MarketingExperiments Blog: Research-driven optimization, testing, and marketing ideas

How long should this blog post be?

What about your landing page? Or email?

Content length discussions are as old as human communication itself. When Ug (the first critic) said to Zog about his cave paintings, “You had me at ‘Zog kill bison.’ All the rest was unnecessary commentary. I lost interest.”

On Wednesday’s free MarketingExperiments Web clinic – “Long Copy vs. Short Copy: How discovering the optimal length of a webpage produced a 220% increase in conversion” – Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director, MECLABS, will share our discoveries about copy length.

But first, we asked the MarektingExperiments community for their opinions on copy length. Here’s the long (and short) of it …

No such thing as too long or too short

There is no such thing as too long or too short when it comes to copy. It’s like a long ball or a short ball in football. If it’s effective, then that is the one to use. The right one.

The key to any copy is the headline, followed by the first paragraph and so on until the P.S., putting in sub-headings for the browsers and enough detail to emotionally engage the reader.

The same is true of video. When the quality of the writing is good, it creates emotional engagement with some logical elements which people use to rationalize their emotional buying decision. No one complains their favorite book was too long to read … or their favorite film was too long to watch. That’s because they are emotionally engaging.

So, the answer to the question is …

“Copy should be long enough to emotionally engage the prospect and give them enough rational reasons to back their emotional decision to purchase.”

If it’s good enough copy, (the message) going to the right person, (the market) in the right format, (the media), then you are onto a winner.

When you can’t deliver enough quality copy in the media you are using, e.g. radio ad, or press ad, then you write a call-to-action advert which gets people to request the detailed copy or go somewhere they can get hold of it.

- Boyd Butler, Consultant

What is your customer’s goal? How do they find your content?

I’ll take a counter point to Boyd.

First thing, not all content will work in all situations, regardless of your copy. You have to look at how the consumer will be engaging with the content, and how they come across it. If you break down content into two buckets, people engage with content to do the following:

1. Research a purchase
2. Professional development (Entertainment is a veil we use to make this more palatable)

Inside of both of these, you can then further break it down to [the question]: how do they find the content? This factor determines the odds of your content getting engaged with.

People find content two ways:

1. They search for it
2. It is sent to them

For example, if someone is researching a purchase, they are more likely to like a longer form of content. Why? Because they are seeking out information to make an informed decision. This means they are doing a search, and asking to engage with content.

Most of us also require a form to be filled out to access the content. This means there is a negotiation going on with the consumer as well. We are asking them to give up something in exchange for the content. So, there has to be [significant] value on the content for them to give up their email address.

In these situations, a longer, or full, document performs better. At first glance, a larger document appears to have more value than a short document, hence is a better deal for the person. So, they are more likely to engage with it in that situation.

Compare this to content sent via email. The consumer is not in research mode (unless your email is on a drip campaign following up researching activity), and they are in work mode. This means professional development content is more likely to get engaged with.

We are disrupting their day. So, they do not have the time to read a long form piece of content. They need to engage with the content in a short time period. They have to stop their task at hand to read your content. In this scenario, short form content works better.

I suggest the rule of five in these cases. Make sure your content can be digested in under five minutes, and that is clear to the consumer. If you do this, you are increasing your odds of engagement when disrupting their day.

You need to look at when and where your content is going to be engaged with, to make sure you are creating the best content, giving you the best odds of engagement. You also need to combine this with your goals. The goal of content should never be to make someone sales ready. It should be to move them to the next stage in their lifecycle. I have never read a piece of content and said, “OK, I’ll buy it.” Especially not in the B2B world where there is a large amount of research.

The stats back up these claims with the following data:

Stat #1: The more expensive your product, the more research someone must do.

Stat #2: People break research up into stages, and usually perform two to three different batches of research before they reach out to set up demos.

Stat #3: People prefer their content to be under five pages, in general.

This research will be made public in my report published by Pardot coming up in the next month. You can also see me present on this data at the B2B Inspiration Tour.

