When Great Copywriting Can Actually Kill Your Sales

By: Ben Settle
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:43:25
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One of the most-quoted copywriting phrases in the world is, "sometimes people will buy your products because of just one bullet."

And that's true.

People really will read an ad that's 5, 10, 15 pages or more...but whip out their wallet simply because of a bullet point buried somewhere on page 8.

However, there is also another side of the bullets story where bullet points can actually hurt your sales.

Let me give you a "real life" example.

A few years back I wrote an ad that was long (one of my copywriter friends even said, "What is this the Declaration of Independence!"), copy intensive and had something like 60 or 70 bullet points.

I was dang proud of that ad.

And when I finished it, I sat back, laced my fingers behind my head and congratulated myself on a job well done.

Until that same copywriter friend of mine above gave me his feedback.

"Ummm Ben..." he said.

"Pretty awesome, isn't it?" I boasted.

"Yeah, this is great except...with this market...nobody's going to care about any of the stuff in your 14 pages of bullets."

I was floored.

Here was a guy who gets paid $25,000 to write a single sales letter -- making his opinion worth its weight in gold -- telling me all those wonderful bullets I'd written were worthless.

And as much as I hated to admit it...he was right.

You see, this was an ad showing people how to buy large, multi-million dollar businesses, without needing any money, credit, banks or prior experience.

And while the benefit of this is universally desired...the details of how this is done is foreign to most people.

Especially the people we were targeting.

To see what I'm talking about, here are a few of the bullets:

• Why sellers will (rightfully) not let you look at their supplier list before you make an offer…and the one "almost magic" way to get them to show it to you almost 100% of the time!
• The ONLY thing your business should technically "own"!
• The chilling financial and physical consequences of buying businesses with union employees! (Hint: my car was smashed up with me in it...after a union negotiation that went bad.)
• How to make sure you don't get stuck paying all the landlord's taxes, maintenance and insurance costs when buying a business on land you don't own!

Now, these kinds of bullets are fine if written to people already familiar with buying businesses.

But to the "kitchen table" entrepreneurs on our list -- people who know nothing about buying million dollar businesses now, but would love to do it -- these bullets would either:

1.) Mean nothing to them

2.) Confuse them

3.) Make things sound complicated

All three of which will destroy the sale.

Anyway, I hope the message is clear.

Yes, bullets are awesome. And just one or two bullets really can make the sale for you.

But, at the same time, you have to be constantly asking yourself, "Does my reader know what this means or care?"

If the answer's "no", scrap the bullet.

Because no matter how powerfully written those bullets are, they will most likely bore, scare of confuse the reader -- and kill the sale.

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