly exploited a loophole to prevent any chargebacks)…
… But he also had the coyones to call her an idiot for wanting a refund, and even threatened legal action if she continued asking.
Literally! I’m not kidding.
So when people are forced into continuity, that’s one thing. It’s perfectly acceptable to me. I speak as a consumer. (As a marketer, however, it’s not my cup of tea. I wouldn’t use it myself.)
When people are forced into continuity against their will, that’s a whole different ball game. And it’s wrong. (Moreover, when marketers outright refuse to cancel and refund orders, those are the worst of the bunch.)
To me, those are the real scammers. And those are the guys who are giving us a bad name — including legitimate forced continuity offers.
It’s no wonder people are scared to buy into forced continuity offers. And it’s also no wonder why some unscrupulous marketers feel the need to hide it and resort to doing so.
Unscrupulous and lazy, too.
Why lazy? Because, if you’re willing to do it right, be transparent, and use good copywriting to ethically persuade your customer on your forced continuity offer (and, above all, on keeping it), you’re going to be a lot more successful.
As Andrew Cavanagh pointed out in the comments of my previous post, you need great copywriting not only to sell the continuity offer, but also to sell the customer on keeping their subscriptions active, before they buy.
Otherwise, like it or not, you’re going to be hit with a flood of cancellations and refunds.
I’ll finish by repeating something I said before:
Be clear. Be transparent. Use great copy. Serve your customers well. And think twice before you make a forced continuity offer — including how your offer will affect your reputation, your sales, and your industry as a whole.
And above all, your relationships.
That’s the bottom line.
Related posts
- The Real Sinister Side of Forced Continuity
Rant warning: what follows may offend some people. But I wanted to throw in my three cents on the topic of “forced continuity,” which seems to be the subject of a lot of debate these days.
Several well-known marketers have made offers of late with forced continuity. What it means is, the intended product you want to buy can only be purchased when you buy another (often, a continuous subscription) billed to your account every month or so until you cancel.
Forced continuity is nothing new. (In direct marketing, they call these “Til Forbid” offers.) It’s another type of offer, pure and simple. It’s marketing. And there’s nothing wrong with that. What’s wrong is not the way the offer is made.
The real problem is its lack of transparency.
But that’s not what I want to rant about today.
What a lot of people seem to be missing here (and something my brilliant wife brought to my attention, which makes perfect sense to me), is that there is a deeper, much darker side to this whole thing.
Something all marketers need to be aware of…
First off, I was caught in the middle myself when I hastily promoted an offer last week, which I failed to investigate and inform my audience about, because I took for granted that the marketer’s offer in question was clear.
(I’ve been told that it has since been fixed.)
Nevertheless, that was my fault.
Amid the flurry of abusive hate email, being called every name “in the book,” and the loss of many subscribers on my list (which are to a degree understandable), I apologized for it.
But my mistake aside, whether the sales copy is clear or not is not the issue I want to focus on. Being clear is simply good business practice. It’s also common sense.
Specifically, there’s a difference between optional, forced, and hidden continuity. The first one I agree with. The second one I don’t mind. But the last one is the one I despise.
It’s also the one that’s illegal.
Some marketers fail to properly inform the customer in their copy, and sometimes they skillfully hide the fine print until the last minute, just enough to be borderline “legal.”
My opinion?
You need to be transparent. You need to be clear in your offer. And you need great copy (yes, great copywriting can ethically persuade people to accept your continuity offer, when done right).
Above all, you need to be above board. Why? Because the gold is not in your list, as many marketers suggest. It’s in your relationship with your list. Big difference.
But whether forced continuity in itself is a good or bad thing, or whether it’s legal or illegal, is not the issue I want to focus on, either.
There’s plenty of debate going on right now discussing those issues, on blogs and forums, many of which are beyond the scope of what I want to tell you today.
I’m not a lawyer, and I certainly know that, legality aside, there’s a question of whether or not it is ethical in the first place. (I do believe it can be done ethically and transparently so that it’s a win-win for both sides.)