- Mathew Sweezey, Manager of Marketing Research and Education, Pardot

Focus on customer personas

I think it all depends on how you know your customer persona. For example, if you market to women/housewives/24-32/living in Texas, I think long copy of human talk (the one that you have while you are with you friends) will be perfect – especially if you include a chance to add comments (with a plugin like Disqus).

On the other hand, if you market to professional males/19-33/living in New York, then you need a catchy headline with a short copy.

- Ahmed Seddiq, Senior Operation Officer, Corporate Visa Services, Dnata, The Emirates Group

Related Resources:

Long Copy vs. Short Copy: How discovering the optimal length of a webpage produced a 220% increase in conversion – Wednesday, May 8, 2013, 4:00 – 4:35 p.m. EDT

Long Copy vs. Short Copy: How our micro-testing increased conversion rate by more than 100%

Content Marketing: Focus on value, not length

Copywriting: Long copy vs. short copy matrix

“The ask.” That’s what your entire copywriting effort comes down to on your landing page. If you have an effective headline, great copy and compelling images, but you fumble at the two-yard-line – the call-to-action (CTA) – then all of your copywriting efforts are for naught.

So, what is the best way to ask the visitor on a landing page to take action?

“A call-to-action is simply a proposition of the value that will be delivered immediately after the action,” said Paul Cheney, Editorial Analyst, MECLABS. “The more value the prospect perceives in the call-to-action, the more likely the prospect will be to take action.”

To help you communicate that value with your calls-to-action, answer these four questions the next time you write a CTA.

  Read more…

According to the MarketingSherpa 2011 Landing Page Optimization Benchmark Report (free excerpt at that link), the headline and call-to-action are the most impactful page elements to optimize:

“The headline has been repeatedly shown to provide high impact … often, it makes the difference between the visitor reading any content and going for the dreaded “x” button. The call-to-action is not surprisingly twice in the top five — supporting the reason and providing a clear opportunity to act, which are critical to conversion.”

Plus, copywriting and call-to-action tests are relatively easy to run, when compared to shopping carts (must get IT involved or perhaps install an entirely new cart), lead forms (must win buy-in from Sales), or homepages (watch out for the branding police). Often, you can make copywriting and call-to-action changes yourself, with no need for design help.

So, to help you formulate test ideas for these high-impact elements of your marketing, here are three free resources from MarketingExperiments …

Read more…

In this excerpt from a recent Web clinic, Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director and CEO, MECLABS, shares an experiment in which copywriting helped double the conversion rate for a digital subscription offering …

To learn more about how you can use copywriting to improve your own performance, you can watch the free, full video replay of the “Copywriting on Tight Deadlines: How ordinary marketers are achieving 103% gains with a step-by-step framework” Web clinic.

Related Resources:

Blandvertising: How you can overcome writing headlines and copy that don’t say anything

Copywriting: Long copy vs. short copy matrix

Optimizing Copy: The 7 most common copywriting mistakes we see marketers make

Copywriting: 5 common headline errors

As marketers, we tend to view the art of copywriting as a game of hit or miss. Either we write something that skyrockets our conversion rate, or it’s a total flop.

All of us, whether we’re aware of it or not, long for a repeatable framework that will help us consistently write effective copy.

Sometimes, though, we see tests like the one below and we start believing in the hit or miss theory all over again.

Results from a recent experiment

Let’s look at a recent experiment to show you what I’m talking about. On the surface, it seems as though we changed three words and were suddenly hit with a 43% boost in conversion. However, if you look closer, you can find a repeatable methodology we’ve discovered from testing at MECLABS, hidden beneath the surface …

You have exactly 60 seconds to retweet this blog post. If your tweet isn’t detected by our internal twitter monitoring algorithm by then, your hard drive will be completely erased.

Don’t believe me? That is probably because I’m lying. I have no way to erase your hard drive and no algorithm (I know of) that tracks whether you will retweet this post.

I’m feeding you a false sense of urgency to get you to take an action.

The truth is, urgency is a powerful copywriting tool. And, while a false sense of urgency might work in the short term, it will over time erode your conversion rates.

But when used authentically, urgency can be quickly added to almost any piece of copy for a lift in conversion.

For example, here is a recent email test for a MarketingExperiments Web clinic invite: