Brian McLeod Marketing » Sales Letters

Are you making full use of everything you’ve got?

Brian McLeod — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 15:01:45 +0000

"Repurpose... Repackage... Reuse..."

“Marketers” that hate marketing?

Brian McLeod — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:59:02 +0000

Once an audio engineer develops their ear enough, they begin to notice things in the audio and the music that the general public never does.

Sibilance… that “SSSSsss” sound that whistles like a spike in your ear.

Hypercompression… that massively squashed “wall of sound” that eliminates all dynamics and makes everything loud as hell.

Tubby bottom-end on the kick drum, flabby bass tone with no definition, grainy sounding sample rate conversion.

It’s MADDENING… because you can never go back to just experiencing the music the way the audience does…

Well, guess what?

…same story as you develop your marketing chops.

You spot something in the sales copy or the offer and your mind says, “AHA!… I know what they’re doing there….”

“They’re using a big promise with specifics in the headline and here comes the social proof… Yep! I was right….”

Often the interpretation of that reaction is, “I hate that….”

Do you really? Hate that?

I don’t believe you do.

Now, don’t get me wrong – crap is crap.

But I’m often a bit amused when I see the pile on that typically develops in these conversations… with people who purport to
have a vested interest in selling things to others…

Inevitably folks begin rattling off all the “marketery” phrases, approaches, tactics, and strategies they can think of.

“I hate ______… As soon as I see that, I’m gone…”

The IM space is full of consumers who think they’re sellers.

And their protestations are more buying criterion than they are marketing philosophies.

You’re hearing sibilance. A tubby kick drum…

Why HATE that…?

I’d rather think about how I’d notch the mids, boost a few db at 4.5K to give it some “click”, then smack the bottom end
with a multiband compressor to tighten it up.

And… yeah. I HATE SSsssibilance too.

Thoughts?

SEO Copywriting? Perish the thought…

Brian McLeod — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 20:25:25 +0000

Sales Letters have only ONE purpose - to SELL

The other day, I responded to a question that seems to come up over and over again – “SEO Copywriting”.

Now, as you’ll read below, I’m a huge believer in SEO. It’s not even in question whether or not SEO is important or valuable.

However, a Sales Letter is 100% the WRONG place to be worrying about SEO.

Here’s the question that sparked the whole conversation:

Does anyone know a good SEO copywriter that can rewrite my salesletter with reasonable amount of keyword density?

And here’s my reply:

Ugh…

Plop a blog in a subdirectory of the domain and fill it with all the keyword rich super mega optimized SEO juice you can muster…

But don’t rape your sales letter that way…

Well… the conversation took a fairly predictable turn when replies like this started coming in:

Trying to fit SEO into sales copy I take it for Brian, is like trying to get your hand in a glove that just doesn’t fit lol.

It appears to be a pet hate of his, combining the two.

Now, whilst I see his point, which I hither-to-before disagreed with him about, I can now see where he is coming from, however I still disagree with him to a small extent.

Surely, if one can include the requested keyword / long tailed keyword without it having any dramatic negative effect on the sales copy or conversion rate, then my question is – why not?

Does the copy have to be inferior as a result?

Personally I find that supposition rather daft, no offense Brian.

So, I took a minute to try and spell it out a little bit more carefully and visually. I thought the metaphor worked pretty well. Frankly, it’s the whole reason for this post (and everything you’ve read up to here…!)

Here’s what I said:

Let me try and be more clear about it and I think you’ll find we disagree less than you realize.

Chances are very good that a well written sales letter is by its very nature already quite rich in primary keywords as well as a variety of other important LSI keywords.

Titling the page properly, setting a good meta-description, img alt tags, etc… all of the basic on page SEO 101 stuff really is quite adequate for a sales letter.

Focusing on OFF-page SEO is going to be the real play for results in the SERPS. Think feeder sites, youtube videos, articles, blog posts, press releases and web 2.0 pages – all of which can be optimized with laser-like focus for specific keywords and search phrases.

A sales letter’s ONLY purpose is to get the people on that page now, to BUY NOW. Anything that is not in direct service to that goal is a DISTRACTION from it.

Just because one CAN kw stuff a sales letter cleverly or non-obviously doesn’t mean that it’s serving the larger goal well.

Getting away with it ain’t the goal.

Sell the hell out of it, that’s the goal.

Think of it this way, say I’m making a sales presentation to YOU, one on one on the showroom floor… it does not help my purpose to try and attract other’s attention while I’m trying to close you, does it?

But let’s say I have four “fronters” working for me. 2 stand outside and bally traffic in to see me, and 2 are inside the showroom ready to qualify and warm up the prospect before they sit down at my desk with me.

Sure, I could just PITCH REALLY LOUD or have a huge trade show exhibit behind my desk… somebody walking by might overhear what I’m saying or see something that interested them and walk over to listen in…

Which makes more sense for CLOSING DEALS?

Your sales letter is the most valuable virtual real estate you own and should be treated as such. There’s a thousand ways to attract SEO traffic, why conflate the two?

So, there you have it. Think of your sales letter like your absolute highest paid, highest performing sales person that brings in ALL the money for your company.

You don’t assign him chores like SEO.

Top closers don’t call leads… They CLOSE deals.

Great sales letters aren’t for SEO… They’re for MAKING THE SALE.

Hope this finds you well,

Brian McLeod