I got an email from Armand this evening directing me to this site:

http://www.internetmarketingexplained.com/

Does anyone know who wrote this copy?

It's terrible. Not because it's structured badly or the benefits aren't there (because I was slightly tempted), but because the english is SOOOOO poor. It was beyond simple typos - it sounded like it had been written by someone with english as their second language.

Now, you can call me a pedant (you won't be the first!), but I see no advantage or benefit to sloppy writing that is full of typos, bad english and grammatical errors. Not only does it damage your credibility (like why should I give this guy $200 when he can't even articulate), but it makes it hard work to read and comprehend.

Especially as he is addicted to the word "utilize" - which is surely just an over the top way to say "use". Does the more complex "use effectively" add anything to the statements in question? Well, maybe when looked at that way, but to my poor fused out brain it is complexity for complexity's sake and does not contribute to the elegance of the writing.

I was also rather intrigued by this:
Why is he asking me if I qualify, assuming I even know what "qualify" means? Surely it's up to the copy to qualify me (like I should have abandoned it 10 minutes ago if I'm not in his market or won't spend the money).

I just thought that was really strange. Statements of that nature are usually followed by "here is the rarity value - order now or else x,y and z will happen including your grandmother turning into the big, bad wolf".

And it's true - we don't all know what "qualify" means. I don't have a sales background, so it took me ages to understand what "qualified prospects" meant. Even if we did know what it means, it should be a hidden concept - why does the prospect need to be aware of qualifying or not?

If anyone "has the ear" of Mr Morin, may I suggest that you politely recommend he engage the services of a proofreader. I'm available for the job, but that's not why I wrote this. I read another copywriter's site yesterday, and that was also full of typos and bad english.

So I ask this simple question:
Why risk alienating or confusing your audience through spelling mistakes, typos and bad english, just to save a few bucks on a proofreader?

Tell me honestly if there is any advantage to badly written, incomprehensible copy?

I would suggest not - people who don't mind, will not think any less of you for writing correctly and cogently - people who do mind will be totally turned off, or will at the very least, struggle to read your message.

I just read your post and you DO make some very good points.

Yes, there probably are a few spelling mistakes and I am sure
I have bastardized the English language a bit here there.

But...

... the question is did the sales letter work?

The answer is yes and we do have a full call, all who have paid $197.

PLUS... I received some great publicity by you posting here about
my spelling mistakes and my poor grammar.

Seriously...

I wrote the sales letter in about 20 minutes in a jam and popped it online
without checking it too much.

Since it was a time sensitive offer, I just posted the letter online, because
I needed it fast.

The letter itself is a temporary letter, meaning when the actual
product is ready to market from the recordings of the call, the letter will
be more thought through.

I have to agree, that spelling and grammar is a factor when trying to sell
a product or service online. I do recommend, as you suggest, to proof
read the copy or have some else do it for you.

No matter what... I think the main test of any kind of copywriting is if the copy produced the desired results. In my case it did and I am sure
we will get a few more sales before tonight's call.

I really do appreciate your comments and thank you for posting it.

I will "UTILIZE" it the next time I write some copy.
(Sorry I had to throw that it in.)

Best of Success,

Armand

Aramand,

U ave me support Lol!

To be frank I love this post. Its what copywriting is all about ... "salesmanship in words"...aaaaaah, nice. Armand words are just that. He tells it as it is and is selling.

More importantly this is a targed piece. Targets know Armand. Targets trust Armand. Tragets are interested in Armand. In other words. pre-qualified traffic.

This is where true sales copy comes into force. Writing for your audience or targets. Did it pull? Yep. Did it sell? Yep. Did it do its job? Yep. Is Armand going to buy me a new car for saying nice stuff? Yep.

This is a good post to liven up a little. Writing for audience.

I would stick my neck out a little and go with the greats... grammar is secondry to a message that is targeted!

Well, I can't argue with results, can I?

I still think my point is valid though - when writing gets sloppy it slows down the reader, and that can't help your message. So I hope you can "utilize" my point.

Jane

Results, results, results... no you cant argue with them but this really isnt about perfect copy. Its about talking to an audience that wants to hear your message.

Do you like accents? I love em to bits. Its one of those things that makes us all different and special. Do you find it hard to listen to someone trying to talk perfect English? I do. Now I know copy is different but personality can shine through in copy. That is exactly where grammar isnt the big deal in "salesmanship in print".

Some think it is. Some think it isnt. See what the experts have to say. Results, results, results...

