I have been researching dozens of employment opportunities in the last month or so and something that I have continually noticed is:

  1. Companies aren’t very good at explaining what they do.
  2. You have to read all of their marketing copy before you can even start to understand what they do.

There is a reason the best copywriters in the world make upwards of $2,000,000 a year for their work.

If you can write good copy, you will never need another skill.

Ronald Reagan, perhaps my favorite president, would have been fantastic at copywriting. After listening to hours of his speeches before and during his presidency, I’ve come to appreciate his unparalleled ability to communicate complex subjects in a simplified and condensed fashion.

Copywriting needs to be done in sections. Often times companies think that they have too much to explain what they do in a one or two sentence explanation.

That’s silly.

Just like if you asked me what I do, I could come up with a short one or two sentence answer. It, of course, wouldn’t be my full story, but it would be enough to either A. interest you to ask more or B. Dis-interest you enough to move on. Companies should get better at doing the same thing.

I was once told to figure out how to tell someone my story in five different lengths. 1 sentence, 1 minute, 5 minutes, 15 minutes and 1 hour.

All serve different purposes, by only having the 1-hour answer, you are going to kill people’s interest before you even get past the teen years. If you only have the 1 sentence, you are going to come out seeming shallow when they ask you for more and you don’t have anything else to offer.

The best copywriting I’ve seen has been done in a similar fashion to this kind of style.

Give them enough to sell them after your first sentence, and if they’re not sold because they want to know more, give them the 1-minute, if they’re still not sold because they want more info, give them the 5-minute, etc.

You give enough information in each section to be able to sell people coming from different levels. If I was in desperate need of getting a product like yours but I had to read through 8 pages of copy before I understood what you did, I might never get to the third page.

Sell the guy who’s ready after reading the first page and sell the guy who had to get through every word before he took the plunge.

One of my favorite examples of excellent copywriting was this Kickstarter Campaign.

In the very first section, they give you the main drive for why you should buy this jacket, but they don’t leave it at that. They go on for pages and pages and pages to explain more about the jacket, if you notice though, they have the option to back the project consistently through the remainder of the copywriting. If at any point someone felt like they had enough info, they could take the next step.

I say all of this, not as an expert in copywriting, but as a consumer of copywriting. People’s attention span for reading and watching is less than 10 seconds. Sell faster, sell more clearly.