Hi Rob.

Some excellent points here - why am I not surprised? ;-)

If I skiimmed too fast and over one you covered already, my apologies but one common technique in copywriting is to trot out some of your faults yourself. This also makes you more credible in the eyes of the reader.

One thing I often urge marketers whenever I can is to plainly state what your product DOES. This is especially true of software develpers. For example:

I have a product proven to increase sales 700% or more.

It's easy to use.

It improves sales for any product with a viable market.

It will NOT improve the product itself - nor will it make a lousy product into something it is not.

Used over time and you can easily double, triple or quadruple your sales.

Buy now.


So great it does all that - what IS the product?

If you haven't guessed, I just described a split testing script.

I can't count how many sales pages I've read or even products I've bought (so call me a sucker) promising to wisk me off to paradise at the touch of a button only to find out it's something I already own. What can be worse than that? I'll tell you what...

Looking all over for a solution to a problem for days, weeks or months only to find out the solution was riight under my nose all the time - and quite affordable at that. So why didn't I buy it? Because whoever wrote the copy, while possibly crafting a masterful piece, failed to simply state what the product is or does and therefore I glossed over it.

More and more I think the "too good to be true" style comes back to bite marketers in more ways than one.

I see Rob's post here as a call to come back to credible copy offering good value - real value and shy away from gimmicks and hyped up promises of a wild ride but failing to mention the crash and burn ending.

Andy