Janealogy,

You make some very good points. I have an editor who proofreads my stuff. (Heck, I'm a writer and a salesperson, and not an editor let alone an English major by any stretch. In fact, my mother tongue is French. With a name like "Michel Fortin," who would have thunk? )

But I must add, while good English is important, good English can also cost you sales. I always try to make my editor steer clear from making adjustments to the style, voice and tone of my copy (and sometimes, good "English" can do that), because direct response copywriting is like a sales presentation.

An old colleague of my editor (who used to be a technical writer for a Fortune 500 company), a militant, self-styled keeper of the sacred trust of the English language, called him up out of the blue one day. She protested...

• "How can you write like that? You've butchered and bastardized the language at every turn! You've dangled participles! You've used contractions! You've sliced and diced sentences! And the Harvard commas -- WHERE ARE THE HARVARD COMMAS?!?!"

According to Joe (my editor), this is a very educated lady -- she has an MA in English, and she generally knows what she's talking about. Joe responded:

• "Maybe. And that copy sold 240-odd products at $60 a piece in less than 24 hours. How much did your last writing assignment sell?"
  
  "It's not the same thing!"
  
  "My point. In fact, my point exactly."

Joe notes that there are dozens of ways to speak English -- "dialects," if you will -- and each one serves a pretty specific purpose. This is what he calls Venue Appropriate Language -- or "VAL" for short.

Joe adds that, when you write letters to people you don't know, you are a lot stiffer, a lot more formal than when you write to friends. When you promote yourself as a marketer, you're a lot more playful than when you promote yourself as a technical editor. And sales letters selling financial products are more language-conscious than letters written to sell information products.

Why? Because whether you're trying to win the hearts or minds of your audience, you need the right language to drive your message home. Remember that it's more important to have the right language in your copy than it is to have the correct English. Because what you say is about informing and persuading, but how you say it is about painting a picture that the client's buying motivator can recognize.

Good copywriting has less to do with good grammar than it has to do with making sales. (Sure, your copy might infuriate some purist grammarians. Unless you target scribes and grammarians specifically, these people are not, and never will be, your clients. Clients are the ones that matter.)

I recently wrote an article. Here's one of the main points, quoted from the article:

Whether the reader likes the language or not is not the issue: if the language makes the sale, that's the true test. In the end, your prospects will cast their votes on your copy not with their opinions or feedback but with their wallets.

(You can read the article here: http://successdoctor.com/articles/article132.htm .)

My skill as a copywriter lies in writing that sells. And when I teach copywriting, I tell people to not be shy or afraid in being personal, conversational and emotional with their copy.

Of course, I'm not talking about being so lackadaisical with your grammar and your spelling to the point that English majors want to burn you at the stake for heresy. And I'm not talking about using a language that's so crude, so profane and so laid back that you appear as if you are on anti-depressants.

I mean copy that goes "for the jugular." A language that's down to earth and straight to the point. Copy that relates to your audience at an intimate level -- not an educational or socio-economic level, but a level people can easily understand, appreciate and identify themselves with.

An emotional level. A level at which you transfer the excitement you have about your product into the hearts and minds of your readers. And that's the key.

As we say in French, "voila mes deux sous!" (My 2 cents worth.)

Alan,

You're making it sound as though bad writing is a virtue, and on this point I disagree.

There is a difference between injecting your personality and vernacular into a piece and just plain sloppiness.

Clearly if a copywriter is writing for teenagers then he/she will use completely different language than if writing to OAPs. And, yes, some bending of the rules of "standard" english will occur - but this is to make your message more comprehensible and digestible to the reader.

However, in the case of Armand's letter, I imagine that he's writing it for small business owners with varying levels of education. He uses simple, straightforward language that is pretty standard english. He has already admitted that the typos, missed words and spelling mistakes etc. were an oversight and not a planned part of the strategy.

In fact, I've heard him speaking on teleconferences and he speaks very well and very clearly. Why would he want to write differently to that when addressing an audience of business people?

Maybe, as you suggest, the actual mechanics of the message are not as important as the message itself and you can still sell in spite of the sloppiness of the work. But I wouldn't poo-poo reasonable grammar and spelling. Grammar is there to make the piece more easy to comprehend. English is a very subtle language, and when the grammar goes to pot, it can become quite difficult to work out what was happening to whom, when and how.

I still maintain that typos and missed words will slow your reader down and don't add anything to the message to business people who are likely from all kinds of ethnic and educational backgrounds. Standards in English operate to create understanding between people from all over the world, otherwise how am I able to understand you or Armand or Janet in Australia? If you wrote with a lancashire dialect, and if I wrote with a Glaswegian dialect then there may be some difficulty in comprehension, dontcha think?