What really bothers me is the stigma it creates.
That’s the problem I have with all of this.
Matt Bacak and Joel Comm, two marketers who are at the center of the recent forced continuity controversy, are friends of ours. We promoted for them in the past, and they in turn promoted for us or will be promoting for us (such as our new Success Chef training system), which we are deeply grateful for.
Matt is not only a great friend but also a client of ours. I wrote copy for him in the past. My wife takes care of a lot of his outsourcing work. We spoke at several of Matt’s seminars. Here we are holding Matt’s newborn baby a few years ago.
As for Joel Comm, he, too, is a friend. In fact, my wife and I were the first ones to introduce Joel Comm to the Internet marketing seminar community.
We introduced him to the audience while we were on stage at a seminar two years ago, because we bundled his Adsense course with our offer at the time. We even paid Joel out of our own pockets for all the copies we sold that day.
As far as their approach is concerned, I do appreciate their attempts to push the envelope, which is admirable. It also opens the doors to be creative, providing new ideas for marketers to make offers online.
As Paul Hancox stated in his report, The Secrets of a 10% Conversion (which I highly recommend), the most important part of a salesletter to test is not the headline but the offer. And forced continuity is simply a different type of offer.
Forced continuity aside, one can learn a lot by watching how these marketers market themselves. Their use of video is one of them, for example.
But the biggest problem I have with all of this is this…
It may be borderline ethical, but being “borderline” is just enough to cause a lot of animosity and resentment. Those feelings of ill-will and hostility are going to be a problem these marketers will have to deal with, and that’s their challenge.
Believe me, Matt and Joel are far from being the bad guys. As service providers for close to 20 years, we’ve seen it all. And trust me, we’ve seen a lot worse.
For example, there are some marketers out there who not only make their continuity offers hidden, but also make it tremendously difficult for customers to cancel their subscriptions and obtain refunds.
On purpose.
Those are the worst, if you ask me.
(Making your customers jump through hoops to cancel their orders, not honoring your guarantees, or refusing to refund them, is just bad business all around, whether you used forced continuity or not.)
But what some marketers — the ones who use questionable and potentially harmful tactics — may not be cognizant about is how these feelings will affect others and our industry as a whole.
In other words, it gives Internet marketers a bad reputation. It gives all of us a bad name. It creates animosity and mistrust toward all marketers, good or bad. And now, legitimate marketers have to struggle twice as hard to sell and make an honest living in this business.
I know this from personal experience.
I fought hard to protect the integrity of good direct response copywriters out there. The direct marketing industry is not made up of just a bunch of scammy, carnival-barking, long-copy, hype-mongering fraudsters, as some purport.
Believe me, when I first opened my copywriters forum, there were some amazing, crazy, and sometimes pretty heated debates going on!
But some bad apples can indeed rot the basket. And they have. Why do you think the used-car business has such a bad reputation, for instance?
If you were to go into the used car business yourself, and you’re a legitimate business owner with the intent to conduct your business in an honest, professional, and transparent manner, you have your work cut out for you.
You see, we’re facing the same problem.
Marketers push the envelope. They think outside the box to come up with new and creative ways to sell. This is good. In principle. But the problem is, some of them just don’t care. They will push the envelope too far.
Some even justify the backlash as publicity. “Bad publicity is good publicity,” they say. Negative publicity is good when it is ill-founded or based on opinion alone (because you can easily fight those, especially if you’re a good copywriter).
And controversy does sell.
But it’s not good when it is true and well-founded — that is, when it is based on bad business, such as something illegal or unethical.
Sure, controversy creates curiosity (and sales do result). I’m a big fan of controversy. But controversy alone, or controversy created by bad or questionable business practices, is like a drug.
It’s short-lived. It requires constant injections — injections of new markets, new products, or new offers — to stay “high” (high sales volume, that is). It forces marketers to keep fighting fires rather than growing their businesses. And it creates ill will, which affects future sales and…
… Kills it for the rest of us.
Here’s an analogy.
