SEO Copywriting Checklist: Why your video sales letter sucks…

…(and what you can do about it!).

Greetings! Today’s video post of the SEO Copywriting Checklist series was inspired by an email Heather received, which linked her to a video sales letter. A very long video sales letter – as in, 12 minutes long.

Heather wrote the solicitor back, saying “I wanted to learn more about your product, but I don’t have 12 minutes’ worth of time to sit there and watch a video without having more information.

“So if you want to send me information in an email, great! But I read fast, so I like to have that information in text form.”

Heather is not alone in her dislike of lengthy video sales letters – or in her preference for text. So if you produce video sales letters, or if you’re thinking about adding them to your online marketing mix, tune in to learn some pointers on making them better both for your audience and for SEO!

Yes, They Can Be Successful…But Consider This

– Your audience may not want to sit through a video. At all. Especially a longer video.

I hear complaints about lengthy video sales letters from a lot of folks. They’ll go to a “help” site, or they’ll want to learn more about a product (as was my case), and instead of being able to read text, they’re faced with a video.

Some of these videos you can’t pause, you can’t rewind – you start them and they’ll just play on, some of them for up to an hour.

So while video sales letters can be successful in certain situations, consider that a large segment of your audience might not want to sit through it!

Even a small alienated segment of your audience represents lost sales – or lost good will if they’ve come to your site to learn more information.

Here are some things I’d recommend you try, no matter how enthusiastic you are about video sales letters…

Try A Little Bit Of Text And Check Conversions

– Transcripts are fantastic.

I might not watch a video, but I will read a transcript. And I have converted on sites that have video transcripts, because I have been able to read, and the company in question has given me that option.

– If you don’t want to provide a transcript, consider a bullet point summary.

If you don’t want to provide a transcript for whatever reason, consider including a really good, content-rich bullet point summary.

At least that way, the folks who don’t want to sit through your video have some context, and something to think about. Otherwise, they’re liable to bounce out of your site and not visit it again.

– Adding text is great for SEO, too – you can include keyphrases in your copy.

Adding text to accompany your video sales letter has the advantage of being good for Google, too. It gives Google copy to crawl and index, and you can certainly add keyphrases to your content.

It creates a nice win-win: it’s a great win for those folks who don’t necessarily want to view your video, and it can also help you in terms of SEO!

Thanks for joining me! As always, if you have any questions I would love to hear from you. You can reach me on Twitter @heatherlloyd, or email me at heather@seocopywriting.com.

photo thanks to Leo Fung (fung.leo)