#Funny that only the books where Spike appears cost more than 100€

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I made many mistakes in my life, for sure, but nothing compares as trying to get into Buffy the vampire slayers comics universe.

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There's a giant chasm and a big misunderstanding for many people between the two major schools of marketing: Brand Awareness and Direct Response.Today I'd like to make a detailed post on these two styles of marketing, what they mean, and how understanding this differences can help both business owners / entrepreneurs and copywriters.Here's how this post is going to benefit both crowds...For Business Owners: It's safe to say you don't have big-brand Apple,Nike, or Pizza Hut money, am I right? You need to make whatever marketing and advertising dollars you have work immediately for you. That means if you spend $100 you need to at the very least break even and you MUST know whether or not your advertising is effective (and why or why not it's effective). If that's the case, you're going to learn what style of marketing will work best and which one won't in this post.For Freelance Copywriters: If you're anything like I used to be - you're busting your ass for tiny pissant jobs and if you're lucky you get that occasional $1,000 to $5,000 job that's exciting at first, but hardly worth it by the time you're finished with the project and done dealing with the client. Or perhaps you are currently working for an agency or want to work for an agency - but the starting salaries are low, it takes years and years of back-breaking work to get up to anything substantial, and even then you hardly have any freedom nonetheless a life of your own. You'll learn here which type of copywriting can actually make you more money from a single campaign than a New York Times best-selling author makes in an entire year of book sales BECAUSE of what it allows you to do for your clients.Let's start with...General Marketing or "Brand Awareness" Style Marketing Or "Above The Line" Depending On Who You're talking ToThis is the type of marketing that most people are familiar with. When you say "marketing and advertising" this is typically what comes to mind.This type of marketing is wide-sweeping PR. The strategy is not that much different from propaganda style marketing that you would see from any large nation during war time when they're seeking to influence the masses through sheer saturation of thought.This marketing has its place.It's a kind of mass brain washing.When you're hearing a jingle, or reading a slogan and you're seeing it and hearing it everywhere you look - on billboards, TV commercials during prime-time, banner ads online, in magazines you're reading, in between the songs you're listening to, in the backgrounds of movies, on the t-shirts and outfits of your favorite celebrities and athletes OF COURSE this is going to begin seeping into your subconscious.This type of advertising favors witty, creative, entertaining.But this type of advertising has A LOT of set-backs both for the average business owner / entrepreneur and for creatives/copywriters who actually want to make money without pledging their life to an agency.Let's look at the business owner firstThe Problem With Brand Awareness Style Marketing For Entrepreneurs / Business OwnersAs I mentioned earlier, you likely will not have hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of dollars (or more) to throw at a brand awareness idea that will then be BLASTED out into the world....just so you can sit around and hope sales jump up by the end of the quarter.Let's look at this from a micro-scale. Let's take the retail store in an average-sized city.If they wanted to market "brand awareness" style they might buy some billboards, some radio commercials, and some TV commercials. These may prompt the prospective customer to call a number, visit a website, come into the physical location or all three.But herein lies the problem...unless you literally asked every single person who called you, clicked, or came into your store where they heard of you at (then wrote it down and recorded it) you would never be able to tell if a spike in business (or a slump) was because of the marketing you were doing or because of something else.And when you made sales, you wouldn't know if you were actually receiving a return on investment for your marketing practices.For example, if you had a billboard, TV commercial, and radio - how would you know which of these channels were giving you the most return on your investment? How would you know whether or not to scale back spending on billboards and then scale up spending on radio?It's like John Wanamaker said, "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half."The other problem with this type of marketing - for a small to medium-sized business owner - is that agencies are actually far less concerned with making you sales than they are with being creative for their own sake and for accolades from other advertisers and agencies.Here's a good example of that:Awhile back Nissan came out with this series of commercials (Here's one: https://youtu.be/L8QKK5IDSXE )Starts out in a kid's room with a toy dinosaur that has an action figure GI Joe type character in his mouth. Then rock music starts blasting and the GI Joe comes alive.Next thing you know, he's running across the hardwood floor to a kick-ass cherry-red Nissan sports car (that looks like a toy RC car).He hops in, checks out his badass self in the mirror, and starts driving around the house until he