A snake oil salesman comes to town. He sells his magic elixir that promises results after a period of time. After he sells his entire lot, in the dead of night he packs up and skips town before people realize he just scammed them.
Now, obviously, he can’t go back to the same town to sell other stuff. He is forced to move to the next town to keep earning money.
Here’s where it gets mucky.
The next time another salesman comes to town, perhaps a legitimate one selling a legitimate product, their sales will falter as a result of that town’s previous bad experience. People will instantly distrust them. They will refuse to buy if not chase them right out of town.
In those days, word got around by horseback. So the snakeoil salesman had no trouble going from town to town scamming others.
Today, with the help of the Internet however, you don’t need to be a victim like those townsfolk to be wary and skeptical of new salespeople. You just need an Internet connection.
Again, Joel and Matt are good guys. They put out great products, and I like what they’re trying to do in terms of promotion and marketing.
It’s creative. Done right, it can be both legal and ethical. And tremendously profitable, too.
But done wrong or done poorly, next time another marketer makes a similar offer people are going to think twice about making a purchasing decision.
Now, remember that the caveat emptor applies (let the buyer beware). I’m just as guilty of this. I should have conducted my own due diligence, just as much as we all should.
However, if you’re a marketer thinking of offering forced continuity, think twice before you do. Remember the difference between “forced continuity” and “hidden continuity.” Be clear. Be transparent. And serve your customers well.
Otherwise, when it’s not done properly, forced continuity can cause a lot more damage in its wake. Why? Not because it is bad in itself, or the fact that it leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths.
But because, bottom line, it affects us all as marketers.
(And remember, some of us marketers are your joint-venture partners. Some of us are your affiliates. And yes, some of us are your clients, too.)
Related posts
- Secrets of a 10% Conversion Rate
I know Paul Hancox.
Paul is a fanatical tester. He’s also an excellent copywriter.
But what you may not know is that Paul is also the creator of the very first split-testing software I’ve ever used. We’re talking, um, circa 1999, I believe. It was called “Sales Page Master Pro.” (Paul has a new version out now.)
Well, another copywriter, Paul Myers, recommended this new “report” written by Paul Hancox. I snatched it up in a heartbeat. I did because the simple title piqued my curiosity. In it you discover how to raise the conversion rate of any piece of online copy you write.
Not to 2% or 3%. Not even to 5%.
It shows you how to boost your conversion rate…
… To as high as 10%, and even more!
As you can imagine, at first, I was skeptical. I’m a fanatical tester and a copywriter by trade, so I figured this is just a marketing tactic. After all, the industry average is anywhere between 1-2%.
I regularly achieve rates of 3%-7% with my own copy. And I know that 10% is possible in some cases. I’ve done it many times.
But for the average marketer or copywriter?
If it came from someone else, I would have naturally passed it off as hype. But since I know Paul Hancox and I know he’s a fanatical tester too, I also know that this wasn’t some exaggeration or underhanded ploy.
So I was intrigued.
(What happened next surprised me.)
After buying Paul’s report, I opened what I thought would be just a few pages of huge margins, white space, and filler (ostensibly to inflate and exaggerate the size of the content).
Not only was I amazed that this course was a little under 130 pages with slim margins, but also I was dumbfounded by the fact that it was wall-to-wall, solid content.
Not some lame 25- or 50-page “report.” (Paul does call it a “report,” although it’s much closer to an actual short book, if you ask me.)
Even better, the content was really, really good.
How good was the content? I not only read it all in a single sitting, but it was so good that, after reading it, I also couldn’t apply all the changes I learned in this book fast enough!
In my 20 years as a copywriter and salesperson, as well as a fanatical tester…
… I learned things I never knew and would have never imagined.
With one salesletter I applied just a simple tweak over the last weekend, it immediately bumped up my conversion. And it’s super-simple, but I would have never thought about it if I didn’t get this report.
(A word of warning, though. While some of the changes Paul suggests are easy and quick to implement, don’t think they’re about tiny, insignificant things, like testing colors, fonts, or graphics. This report goes deeper than that. A lot deeper. Hint? It’s about salesmanship.)