Please don't misunderstand and think that I believe everyone should write in "BBC" english. No, not at all, and by all means it's great to have personality in there - Armand is very good at that part. But please don't tell me that missing words, spelling mistakes and other evidently typographical errors add to the message. I know people who miss words out actually in their speech, and sometimes they miss entire concepts and my poor brain has a very hard time following them.

The devil, as they say, is in the details. Clearly in this style of benefit-rich copy, people like yourself and Armand go to great lengths to include all of the benefits of your product in a well thought out structure. Having gone to this level of effort, how do typos aid your message?

Yes, I agree with you, 100%. There is no need for bad grammar or poor copy. What I am saying is though that grammar is not essential to a well constructed sales message. There are time when "unusual grammar", not bad will help a sales message.

You said ...

Typos have never and will never aid my message. Typos are a downfall of mine and I am the first to admit that. Typos do lose business. Typos look amatuerish. My site has typos! And believe me I do my best to get rid of them.

What I was saying though was there are times when an audience will forgive typos for the sake of the message or the content of the message. Relationships are built through copy.

Every week I get Jock Fordes brilliant newsletter. Quite often there are typos. I personally can forgive and ignore them as the content is well worth the price. That inst an exclusive feeling to me.

I dont and could never proofread anything I do. I dont and like Mike I have someone else do it for me.

I think that the grammar and style should reflect the audience and the message. For instance, 19 year-old kids are selling ebooks filled with grammar errors and sloppy writing, but the book sells well. Why? Because those very grammar errors show that the marketing pros who were interviewed were busy, rushed, and were taking time out from their hectic schedule to share information.
This gives a freshness and immediacy that a formal, highly edited approach couldn't.
The sales letters promoting it aren't gems of writing. Some of the statements border on the crude. But they sound exactly the way a real person would talk and so they are believed-and the message hooks people in (along with a ton of endorsements by well-known people).
Brilliant marketing, in spite of my own personal feelings about the person.
I agree with others here: the ultimate test is how well did the copy pull? Did it get people interested in the product, and convince them that they want or need it? Did it speak the language of the audience? Then it overcame the grammatical problems, and sold in spite of the sloppy language usage.
Sheri

This was the point I was trying to make. I am in no way saying that sales copy should operate to the standards as set out by people with MAs in English.

I'd also like to make a distinction here about grammar. The conversation thus far seems to have taken rather a polarised view that there is either correct grammar or no grammar.

If we can forget for a moment our fears about our school english teachers and how we got told off for not understanding the difference between a phrase and a clause, then we can say that grammar is simply a tool we use. It helps us structure words in such a way as to most easily convey the meaning of what we are saying.

So, for example, here's a sentence:

"People who write good sales copy are good at selling stuff"

What does this mean? Does it mean the same thing to everyone who reads it?

What if we mess with the grammar a bit.

"Person what wrote good sale copies were best at sell stuff"

Does that mean same thing? Does it mean anything at all?

There's another famous example where the addition of some punctuation completely alters the meaning of the sentence, but I'm buggered if I can remember it right now.

So, whether you know it or not, like it or not, we are all using grammar all the time to make clear what we mean with our words.

I am not advocating that sales copy has to be written in "perfect Queen's english". And as some of you quite rightly point out, the tone and language of a piece shoud be a reflection of how your target market speaks. What I am saying though, is that the meaning should be reasonably clear to the target audience, and that will require grammar of some sort - whether it be street talk style grammar or business grammar, or whatever.

When I worked in Australia I once received a brochure from a company trying to sell me some computer based training packages. I tell you, no matter how many times I tried to read their copy, I could not work out what the hell they were talking about. The writing was SOOOO BAD that I honestly had no clue what point they were trying to convey or why I should listen to a word they said. What was my impression of them? Unprofessional, sloppy and not someone I want to do business with.

My target market is small UK businesses. I have to make certain assumptions about what type of writing and which words will appeal to them, and which will leave them cold. I surmise that most of them have a reasonable standard of education, but that they won't relate too well to lots of "jargon sounding" marketing words. I also have to anticipate their "cynical filters" - when is something going to sound hypey and far-fetched? I know that people buy from me because I speak authoritatively, so in my particular circumstance it is extremely important that all business communications go out with the minimum of sloppy language and typos - be they copy or emails.

In fact, I'm rather beginning to feel that by speaking well that I'm at quite a disadvantage in this whole copywriting arena!