One of the fastest ways to improve the effectiveness of your marketing messages, is to get to the point as soon as possible, in as few words as possible.
For example, I recently helped a new client increase the conversion rate of a page on his website by 450%, after reducing the number of words on that page by 75%. I have also seen response rates from email marketing soar by over 700%, when rambling copy was changed into a shorter, compelling and more powerful message.
Most of the written marketing I see is at least 50% too long. This is because amateur copy writers feel they have to include everything in every marketing message they write. They feel compelled to tell the reader about every benefit of what they do. They don’t want to miss a thing, so they go into way too much detail. Thus, what needed to be a brief, focused message with impact, becomes a meandering, diluted message instead.
If you are disappointed by the conversion rates of your written marketing, it might be time to focus more on brevity. Concentrate on delivering your most powerful points and do it with impact!
Jim Connolly can help you grow your business and achieve the breakthrough marketing results your hard work deserves. To find out more, simply click here!
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Hey Jim,
The target market and demographics are other factors, no?
Glenn on Viper Chill did a breakout of the pagecount of top blogs, e.g. copyblogger, problogger etc.
Most were over 1100 words.
Whereas… gossip blogs were less than 250.
Depends who you’re writing for.
Ivan
Hi Ivan. I think you are confusing the topic of this post, which is the length of marketing messages, such as ads and sales pages / marketing emails, with the ideal number of words to SEO a blog post?
In my experience, (see Dean’s comment below), marketing messages in emails, advertisements and the marketing pages of websites are better kept shorter. People are busy and have notoriously short attention spans.
Thanks for the comment.
@Ivan,
Seth Godin writes the most popular marketing blog in the world and is known for writing extremely short posts.
One of the reasons I only read Jim and Seths blogs for my marketing fix, is that they cut the bullshit and get on with it.
Thanks for the kind words, Yama.
Who’s this Godin guy?
Seriously though, you make a good point. Seth tends not to SEO his posts, so has the freedom to write them whatever length he chooses. As a very good copy writer, Seth keeps the posts to their right length.
I use a very similar approach here and tend to write far shorter posts, than I would, if I relied on affiliate or ad income. The examples Ivan gave are both people, who rely heavily on affiliate income, thus it’s really important for them to heavily SEO their posts.
Thanks for the feedback.
So true. As soon as I get to a webste that has a lot of text or even receive an email with a lot of text I dont read it.
You are in the majority there Dean!
People are busier than ever before and the initial scan of a huge marketing message is enough to drive people away, before they even check the message out.
Thanks for the comment!
Thank you for the advise. I do tend to suffer from verbal diarrhoea myself. Any tips on how you select from, say 12 points the relevant 3 to talk about? I find myself worried I’m going to miss THE vital point – how do you get over that feeling?
Hi Jim
I so agree with you, and when I write copy for my clients I like to keep it brief. I tend to go for 150-200 words maximum per web pages. Like you I feel people have a short attention span and you need to get on with it!
However, there are some very well respected copywriters, such as Andy Maslen, who still feel long copy works, which I guess it does in some instances!
Thanks for a great blog
Nicky
[...] written marketing, we also need to ensure that prospective clients can clearly and quickly learn what we do and how it will benefit them. However, when we look at most small business marketing, we see pretty-much the exact opposite! [...]
Interesting post, and very nice to be referred to as a well-respected copywriter!
There’s a lot of talk here about “feelings”, which I think are not the best basis for deciding what to do about copy length.
I don’t feel long copy works better, I know it does, because our clients have tested it.
Opinion is worthless unless it’s backed by scientific testing.
David Ogilvy knew this, Drayton Bird knows it, the world’s most successful (and richest) direct marketers know it.
Having said all that, it’s long relevant copy that outpulls short, not long boring copy. And in fact it would be more accurate to say longer copy usually outpulls shorter copy, as there’s no way of determining what “long” means. 150 words might be long to some people, so might 55.
[...] posts are focused, information rich, but never too long. That’s because Seth understands the power of brevity. This means some of his posts are just 1 or 2 paragraphs in length. With Seth’s blog, you [...]
[...] Their written marketing is dull, filled with generic promises and far too wordy. [...]
[...] at least 50% too long – Often 75% too long! If you want people to hear your core message, keep it short. Focus on information rich content. Learn to embrace brevity. Make it as easy as possible for [...]