Paul’s report is called, “The Secrets of a 10% Conversion Rate.”
To be candid, I would have easily paid five times more for this course, if not more. This is a steal, and I mean that sincerely. These days, it takes a lot for me to be impressed. Well, I’m more than impressed.
I’m astounded.
I was so impressed that…
… I decided to buy rights to the book and offer it myself!
Yes, it’s that good. (If you know me, you know I don’t do this often. I far more prefer to promote my own products or, at most, be an affiliate of an existing product. But this is truly an exception.)
This gives me the ability to offer this book to you.
So get your copy of “The Secrets of a 10% Conversion” right now.
It’s 127 pages. There’s no boring fluff or filler. There’s no “history” of this, or “basics” of that. It’s solid gold, with some advanced, killer strategies, from the very first page to the last. (Besides the table of contents, of course.)
The salesletter’s suggested retail price is $197 for this report. But I’m making a special offer for just a fraction of that, which is applied when you checkout.
For the full story, go and read the letter now. Grab your copy of Paul’s report. Then grab a coffee or your favorite beverage. And depending on how fast you read, take up to an hour to read this 127-page report.
If you’re anything like me, you will want to re-read it.
Several times.
It will be well worth it. I promise you.
If you don’t like it? Just let me know and I’ll give you a refund on the spot. (It’s guaranteed for 90 days, anyway.) At the time of writing this, It made 85 sales and I processed 2 refunds.
By the way, post your feedback by adding your comment at the end of this post. I’d love to hear from you. What did you think of the book? Did you apply any of the tweaks Paul suggested? What were some of your results?
I’m also testing the delivery mechanism for this product. If you come across any snags, please let me know, too. Either reply to this thread, or email me at support [at] thecopydoctor.com.
I highly recommend you implement some of the changes Paul suggests. If you’re not testing right now, don’t worry. Paul also shows you how to do it and offers a few resources.
Now, you might think…
“But Michel, my site barely gets any traffic!”
Good question. How can you test your copy when you’re barely making sales, if any at all?
There’s a way around it.
Sure, there’s split-testing and then there’s multivariate testing. But in either case (especially with multivariate testing), you need a lot of traffic to come to some statistically significant results.
(That’s why some of the “big players” can test their way to amazing conversion rates.)
However, in this report Paul also introduces something he calls “flow testing.” I knew about this (I talked about it on my blog in the past), but Paul explains it so masterfully and in plain language, it makes it remarkably easy to understand and implement.
(It’s also the best testing strategy for smaller sites that get very little traffic. You can test your copy even if you only get 10 visitors a day! And yes, it can help you achieve high conversion rates, too.)
So get yours now. Get “The Secrets Of A 10% Conversion Rate!” today.
Related posts
- How to Negotiate Better Copywriting Fees
After reading my articles on how to find copywriting clients, a student of mine, Jeff, asked me an interesting question.
He’s an aspiring copywriter and wants to build his own freelance copywriting business. When he read that I wrote copy for free when I started my career as a copywriter, he asked me about doing the same:
“Mike, my friends have a very small business, and they have asked me to do copy for them. They say they can’t really pay me that much. I have told them I will do it for free as long as I get rights to the copy and can use it for a reference and in my portfolio. I think this is a wonderful opportunity to get more experience, but my wife wants to see some money on the table. I value your opinion. Can you help?”
Here was my answer.
I believe your trade-off is good in principle, but meager. I would consider some money — or some larger concession on the part of the client.
Writing salescopy completely for free is not good. What you should be looking for is a return on your “investment” (because writing copy for free is indeed an investment on your part), for two reasons:
- To stop potential nibbling, grinding away your time and resources;
- And to add value to your services (doing something for free paints a low perceived value and makes you, or the services you provide and especially the final product you create, look cheap).
In short, you want to take the focus away from a trade-off based on free copy to one based on a concession: value for value, in other words.
Otherwise, it can lead to a few problems once the service is rendered — problems that will be more difficult to resolve than they are to prevent.