reaches what looks like a little girl's room.He slides into the room, tires screeching, crashes into a little toy tea set and steps out of the car. He sees a sexy Barbie appear at the top of a doll house next to some loser Ken doll.Next thing you know she jumps in the car with him and the Ken doll is left looking shocked - totally got shown-up by the badass GI Joe guy in the cherry-red sports car.The commercial ends with "Nissan: Enjoy The Ride."Well The Wall Street Journal calls the commercial >The most successful TV commercial of the year.Magazines call the ads the best of the year as well - article after article.The people who wrote the campaign and the art directors appear on Oprah.There's even talk of a TV series that will be made out of the characters in the ads.Then, the head honchos of that marketing agency get inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame.They even come out to the same rock song that was in the commercial to accept the reward and got a standing ovation.But what about the sales?That's the point, right? To sell more cars?Well, the first month of the campaign Nissan sales fell 2.7% over the previous year. The next month they fell 10.2%.Meanwhile, their biggest competitor (Toyota) is running the same old boring ads featuring big rebates, incentives, encouraging people to buy a Toyota and get a $1,000 rebate and their sales are booming.Just like any REGULAR business owner or entrepreneur, these local car dealerships are running real businesses and their salesmen are trying to move products and put food on the table.So they start complaining because these advertisements with the toys don't actually explaining anything about the car or its benefits and customers aren't coming into the lots - in fact the commercial isn't actually encouraging anybody to buy anything.And you know what one of the people said at that agency after they were asked about the declining sales?"That's car dealers. They're forever bitching about something. There are always people that like to damn things that are new."That's the kind of blatant disregard you have, when the success of a marketing campaign isn't measured on how many literal sales it creates, but how many awards it gets and how many people it entertained.Basically, "How dare you remark on the fact that you're not making any money - look at all the people who HEARD about it and SAW it and all the compliments and awards we got?"I don't know about you - but I have this funny idea that a marketing campaign of any kind should gauge it's success on how many money-in-the-bank sales it resulted in relative to the cost of the campaign instead of just how many people it entertained.And if you're the average business owner, you don't have all that money to risk on a "cute" idea to entertain the masses with and hope it results in sales.You need to make sales NOW and you need to measure those sales. For every dollar you spend, you need $2 back.We'll get into that in a moment.The Problem With Brand Awareness Style Marketing For Copywriters Who Actually Want To Get PaidFor copywriters in this space, the real issue lies in the fact that you can't tell how many sales are being generated as a direct result of your copywriting.Now, if you're lucky enough to spearhead a big, award-winning campaign...then you may get awards, you may get a bonus, you may get a promotion, and you may get a raise.But you'll never get a cut of the money that was generated on behalf of that campaign (assuming it didn't just win an award, but actually made money).Herein lies the problem with brand awareness style (agency) copywriting - nobody can tell for sure, without a shadow of a doubt, whether or not your copywriting is actually generating sales. And, at best, they can estimate and guess....but only ball park numbers.So, even if you create a bombshell campaign - nobody can say "Hey, your campaign literally generated $31.6 million dollars exactly."And because of this, you're far away from the point of sale.A billboard may lead someone to buy a product...but it doesn't lead them to buy the product RIGHT THEN.A 30-second TV commercial may cause someone to wander into a store at some other unknown time and buy the product or service...but it doesn't make them buy it RIGHT THEN AND THERE as soon as they see it.Therefore, you are far removed from that point of sale, where the prospect actually takes out their credit card (or a wad of cash) and buys the damn thing.And because of that, you'll never get to charge $5,000....$10,000....$20,000.....$30,000 to write a single promotion.And, because they can't track the results of those campaigns for sure, you'll never be able to say at an agency (or a general brand awareness style campaign for a freelance client) that you want 3%...5%...or more of every sale generated as a direct result of your campaign.So, if the campaign draws in $3 million over the year, you can't get $90,000 of that (at 3%).Now, Let's Look At Direct Response MarketingSo here, I'm going to talk to both copywriters and business owners because I think the benefit for both is going to be obvious (as copywriters and business owners are often working together - OR a business owner ALSO has to be a copywriter for their business).First, what exactly does "direct response" mean?It means - any advertisement that requires the prospect to respond DIRECTLY to the advertisement in order to take advantage of the offer.Instead of a 30-second TV commercial that says "You should buy this thing next time you see it." It's the 45-minute fringe-time infomercial that says, "Call this exact number (which is coded