Many years ago, I first had one of my sales letters reviewed for legal compliance.
It was quite the education, too.
In fact, while I am certainly no expert on the subject, and I very well may be wrong… going by what he told me, it’s rather astounding how many sales letters — even by so-called world class copywriters with legal departments reviewing their copy — look like gigantic “fed bait” targets to me now.
Anyway, I quickly went to work fixing the compliance “holes” in that ad.
And, soon after that, I ran it. Then something interesting happened. Even though I thought for sure the changes I made to my sales letter to make it more compliant with its claims would have made its response significantly weaker… just the opposite happened.
Response, engagement, and sales were way higher than expected.
The quality of customer was also way higher than expected.
And my knowledge of copywriting soared higher than expected, too.
The reason?
My theory is three fold:
1. The more compliant my sales copy, the more believable it is.
2. The more believable it is, the more likely it’ll sell the skeptics.
3. And the more it sells the skeptics, the more sales from the higher quality customers I tend to get — probably because skeptics are often a 2-5 x’s bigger market segment than the hyper buyers sitting around in their moo-moos drawing welfare each month that are attracted to the screaming claim & exclamation mark-ridden copy are. In fact, it was such a valuable experience I invested a pretty penny in having a bunch of my other various companies’ sales letter analyzed a few months ago, and am having even more done today. I probably have invested nearly $20k in these reviews over the last 6 years or so, and it’s always worth every penny.
It could be that one the greatest copywriting “hacks” is having it legally compliant…
Something to think about.
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Ben Settle