For one, the person could ask you for more, and more, and then more, slowly nibbling away at your time, your money, and your resources.
(While some will do this conspicuously, others will do this nudgingly and subtly, often without your knowledge — especially if they’re friends of yours, since your willingness to help will also make it easier for them to do so.)
I know this from personal experience.
Early in my career, I’ve written copy for free for clients who, after delivering the copy, kept asking for small tweaks, here and there, all the time. And I never got paid for the extra work.
The worst part was, this happened more often with clients whose copy I wrote for free, or at a substantial discount after they haggled with me on price.
Even when there was a signed contract, they still found ways around it and asked for more concessions after the copy was delivered.
Trust me. I’ve been in these situations too many times.
One of my favorite speakers is Larry Winget, author of “Shut Up, Stop Whining, and Get a Life!” and “You’re Broke Because You Want to Be.” On his program, “Success is Your Own Fault,” Larry quotes the Sanborn Maxim, which goes:
“The customers who are willing to pay you the least will always demand the most.”
(Re-read it. That statement is profound. It certainly was for me.)
Nevertheless, the problem is that there is a “concession mismatch.” Stated differently, the perceived value of each concession is not equal to each other.
It’s not because the copy is free but because it is free and what you’re asking in return is meager when compared to the concession you’re making — the concession being a finished, completely written piece of sales copy.
Psychologically, by writing copy for free you are not adding enough value to your concession. More importantly, you are taking value away from your product.
Think about it.
By making your end-product the concession itself, then the perception will be that the copy will be of low value, too. Why? Because the concession they are making, in exchange, is meaningless in comparison.
Sure, building your portfolio is important to you. But giving you the ability to add their copy to your portfolio is worth how much to your client? How big of a concession is that to them? What are they really giving up in return?
In many cases, not much.
Look at it this way: since you are not asking the client to make a significant concession in exchange for your concession, then you’re not only devaluing your product and your services but also yourself.
To be clear, asking for tradeoffs is good and you’re doing well in asking for one. It adds value to any concession by always asking for something in return.
Never make a concession, even if it’s as simple as a discount, without asking for one in exchange. This is nothing new. Most of the top negotiating experts out there, like Roger Dawson and Herb Cohen for instance, teach this.
But even if they’re friends of yours, remember this (and this is an important concept to grasp): the perceived value of the service depreciates immediately after the service is rendered.
Why is this important? For one, if the copy doesn’t do as well as expected, who cares if you did it for free? (Your client certainly won’t.)
But it goes further than that.
If all you had were rights to the copy and the copy did perform well, and if anything should happen between the two of you, would you ever consider stopping your friend from using your copy?
Friendships notwithstanding, would you be willing to work twice as hard trying to satisfy an insatiable client when you could be working on other, paying clients?
It’s something to think about.
Asking for a larger concession before work starts helps to stop the potential grinding away process after the copy is delivered. If they try, then each time they ask for a concession, you in turn ask for one, too.
Moreover, by asking for a larger concession in the beginning, you also increase the perception that each concession you will ask will be just as large, which will force them to think twice before nibbling for more.
If they are demanding (and cheap clients usually are), ask yourself:
“Am I prepared to do two to three times the work, deal with a high-maintenance client, and divert my attention away from other, paying clients (let alone away from marketing to find better clients), for a mere addition to my resumé?”
On the other hand, making a concession — giving a discount, for example — will increase your perceived worth. By raising your fees and giving a greater concession will allow you to ask for a larger concession from them in return.
So ask for something upfront, even if it’s little.
Say: “I understand that this isn’t in your budget range. In exchange for a special consideration (say, a discount), may I suggest (whatever concession you want them to make).”
Even better, let them name their concession for you. It might be a lot more than you anticipated. Say something like: “In exchange, what can you do for me?” Then let them tell you what they’re prepared to offer you in return.
(Incidentally, doing it this way also gives you a pretty good idea of how much value they place in your services and your copy.)
Your copy no longer becomes the object of the tradeoff. The concession — a discount or whatever concession you’re making — is.