for that campaign) right now to order."When someone calls in that number, it's special and relates onto that particular infomercial in that particular area. So, any sales made can be traced back to that exact particular infomercial in that exact location. They will know how much was spent on the campaign and how much money it returned - no guesses, just literal numbers.That's just one example.Let's take direct mail. Direct mail has been an advertising style for nearly 100 years now and it's pretty simple. You send a letter out advertising a certain product or service. People mail back in a request form (plus some form of payment) to receive it.Each mail-in request is coded so they know exactly which letter was performing the best (this is where you get into "split testing") and the one that performs the best, they scale up the marketing on that one and it becomes a "control".Here's an example of that - the famous Wall Street Journal subscription letter that ran for 30 yeas, that nobody could beat (meaning no copywriter was able to write a letter that performed better than this one) and drew in over $2 billion in subscriptions (and they know that for sure because people responded directly to the letter):http://swiped.co/file/wallstreet-letter-conroy/?_sf_s=wall+street+journalBack when people started advertising online effectively and essentially started making themselves multi-millionaires they weren't big car companies or restaurant chains - they were direct marketers/copywriters.In fact the first people to make millions online started about 1995 and they were pretty much ALL direct marketers/copywriters.They simply took all the same nearly 100-year-old tried and true methods of direct mail / print / infomercial advertising and put it online. It was easier, faster, simpler, and cheaper.As the Internet has grown - what we typically think of as "online marketing" IS none other than direct response marketing. Period.This is actually why it's so important to study the "old masters" and look at exactly what they did offline because it will give you a far greater understanding of what's happening online.Direct mail became emailSales letter became sales pagesInfomercials became VSLs (video sales letters)Print ads / classified ads in target publications (for example "call this (coded) number now to get your free sample of Mr. Muscles Muscle Powder) designed to get leads became opt-in / squeeze pages (put your email in here to get your free e-book).This style of advertising isn't about entertaining people - it's about advertising BY THE NUMBERS.Even if you think you had a great idea for a campaign - if it didn't make sales, then you don't try to make it work anyway, you just try a different direction.So, unlike that Nissan campaign mentioned earlier - in which their success was tracked, not by sales but by how many people were entertained - in direct response it would have been scrapped the minute it failed to make a return on investment from any initial test.Now, for the entrepreneur thinking in a "direct response" way means you can spend small amounts of money that you can track in order to test campaigns before just throwing all your money at them and hoping they work.You can scale up what's making a return on investment and you can get rid of what's not working.For the copywriter - you are AT the point of sale. Meaning the words you write are directly resulting in a sale.And because all sales can be tracked, if you end up generating hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of dollars for your client, they're not going to give a fuck if you charge 3% or 5% royalties. They're certainly not going to care about paying you a $10,000 or more base-fee straight-up front if you're getting proven results.And this is why direct response copywriters get paid more than every other type of writer.Imagine if you were the guy who wrote the Wall Street Journal letter? What if you got 3% of $2.5 billion?In fact, it is not uncommon for direct response copywriters who get very good at their craft to pull in multiple millions a year from just one or two campaigns that they wrote - and the campaigns can sometimes run for yeas and years.Campaigns can run for 2....3....5...10...15 years or more as long as they're pulling in money and nobody writes something else that "beats the control."And for entrepreneurs?It's not uncommon for business owners and entrepreneurs to start with a couple thousand bucks and a good idea, and either hire a copywriter/direct response expert to craft a campaign and funnel for them or learn to do it themselves and make tens of millions within the first year.That's why I believe - if you're a copywriter trying to actually make money, you want to do the type of copywriting that's closest to the point of sale where results can be empirically tracked and you can get a slice.And if you're a business owner, rather than wasting your money on brand awareness and witty slogans, just HOPING you'll throw something out there and it'll stick, that you should instead craft every marketing campaign you have with the idea of "If I can't track it - I'm not going to do it."So you should be thinking LIKE a direct response marketer all the time - everything must be traceable all the way through the funnel both online and offline.Let's Look At Some General "Rules" Of Direct ResponsePeople haven't changed, regardless of mediumWhat worked 100 years ago in a sales letter works the same today - people buy for the same reasons. Our brains have not evolved or changed in the last 100 years (or even the last 10,000).Having a fundamental grasp