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Are there any long copy advocates left online?

Last week, I awoke from a lengthy marketing slumber and scanned a few dozen online promotions from the direct response giants: Phillips, Boardroom, KCI, Forbes, Rodale, etc.

They all seem to share the same approach for marketing to a new prospect — short, punchy, space-ad-like web pages, focusing on lead generation or making irresistible trial offers. I could only find a few promos remotely close in length to their mailbox advertising.

Here’s a random example of a “space ad web page” in the options trading market. It has a headline, a couple of bullets and an offer. You can scroll from top to bottom in two moves.

Of course, once the new prospect wends his way into the funnel, he’ll receive the thirty page magalogs cherished by us marketers.

But as a best practice, long copy offers aren’t being put in front of cold prospects. Seemingly with good reason.

Here’s an interesting test any online marketer can take.

If you have any long sales letter websites (yes, the ones sporting garish red headlines) with Google Analytics installed in them, do a comparison between the average time spent by new visitors on your site last year verses now.

For most, the difference is startling

Web analytics show most first time visitors clicking away in droves from sales letter sites today.

And that’s because most people aren’t reading anymore.

The blue line is YouTube’s growth in 2007. Amazon and eBay are flatliners by comparison.

Now, take that floundering sales letter site and insert a short YouTube video and voilà…visitors are spending two and three times longer on the site…and conversions to sale are magically following suit.

This is happening in many markets.

Combine this with formatting your top level web page to look like a space ad instead of an online sales letter and the results become additive.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I still worship at the long copy temple and relish clever, futurist, financial promos like this. But increasingly, the “online space ad” seems to be gaining prominence.

I think 2008 will see the resurgence of the venerable space ad for several reasons.

• Space ads are a natural response to the contempt many visitors feel when they land on a sales letter site
• Space ads online are ideal for inserting concise videos. Competently done videos fuel the sales process.
• Space ads are the purest and oldest advertising medium. Successful ones not only have to compete against other ads but against the magazine and newspaper content the reader has paid for.
• Space ads are like sprinting. If you’re in decent shape, you can train yourself to “look good” for short distances. Writing direct mail packages and magalogs are like running an ultra-marathon. Bencivenga and Makepeace may look as good at mile 30 as they do at mile 3 but the rest of us will be seen coughing up our lunch.

A couple of months ago, I began exchanging messages with a subscriber.

I’d post my usual fare, like a David Ogilvy or Gene Schwartz full page ad and this fellow began regaling me with tales of working closely with both of these legends.

Little did I know, he’s a legend himself.

The man is Drayton Bird and thanks to his recent collaboration and interview with Clayton Makepeace, many online experts are gearing up for Drayton’s Bird’s flight school.

What’s not to like about him?

• His blog is called “Bird Droppings”
• There, you’ll find liberal use of swear words and politically incorrect prose. How refreshingly real.
• He seems to get to the pub often
• He possesses the most impressive notch any direct marketer could have on his belt: “Drayton Bird knows more about direct marketing than anyone else alive.” (David Ogilvy)

He has a boatload of delectable DM goodies for the taking. Do yourself a favor and get on his list at: www.draytonbird.com

About a year ago, one of my subscribers sent me a fascinating link to a series of interviews with legendary ad agency heads.

This series sponsored by Yahoo, features: David Ogilvy, Leo Burnett, William Bernbach, Lester Wunderman, George Gallup, Edward Ney, Burt Manning and a host of other advertising heavyweights.

One of the most memorable comments comes from David Ogilvy in the second interview/webcast.

As a young man, Ogilvy wanted desperately to work for the agency he idolized more than any other: Young & Rubicam. But he says he had neither the “qualifications” nor the “credentials” and “didn’t dare ask.”

So the only alternative was start his own agency. And that he did…surpassing Young & Rubicam in revenue.

Interestingly, Lester Wunderman, the first to coin the term, “direct marketing,” also expresses the same inadequacy as David Ogilvy about his start in advertising.

I oughta get some more music on my Ipod but that hardly happens.