Also, don’t limit yourself to a discount.
You can offer a bonus service (such as an extra revision, free of charge), an extra consultation, an extended guarantee, an add-on service (such as writing the opt-in page copy, formatting the copy, or even testing the copy), and so on.
That’s why the key is to breakdown and denominate each component of your service — from research to revisions.
In other words, give each component a price tag.
Not only will each element have an attached value to it, which can be used in the negotiation, but also it will help to justify your higher fees.
When a prospect sees the value behind every individual component, they also get a better appreciation of what you do, how you price your work, and how much they are truly getting if you were to concede on any one of those elements.
In the end, you add weight to your tradeoff, and your copy thus retains its value.
On the flip side, your client’s concession doesn’t have to be just a mere addition to your portfolio, which is minimal at best. (In fact, it should be automatically included in your agreement with any copy you write anyway.)
Remember, you want to match their concession with yours. Better said, you want to match the perceived value of your concessions.
Here’s another option.
You can offer your friends a significant concession in exchange for a percentage of gross sales your copy produces, for as long as they use your copy if not for a predetermined period of time.
If royalties are not an option (particularly if you’re new, or if you don’t know the client or their business well enough), you can ask for other things.
For example, you can barter (bartering is often the most overlooked negotiation strategy). You can have them write a testimonial about you. You can get them to give you quality referrals. You can ask them to send a broadcast to their lists promoting you, your products, or your services.
Plus, ensure they deliver their end of the deal within a specific period of time.
Remember, the value of your service — including your concession — depreciates immediately after the service has been rendered. The longer they wait to comply, the less meaningful your concession becomes.
This is preferably specified in a written agreement before work begins.
If they don’t comply within a specified period of time, then you can ask or invoice them for your full fee (and with an agreement in place before work starts, you will have legal recourse to do so).
In fact, having all this written down in an agreement prior to commencing any work is essential. Don’t get burned like I did. Get it in writing.
Finally, remember that it’s better to negotiate on a concession (whether it’s a discount or not) than it is on the copy itself — such as by offering it for free.
Related posts
- Are Bottlenecks Clogging Your Sales?
When a sales page is not performing up to your expectations, the worst thing you can do is nothing.
In most circumstances, there are steps you can take to alter the copy to improve your results immediately. By taking action and making changes, you can strengthen your copy quickly and improve your sales conversions.
The key to this process is testing to boost your outcome.
However, when most people start testing their sales copy, they immediately think of something they can add or tweak. Or they’re confused as to what to test, particularly what to test first.
I’ve found that the best and most efficient element to test is to actually first remove the things that are stopping people from ordering. In other words…
Bottlenecks.
Sales copy is a greased slide that should take the reader almost seamlessly and painlessly from the moment they see your copy to the completion of their order. The easier it is to read and take action, the more sales you will make.
Anything that blocks or stops this greased-slide process should be eliminated. And you know what the biggest bottleneck in copy is?
Before I tell you, first let’s cover a few things.
The Power of Split-Testing
Of course, you’ll want to ensure your testing is as accurate as possible by tracking your conversions from unique views, returning visitors, and email referrals separately.
If you want to implement all your changes at once, or if you want to test multiple variables at the same time, you need to take advantage of multivariate testing.
Multivariate testing allows you to test multiple aspects of your copy, simultaneously, while determining which variables as well as the best combinations get the highest response.
(I use Google Website Optimizer almost exclusively now, and I recommend it.)
Your first step in improving conversion may be to review the sales page and eliminate any visual embellishments or distractions, including any oversized graphics or flourishes.
You’ll find that eliminating potential distractions from the reading process to the decision making process will increase conversion. Once you’ve trimmed the excess that may be impeding your results, you can begin to focus on the copy.
There are three major bottlenecks common in sales letters that you will want to experiment with and focus your efforts on. They are, in order:
- The headline
- The process
- The offer
As one of the vital factors in your copy, much has been written about the creation of a strong headline. It must be powerful enough to be compelling to the reader.