of consumer psychology will get you everywhere. So, therefore, never refrain from studying the great marketing books from 100 years ago....70 years ago...20 years ago just because they weren't written in the time of the Internet.The direct response businesses and copywriters who make the most understand this.Showcasing benefits sells better than entertaining your prospectImagine for a moment that you went up to a car salesman and instead of him telling you about the benefits of the car, he sat you down in a chair, wheeled out a portable stage, and started putting on a magic show.Perhaps he pulls a red Nissan out of a hat, or makes one disappear.Perhaps he saws a red Nissan in half, pulls the two pieces apart, just to reveal that the Nissan actually had no damage to it whatsoever.Maybe he trots out a line of half-naked Victoria's Secret models and has them start rubbing themselves all over the car moaning, "Oh my gaawwwwdd, it's so fucking goooooddd."Maybe he tells you a beautiful story in which a red Nissan convertible saved a family full of clown midgets form a stampede of angry captured circus elephants.Maybe you'd be impressed.Maybe if you were a guy you'd pop a big, fat boner for the models.Maybe you'd shed a tear at his sob story.But what would happen if another salesman came up to you and asked you simple questions such as....are you married?...Do you have children?...How far is your drive to work?....What car do you currently own and how long have you owned it?...What are you looking for in a vehicle, are you wanting to do some off-road driving, go into the mountains, head to the beach, or stay more in the city/suburbs?While Mr. Song-And-Dance is putting on the show, this guy is actually asking you questions relevant to your end decision.Then, he'll bring you to a car that fits your lifestyle and explain the benefits as they relate to your goals directly.Claude Hopkins, author of the nearly 100-year-old Bible of advertising Scientific Advertising (it’s free on Kindle), got a desperate client way back in the early 1900s by the name of Schlitz Beer.At that time Schlitz was number eight WAY behind all the other beer companies. They were desperate to boost their standing in the beer world.Also at that time, all the beer companies were advertising more or less in the exact same way.They were harping about how “pure” their beer was.In fact, some took out full-page ads with a picture of their beer bottle with just the word “PURE” next to it.But that didn’t mean anything to the people seeing the ads because all the beer companies operated in the same way.They were all just screaming about how pure they were – what the hell does that even mean? Do you know? I sure don’t.You see Claude Hopkins didn’t want to sell anything that he did not truly understand. So…He Requested a Tour Of The Company’s BreweryOn the tour he was shown plate-glass rooms where beer was dripping over pipes.He asked why they did this and was told that those rooms were filled with filtered air, so the beer could be cooled without impurities.Next, he was brought to a series of huge expensive filters filled with white-wood pulp that provided a superior filtering process.The manufacturer explained that they cleaned every pump and pipe twice daily to ensure purity.He also explained how each bottle was sterilized not once or twice, but FOUR times before being filled with beer.Next, Hopkins was shown the 4,000 foot deep artesian well dug to provide the cleanest and purest water available, even though the brewery sat right on the shore of Lake Michigan (at the time Lake Michigan wasn’t a polluted mess and could realistically have been used as a clean water source).Finally, Hopkins was brought to the laboratory and shown the mother yeast cell that was a product of over 1,200 experiments to bring out the robust, signature flavor of the beer.And, he was told all the yeast used in making Schlitz beer was developed from that single, original yeast cell.Finally, Hopkins turned to his guide amazed and exclaimed, “My god! Why don’t you tell people in your advertising about all these steps you’re taking to brew your beer?”The Schlitz people told him, “All companies brew their beer about the same way.”Hopkins replied…“Yes, But The First One To Tell The Public About This Process Will Gain A Big Advantage”So, Hopkins sat down and wrote the following ad, very plainly and very simply laying out the process he witnessed, because he knew something very important - explaining the literal benefits to the prospect would be more valuable than any witty bullshit he could come up with.The ad was worded thusly…PERFECTION OF 50 YEARSBack of each glass of Schlitz Beer there is an experience of fifty years.In 1848, in a hut, Joseph Schlitz began brewing. Not beer like the Schlitz beer of today; but it was honest. It was the best beer an American had ever brewed.This great brewery today has new methods. A half century has taught us perfection. But our principals are 50 years old; our aims are unaltered. Schlitz beer is still brewed, without regard to expense, according to the best that we know.We send experts to bohemia to select for us the best hops in the world.An owner of the business selects the barley, and buys only the best that grows.A partner in our concern supervises every stage of the breweing.Cleanliness is not carried to greater extremes in any kitchen than here.Purity is made imperative.All beer is cooled in plate glass rooms, in filtered air.Then the beer is filtered.Then it is sterilized, after being bottled and scaled.We age beer for months in refrigerating rooms before it