The Death of the (long) Salesletter … Yay
The latter half of 2006 saw a new type of craze opening up in the online marketing world.
This new craze told us how what was once popular (AdSense, Affiliate Marketing etc) was now dwindling away. They were “The Death of …” series of reports.
Personally, I became quickly tired of these new “Death of…” reports. And many others have as well. No wonder: One of them gets to a tipping point and on they jump and scamper onto the bandwagon - skilfully (and some not so) selling their wares while talking of the death of … something.
I think consumers are becoming more savvy to marketing techniques, especially online consumers. They see through such tactics more easily and because of that we, as all marketers, just have to get better and rather than sell, converse with our prospects - build trust. We also have to respect that out prospects are busy people - there is just never enough hours in a day.
So (drum roll …) this is why I recommend this … “Death” report. Because it makes you think.
I came across it from none other than Brian Clark of the famed CopyBlogger - The Death of the Long Copy Sales Letter, downloaded it with just a little bit of wariness and was pleasantly surprised - hence this post.
Written by well respected (and highly successful) copywriter, Michael Fortin - The Death of the Sales Letter is a thought-provoking and insightful read that will change forever the way you think about those long sales letters with all them bells and whistles and little emotional triggers trickeries slapped thoughtfully throughout.
Basically he says that in today’s marketplace, with our time being at a premium we must sell better, quicker and get to the point - and essentially give the prospect a show. He goes on to say that audio and video are the new ways of copywriting.
But folks, I’ll let Michael tell it to you best. You can download the report here (PDF 336Kb - 51 pages).
Mike Sigers of Simplemonics also talks it up - The Birth Of A Better Salesletter.
And for you cynics out there (like yours truly) he’s not selling anything or pushing some future $4,997 infoproduct.