But the logic is simple: if people don’t read past your headline, they won’t take action no matter how good your copy or product is. And the headline is often if not always the biggest bottleneck in copy.
Some of my marketing clients have improved their sales from 20% to 700% by simply changing and testing the headline. (In some cases, it was as simple as adding or removing a few words.)
This brings me to an important discussion.
Don’t Make Assumptions
Recently, a coaching client of mine asked me for my opinion on this post from James Brausch’s blog, where James submits that the headline is not the most important part of a salesletter.
Now, I understand the message James is trying to convey. He makes a valid point. But some people might misinterpret his findings and conclude that headlines are not important. So let me take a moment to clarify a few things.
James purports that headlines are not the most important elements of sales copy because of two logical arguments:
- James tested headlines, and “nothingness” (that is, no headline) as a variable has increased response in some cases.
- The order link is the most important element because, while sales copy can still work without a headline, it certainly can’t without an order link.
First off, James’ premise is right. Because his argument relates to actual, bottom line results. Are headlines directly tied to creating actual sales? The answer, of course, is no. But order links definitely are.
(By the way, in recent tests based on an idea I got from my friend Armand Morin, I found that a simple, old-fashioned gray submit button outperformed a graphic one by 62%, even over traditional order links.)
But a headline is the most important part of the salescopy, not because it is directly tied to sales but because it is indirectly tied to the sales process.
To the “greased slide,” in other words.
It’s all about fundamental marketing: the famous AIDA formula (which means “Attention,” “Interest,” “Desire,” and “Action”). The first part of the formula is the most critical element, because you first need to grab people’s attention.
If you don’t, the rest of the formula fails.
The Real Purpose of a Headline
Consequently, the headline is meant to help capture your readers’ attention.
The primary objective and purpose of a headline is one thing and one thing only: to get people to start reading the next paragraph. And the next paragraph’s job is to get people to read the second one. And so on.
Simply because “nothingness” wins in some cases doesn’t mean using a headline doesn’t work or that it’s safe to conclude that the headline is not the most important part of the salesletter.
Coming to that conclusion is premature and misleading. (It’s a correlation, not a cause. There is a difference, and I’ll come back to this in a moment.)
First of all, there are many other variables here that are not taken into account:
- For one, the first paragraph — in a no-headline letter — can act as a headline. Or any graphics (with copy on them), pop-ups, even the web page title (i.e., the text in the top browser bar) can work. Who knows?
- The mindset of the reader may be “presold” before hitting the copy — such as coming from an affiliate promotion or other website. They’ve probably captured the readers’ attention already.
- If the traffic came from a PPC campaign, the ad (keywords and ad copy) acts like the headline. People read it and want more information. So if they hit a salesletter without a headline, they’re tempted to read it anyway.
- Headlines can sometimes scream “salesletter!” And when people see one, they may be pushed to scan or leave the copy. Especially if the headline has the tell-tale signs: red color, overexaggerated claims, or unnecessary bloat (such as wordy headlines that are needlessly long).
- Finally but most importantly, they may not be targeted at all. Untargeted traffic is often the biggest reason for copy to fail. But if they are targeted, a headline may push them away. (Better said, a poor headline will.)
Bad Headlines Are Bottlenecks
Again, the biggest bottleneck in any copy is almost always the headline. Because if people can’t read past it, they won’t read the rest. If you don’t get their attention (the “A” in AIDA), then the rest of the formula falls down the drain — no matter how great the copy, the offer, or the product really is.
So removing a headline in some cases may be like removing the bottleneck.
As Dan Kennedy once said:
“The truth about long copy is that, first of all, there’s abundant, legitimate, statistical research, split-testing research, to indicate that virtually without exception (…) that readership falls off dramatically at 300 words but does not again drop off until 3,000 words.” — Dan Kennedy in a Tim Paulson Interview
In this case, Dan was talking about long copy in that, if people are targeted, they will read it. All of it. But if they’re not, they won’t even get passed the headline.
