Is copywriting the key to Internet marketing success?

Master copywriter Ted Nicholas seems to think so.

“Mega success on the Internet is all about copy alone,” he writes.

“It’s also helpful to know about other things like search engine optimiziation, squeeze pages, twittering, and teleseminars.

“But without powerful copy to fuel the marketing engine, you will not even be able to make a living online, let alone become wealthy.”

Ted says his online marketing success “is 99.9% due to my copy which drives all the rest of the elements.”

Ted’s viewpoint about the importance of copy in online marketing is diametrically opposed to that of web usability guru Jakob Nielsen.

“We know that users on the web typically don’t read very much,” proclaims Nielsen in his 5/6/08 Alertbox.

He says that high-literacy users scan — and, on average, users typically read only 20% of the text on the page.

What he thinks drives sales online is a mystery to me, but obviously, he doesn’t think it’s the copy that no one reads.

My question to you is: who do you side with?

Do you agree with Nicholas that strong copy is what makes money in Internet marketing?

Or do you, like Nielsen and others in the usability crowd, believe copy is a necessary evil on the web — and the less, the better?

P.S. Let me tip my hand and say that I side with Ted’s view that copy is important, and think Nielsen is a gasbag full ot hot air.

Why? Simple. Ted’s conclusions are based on generating $6.8 billion in sales online and offline with his copy.

Nielsen’s conclusions are all based on statistical analysis of “page views” — people looking at and reading web pages — and not on people RESPONDING TO WEB PAGES BY SPENDING MONEY.

But enough about me.

What do YOU think?

Since I am highly selective on which projects I work on … and turn down 10 clients for every one I take on … I am frequently asked by these prospects, “Well, can you recommend a copywriter who can help us?”

You’d think it would be easy, but it’s not. Yes, there are more copywriters than ever today.

But most of these are beginners who, frankly, don’t really know what they are doing.

I don’t recommend cheap copywriters to my clients, because 99 times out of 100, the failure of their copy to work costs you much more than the savings you gained from their dirt-cheap fee.

I only recommend experienced copywriters with a track record of success.

Here is my short list of recommended copywriters:

www.freelancecopywriterdirectoryonline.com

Any you would add to the list? Yourself? Others? Any you would drop?

Not according to an article published this week in BtoB’s Vertical Insight Guide.

The article reports that only 20% of senior executives belong to one or more social networking sites — which would seem to indicate that all the noise about marketing with social media is either misplaced or premature.

If you want to reach senior executives on the web, your best vehicle, according to the article, is webinars, which 77% of C-level execs listen to at work.

Close behind are blogs, read by 58% of executives, and streaming videos, watched by 56%. In addition, 41% listen to podcasts.

And how do these senior executives spend their time at home? Blogging? Participating in virtual worlds like Second Life?

No — 76% say they watch television after work.

So TV advertising may not be as old school and archaic as the new media evangelists would lead us to believe.

Copywriters are at risk of becoming a commodity service provider.

As proof, during a search I stumbled across a pay-per-click ad today offering online writing services.

Specifically, the ad promised “unique custom-written SEO web content.”

What do you think they charge for 500 words of custom content (total, not per word), including optimization of the page?

A–$5,000.
B–$500.
C–$50.
D–$5.

If you sink money into starting an Internet marketing, copywriting, or other small business, and you aren’t successful, will the government write a check to tide you over until you turn a profit? Not on your life.

So why should they do it for car manufacturers and banks? The answer, of course, is that they should not.

As Ed Konecnik points out in a letter to NYC’s Libertarian newspaper Serf City (vol. 5, no. 1, p. 2): “Success is a result of manuy factors. By eliminating the consequences of failure, we inspire and encourage mediocrity.”

Plus, a government bail-out of big business is just grossly unfair to small business. If we run our businesses poorly, we are out of business. Why should the same rules not apply to large corporations and financial institutions?

“In the real world, bankruptcy and failure are options that serve to cleanse and filter out incompetence,” writes Konecnik.

In an article in The Weekly Standard (5/18/09, p. 39), John Podhoretz puts forth an odd thesis: namely, that the less a writer knows about his topic, the better.

His article focuses on one specific type of writer, professional film critics, whom he says are a dying breed, as more and more newspapers lay off their film critics, and movie goers turn to film blogs instead of the newspaper for movie reviews.

“This deprofessionalization is probably the best thing that could have happened to film criticism,” Podhoretz writes, noting that to write moview reviews “requires nothing but an interesting sensibility.”

He goes on to say that an education in film-making is not only unnecessary for writing movie reviews but may actually be detrimental:

“The more self-consciously educated one is in the field — by which I mean the more obscure the storehouse of cinematic knowledge a critic has — the less likely it is that one will have anything interesting to say to an ordinary person.”

Funny, but I thought a “storehouse of knowledge” was a PREREQUISITE for writing intelligently on any subject, whether it’s Internet marketing, copywriting, popular science, or film.

But Podhoretz seems to argue that the less you know about the subject you write about, the better.

His reasoning: your reader also knows little, so your ignorance will enable you to write at the reader’s level of knowledge and interest.

When you write, do you strive to continually gain more knowledge of the subjects you write about? (That’s my approach.)

Or does Podhoretz’s notion of keeping the writer ignorant so he is the reader’s peer make some sort of sense to you?

(And I can see where it might; e.g., most scientists are notoriously bad popular science writers because they write for other scientists, not the general public.)

The debate over long vs. short copy rages on, and a recent Copy Chasers column in BtoB magazine (6/8/09, p. 26) declares that — at least in B2B advertising — short copy is the winner.

“In an age when 140-character messages seem to push the limits of the human attention span, it’s best to keep things as short and sweet as Twitter,” the column advises.

“Brevity is always welcome in B2B advertising, as decision-makers need to think fast. Advertisers that can concisely convey a message have a distinct advantage over those that force readers to slog through text.”

On the surface, this seems sensible:

1–Businesspeople are busy, and don’t have a lot of time to read.

2–Therefore, they will respond better to short copy than to long copy.

And today, any product information they need is posted on the advertiser’s web site, the URL for which can be featured prominently in the ad.

Yet in consumer advertising, there are still some advertisers who hit home runs with long-copy space ads.

Two that come to mind are the Institute for Children’s Literature (“We’re looking for people to write children’s books”) and The Teaching Company (“The Great Courses”).

So … is BtoB right –and (at least for B2B) is long copy advertising dead at last?

Or can a long copy ad, in some cases, do a better selling job than Madison Avenue’s minimalist approach to body copy?

What say you?

Which makes more sense when dealing with vendors?

A–Pay them top dollar to get top work from them. Vendors will go the extra yard when they are well compensated.

B–Nickel and dime vendors to get them to lower their price. The less you pay your vendors, the better it is for you.

To watch a free video of how clients haggle with vendors, click here now:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThMu3MFCC60