That’s because right now, an Ipod loaded with business and marketing seminars, lectures and talks is as essential to me as air, food and water. Running on a treadmill for an hour would be out of the question without it.

Here’s a site called the CEO Clubs. I was pleasantly astonished when I first came upon this site a few years ago. There are many superb MP3s on the site free for download.

A few of the speakers in the marketing, copywriting and publishing realm: Joe Sugarman, Ted Nicholas, Jay Abraham, Dan Kennedy, Jack Canfield and Harvey MacKay.

A WARNING though. Several of the audios are tin-can-and-string quality. Joe Sugarman’s, unfortunately is one of them.

There are also some terrific talks by heavyweight CEOs like Ted Turner, W. Clement Stone, Bill Bartmann and Dan Pena.

Strangely, I haven’t heard Bill Bartmann’s address yet but just loaded it on my Ipod. He’s the ultimate millionaire to bankrupt to millionaire three times over story. Later, Bartmann took a $13 thousand loan and turned his kitchen table business into a $3.5 billion, 3900 person organization.

Dan Pena has been one of my most steadfast remote mentors. I haven’t met him yet but exchanged emails a few times with his business partner, Bruce Whipple.

The larger than life Dan Pena was the basis for Michael Douglass’ character, Gordon Gekko, in the movie “Wall Street.” Dan used to stand on the trading desk and shout at the traders with a bullhorn during his tenure at Bear Stearns. The brilliant British copywriter and newsletter publisher, Stuart Goldsmith, penned a memorable salesletter for Dan’s now out of print book, “Your First Hundred Million.”

I have to thank Dan Pena for turning me on to Ted Turner’s talk.

Whether or not you like the “Mouth from the South,” this is an address you have to hear.

Ted glibly tells the roomful of CEOs at the Harvard Club that since they’re middle aged and “already half-dead” they have absolutely nothing to lose by taking risk.

I believe this is also the talk in which Ted tells the story of his father who ate breakfast one morning and then calmly walked into the bathroom and blew his brains out.

Ted says his father left him two things after his death: a billboard company worth $2 million and the notion that he should set goals that transcend his lifetime.

This is one of those life changing ideas that initially sounds irrational and even crazy, yet it’s the philosophy Ted used to build a multi-billion dollar media company.

So get on over to http://www.ceoclubs.org/main/talks.htm and get some Ipod food.

Most direct marketers sneer at the Neanderthal direct mail approach of mortgage companies here in the States.

And hardly a day goes by we don’t get a refinance offer or line of credit offer in the mail. Their approach has been nothing short of unimaginative, robotic and wasteful…yet highly effective. The lure of cheap money has been a commodity that produced its own demand.

Now, the bubble is bursting but this time the mess is so big, the mortgage companies are collapsing alongside their illiquid customers.

Today, I got a home equity line of credit offer from my mortgage company and I’m seriously thinking about taking them up on it…while it’s still available. Their stock shed another 7% this week and it’s been reported that 1-of-8 of their customers are delinquent or defaulting.

But I won’t be using the line of credit for traditional purposes.

No.

Since I’m already shorting them, I’ll use the line of credit to short ’em some more. They’re already halving our monthly payments so why not give ’em a chance to pay off the whole loan.

Interesting times.

Imagine a direct marketing/copywriting seminar from a parallel dimension.

• Not a single nauseating pitch or pitchman during the whole two-day event. Nothing for sale even if you wanted it.
• Alsatian wine and even champagne are served with a 3-course lunch in the penthouse of one of New York’s most luxurious hotels. The next day there’s a cocktail party serving top shelf. This is included with your seminar registration
• The sum of actionable knowledge, acquired over a lifetime, from the copywriting legend is served to you on a silver platter
• Almost all the copywriting and direct marketing superstars (and aspiring ones) are present and recognize this as one of the milestones in their careers

And the rallying cry for this most unique meeting? “Why not the best!?”

If you’ve been to any events in the direct marketing arena, it’d be reasonable to conclude this was a parallel dimensional experience.

Yet it all was very real. [Read more…] about My Story…at Gary Bencivenga’s One and Only Bencivenga 100 Seminar