However, Dan’s assertion applies to headlines, too. In other words, if people are targeted and the headline is right for them (i.e., if they are targeted and the headline does grab their attention), they will read the rest.
But if they are not targeted, if the headline doesn’t grab their attention, or, even worse, if the headline is poor and actually pushes people away, then they will leave the moment they read the headline.
Naturally therefore, if the headline is poor (and all other headlines tested are poor, too), then “nothingness” can certainly win because you are in essence removing the bottleneck — but not necessarily the cause.
If a really good headline was found, it might win over “nothingness”. And I admit that, in some cases, finding the perfect headline might be a challenge. So removing the headline can be an obvious solution.
But it can also be the result of being too lazy to come up with better headlines, or not having enough traffic and/or time to test more headlines.
(My friend, top copywriter Brian Keith Voiles, often talks about writing 10, 20, even 100 headlines before settling on the one he likes. To that I would add, you should do the same to figure out which headlines to test, too.)
Causality Vs. Correlation
Now, let’s go back to something I mentioned earlier.
There is a difference between “causality” and “correlation”.
In plain English, the winner in a split-test may be relative. The variable in itself may not have been the cause. It may have won because other variables tested weren’t good enough to produce a better result.
If “nothing” was used as a variable and won, it is possible that it was because the element tested was redundant and unnecessary. But more than likely, it may have been because all other variables tested were bottlenecks.
In this particular case, I believe that removing the headline was not what caused a salesletter to outperform. It was simply the lack of a bottleneck that led to the copy outperforming with “nothingness” in the end.
Specifically, the other headlines it was pitted against were either not the right ones for that market or they were poor headlines to begin with.
But coming to the conclusion that removing the headline — any headline — is the cause of your sales copy’s boost in response is premature.
For example, if you drink orange juice every day and you don’t have cancer, does that mean that drinking orange juice cures or prevents cancer?
Obviously, that’s an assumptive leap, and it’s wrong. There may be a correlation there, but it’s not the cause. You need to conduct more tests, dig deeper, and add more variables into the mix to determine the cause.
And that’s the case, here.
No headline winning over other headlines doesn’t mean that the lack of a headline caused the copy to pull more. It may simply be that “no headline”, in relation to all the other headlines it was tested against, won because the other headlines were poor or weren’t right for that market.
So removing the headline simply removed the bottleneck.
But it’s also safe to say that, if you were to test more headlines, there would be one out there that could outperform “nothingness” as well.
Now, I’m neither a mathematician or statistician, nor do I pretend to be one. But I do know that it’s often best to conduct more tests to determine the cause. (Or, in this case, come up with more headlines to test with.)
Find The Right Mix
You will want to test several approaches to determine what tests best for your market. You will only find the right mix through testing the elements individually and collectively.
(That’s the power of multivariate testing.)
Other than headlines, the ordering process and the offer are usually the next biggest bottlenecks. They can create friction, lower buyer confidence, and invite procrastination.
A more forward call to action may be what your product needs to overcome buyer hesitation and push them along the order. Or the order form may be too confusing, too difficult to understand, or too cumbersome to process.
(In many tests we’ve discovered that, the easier you make it for your prospects to order from you, the greater the response will be. Often, the bump in response is significantly greater.)
Once you’ve removed the friction in the ordering process, next up is the offer. There are three components to the offer you will want to experiment with. They are:
- Prices
- Premiums
- Proof Elements
People often start by testing the price. Without question, pricing should definitely be tested.
But until you’ve removed the other bottlenecks, you won’t know whether a higher price point will increase sales or a lower one will.
Also, when most people test premiums with their offers, they tend to do so by adding more.
While alternative premiums may be more appealing, offering too many bonuses — or simply offering some in the first place — may be a deterrent.
Fear is a Bottleneck, Too
The next step is increase the strength of your claims through internal cues and external sources. Because your credibility or lack thereof is a major bottleneck too. Better said, people’s inherent fear and distrust in you is a major bottleneck.
It all boils down to establishing trust.
Anything you can add to establish credibility and reduce their fear in buying from you will both strengthen your claims and ult
