Don't go there.
I'm not talking about 'that' length.
I'm talking about the length of your Facebook ad
copy.
I just got off the blower with a marketing agency – I'm setting up a gig where they pay me to write a load of Facebook ads for their clients...
And as we were haggling over the moolah, I asked him about the typical length of copy
they had in mind per ad.
'We only need short to medium length,' he said.
'Great,' I said. So I told him my price.
He went a little quiet.
He went a little pale.
'Errmm, that's a little over our budget.'
Now, I don't normally budge on my prices. My price is my price.
But then it occurred to me—because I know what men are like for exaggerating lengths—to check how long his long-form copy was.
So he showed me a
sample.
Turns out, his long-form copy is the equivalent of my short-form!!
I'm talking two lines of copy and a snappy headline. Max.
The reason, he explained, was this...
'Our clients sell low-ticket, high-volume consumables, and we've found that shorter copy works better for our target audience.'
What's that got to do with you?
Well, books are low-ticket (low-priced), high-volume goods.
By testing different ad copy lengths, you'll see
what your audience responds to best.
There are two ways to look at it.
One of my first copywriting mentors used to say, 'how much copy do you need to sell a toothbrush?'
She meant you don't need that much copy to sell something simple. In fact, if you try to oversell it, with too much copy, people can get suspicious and it can work against you.
You wouldn't need a 10,000 word sales page to sell a toothbrush, but you would need one to sell a £15,000 coaching
programme.
Understanding where your audience is at and who you're targeting can make or break an ad.
How you talk to them matters.
Just as you wouldn't walk up to a random stranger and ask them to marry you. (Unless you're sooo attention starved you go on a show like Married at First Sight.)
To help you understand your audience, and know how to talk to them, I've created a guide called:
The Author's
Guide to Market Awareness
It breaks down five different stages of awareness - how well your readers know you - so you can better target your ad copy, meet them where they're at adapt you talk to them.
You can check it out here.
At the end of the guide, there's also a link to an Amazon book sales page so you can see how Amazon uses the five stages of awareness to get folks to spend their
moolah.
Let me know if you find it helpful, or hit reply if you've any questions.
Right, that's it for this short-ish or long-ish email.
Until next week.
Angie (length matters) Archer
