The Greatest Myth in Marketing?

Not a month goes by where I don’t see a copywriter or marketer somewhere sharing this now decade-old marketing adage…

That statistic was often credited to a Microsoft survey, but in reality it came from a fake academic site and was referenced by a Microsoft Ads employee.

The bottom line is it’s completely false and there is no study — academic or fake — to prove otherwise.

But the damage is beyond done.

Some marketers use it to claim that long-form copy is dead…

That there’s no way potential customers are going to watch a 2-hour webinar or read a long-form sales letter.

Just get to the sale already, they say.

And yet we humans have no problem whatsoever binge-watching our favorite show on Netflix for 18 hours straight…

Or watching the death-defying acts revealed in one cat video after another on Facebook or TikTok.

The truth is we’re both able and willing to consume long-form copy as long as it’s not BOOOOO-RING.

Our prospects gladly give us their attention for as long as we keep earning their attention.

As for that other myth that long copy doesn’t work anymore…

A few years ago when I was copy chief at a large financial publishers, one of my copywriters did a study of every promotion sent out over the previous several years.

What he found would shock most marketers…

The top 10 best-selling promotions — generating tens of millions of dollars total — were also the 10 longest promotions, with 4 of them topping out over 100 pages long.

In video form, that was about 90-120 minutes.

Even more surprising… these promotions were selling low-ticket annual subscriptions in the $49 to $149 range.

And yes, we often tested long copy vs short copy… and the longer copy almost always won.

So your prospects will give you their attention if you earn it.

That doesn’t mean all marketing copy has to be long-form… it simply means stop believing everyone who say long copy is dead.

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