goes out.Otherwise Schlitz beer would cause biliousness, as common beer does.Ask for beer, and you get the beer that best suits your dealer. He may care more for his profit than your health.Ask for Schlitz, and you get the best beer that the world ever knew.this simple idea to just lay out the benefits (with a bit of subtle hype) brought Schlitz from number eight, to the number one best-selling beer in America in just six months.And there it remained for decades.Direct Response Marketing Is A Good Sales Pitch AMPLIFIEDA good car salesman who is a master of his craft has perfected his pitch over time through much trial and error and learned how to adapt that pitch to different people, in different environments, for different vehicles.Good copywriting and direct response marketing is taking a good pitch like that and BLASTING it out to hundreds of thousands if not tens of millions of highly targeted people.As a copywriter, you are that salesman, it's just that you can send that well-crafted pitch that makes people salivate to buy your offer and sent it out to TONS of people instead of just one person at a time.Oh yeah...and you can do it from behind your computer screen anywhere in the world (or in an office - it's up to you).Incentives Work Better Than PromisesIn general advertising there’s a lot of promises being thrown around – you’ll smell better….look better…feel better…fuck better…..whatever better, I PROMISE. This is TOTALLY TRUE and you’ll LOVE IT IF YOU JUST BUY IT!That’s all well and good and there is nothing wrong with making promises or guarantees (if you intend to keep them), but that’s not going to push me over the edge to actually reach out and grab what you’re offering… I need incentive.And what are incentives? It’s pretty simple really….Try it for 30…60…90 days (whatever works for you or the client) and if you don’t like it I’ll give you your money back, no questions asked.If it doesn’t work, I’ll pay you DOUBLE your money back.I’ll give you X% off your first purchaseHere’s a free sampleBuy right now and I’ll give you $XXX worth of bonuses for FREEGive me your email, phone number, and address and I’ll give you a FREE ground-breaking reportThose are just a few examples. If we were traveling across a bridge in Medieval times and an angry looking guy in a suit of armor said we can’t pass because we don’t have the right papers… we may offer the angry mug an “incentive” to allow us to pass….In other words, incentives are bribes. And bribes work.Ugly and Simple SellsCreative agencies will put almost all their emphases on images and beauty and very little emphases on the words that actually sell something.In fact, the copy will be just a “background” of the images – an accessory.This is so absurd it blows my mind every time I see it.People always talk about how others judge a book by its cover (usually saying they shouldn’t do it). I don’t think that’s exactly true – I think they judge it by its title.A Better Title Will Sell More Books Than A Prettier Cover.Look at the title of Dale Carnegie’s famous book…How to Win Friends and Influence PeoplePut that shit in black text on a plain-white background and make that the cover of the book – it will sell.Why? Because like we talked about earlier it simply laid out the benefits the reader will get by reading it.If you look at how creative agencies run print ads, for example, they’ll take out full-page (or even two-page ads) that show a gorgeous picture of the product, but say barely anything about it.They’ll do the same thing with display ads online.But direct response copywriters will come in and take out a full-page ad and not show a SINGLE picture of the product, we’ll fill the whole thing up with boring black-and-white text, and guess what?We’ll sell more of that product and PROVE it.In fact, while general agencies are doing picture ads on Facebook, my ads perform ten times better and they’re just REALLY long text (sometimes over 1,000 words with NO picture).Creative agencies often put designers first and copywriters later. They ask "how can we fit the copy into the design" and if the copy doesn't fit, they cut the copy out and trim it down until it becomes meaningless...as if designers know how to sell things.My goal is to minimize imagery and maximize the literal words that will sell the damn thing.To go back to cars, look at how most of the print advertisements these days market cars – just on looks.They talk about how sleek it is, how nice the interior feels and looks.They do this in maybe one clever sentence and show a BIG page of how the car looks.Look at what David Ogilvy did – for example – with Rolls-Royce.Instead of talking about how beautiful the car is and showing a bunch of pictures of it, he wrote a big article and put a picture of the Rolls Royce off to the left hand-side.The emphasis was on the article (the benefits).Here it is: http://swiped.co/file/rolls-royce-ad-by-david-ogilvy/?_sf_s=rolls+royce"At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in the new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock" then it goes into benefit after benefit after benefit.Let’s use another, more modern example.For online marketers, the most effective way to sell a single product is to use what’s called a…Video Sales Letter (VSL)When these video sales letters first started being used by really smart online marketers (before they all but replaced long-form on-page copy) all they consisted of was some guy’s voice reading from a script.And, the only imagery on the video was simply the exact words he was reading – just black and white Powerpoint slides, with him reading the exact words on screen.Well, these videos proved to beat-out on-page copy every time, sometimes by 300% or more.But all they really were, was the exact wording that would be in the on-page copy, and read out-loud on a video with no imagery or anything.And They Were UGLY.They looked ugly and they sounded ugly.So, of course, over the last seven to eight years many marketers – including billion dollar international publishing companies who built their entire empire from direct response marketing like Agora – tested higher production quality on these videos.For example – paying actors to stand in front of the camera and give the pitch.Or, paying somebody to create fancy animated motion-graphics.Or, adding music and stock footage and more.Or, just shortening it from the typical 30-to-60 minute length, to 10 minutes…5 minutes… or less.Guess what?That boring, ugly-as-sin, amateur-looking Powerpoint-style video…Out-Performed and Out-Sold EVERYTHING Else!Period. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.And remember - direct marketers do it by the numbers.Before these VSLs replaced the long-form sales pages online (which were just extensions of direct-mail sales pages prior to the Internet), there were long, scrawling, badly-designed 25-to-40-page long online letters.God they were ugly (they’re not extinct, either, they are still used and are still effective).Well, of course, designers came along and tore their hair out about how ugly they were, and tried to “fix” them.They shortened the copy, made it prettier… and sales tanked.Same is true for direct mail, print advertising, TV, whatever – simple and ugly sells better.I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again –Advertising Is Salesmanship AmplifiedThe way people sell things person-to-person is using a combination of words and demonstration and many MORE words than demonstration.Although the visual may play a part, it is secondary to the words being spoken.To swap that out as if visual sells and words don’t is insane. I get the exception when it comes to product demonstrations (the George Foreman Grill or Ninja Juicer and so on), but for pretty muh everything else you're selling benefits and a feeling - and that takes words.I remember a desperate client came to me once who wanted to sell his Real Estate investment course.It was a “mid-ticket” online course that costed $500.A creative agency had approached him and talked up how they were going to make him so much money.Well the guy who had created the course had written a sales page for it.I read the copy for the sales page and it was just REALLY bad…no wonder it wasn’t working.But what was this creative agency’s answer to why the sales page wasn’t working? It wasn’t to re-write it.No, in their minds, the reason the sales page wasn’t converting was because…“It Wasn’t Designed Well Enough”So they charged this guy something like $7,000 to re-design the sales page and put a bunch of pretty ads up on Facebook (that work is so click-button simple, the price point was nothing short of robbery).The ads were equally bad.They had a picture of some silhouetted guy in a business suit, with something like a house in the background, and the wording was, “Passive wealth through property investment.”Uh…okay?What The Hell Does That Mean?A month goes by – and by the way this guy is paying for these Facebook ads – and not a single sale.So he’s about $10,000 in the hole.The process this creative agency went by was ass-backwards.It took me a single afternoon to re-write the sales page (and just put it on a white background).Then I wrote a few Facebook ads that explained the course benefits and why they should click on the link. The ads were LONG text (no picture).The guy had sold 10 people within five days.He ramped up the advertising from there, and started pulling in over $40,000 a month (not bad).And that creative ad agency?I shall not name them.But they have been featured in Forbes, Huffington Post, CNN, the owner (not the employees) is a multi-millionaire who is constantly Snap-chatting his expensive condo in Miami and all the expensive meals he eats and all the yacht trips he takes…all before the age of 25.His agency is really good at selling one thing….lies.Putting Lipstick On A Pig Doesn’t Make People More Interested In Kissing It.Dressing up a bad salesman in a $4,000 suit and putting a bikini-clad supermodel to either side of him, isn’t going to boost his ability to sell shit.Long form almost always out-performs short form (the longer it is, typically the more it converts).Usually a two-minute commercial beats a 30 second commercial.Typically a 30 minute VSL converts more than a 10 minute VSL.Usually a 6,000 to 12,000-word sales page will convert better than a 1,000 to 2,000 word sales page.This is the only “rule” I believe has exceptions based on product and where the prospect is at during the sales funnel.However, the fact of the matter is that no matter what copy you’re writing, for any product, and in any medium, it will typically be significantly longer than anything a creative agency will recommend for any given campaign.Because we emphasize words and pitch over images and design, the amount of copy for any campaign will be longer than our creative counterparts, which means it will be “long copy” and longer will sell better than those other campaigns.Finally - I'll leave off with a video from one of my favorite advertising guys (David Ogilvy) talking about the difference between direct response and advertising - definitely one of my favorite short speeches about thishttps://youtu.be/JAdKTx14Wy8