Ditch the Dogma for Better Conversion Rates

Have you ever been listening to someone speak but couldn’t figure out if they were being serious? I had one of these experiences recently when I saw a social media post about passive income. The question posed was this. “Would you rather take $1,000,000 right now or $50 a month for the rest of your life?” One of the answers was, “The $50 a month because that’s passive income and passive income will change your life.”?

You have to wonder if our business-savvy expert knew how to operate a calculator. My hope is that he was joking but you never know these days. And if it was a joke, what a lampooning of the dogma we often see in the business world. The idea that you always have to do x, y, or z regardless of the situation is among the dumbest takes out there.?

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m a big believer in doing what works. And the most obvious sign that something works is its repeatability. But just because something is repeatable doesn’t mean it’s Gospel truth. Even though our “$50 a month vs $1M right now” scenario is obvious, it's a great example of why something as desirable as passive income isn’t always the best solution.?

If done right, creating passive income will make you wealthy. But there's a time and place for everything. Often unsaid is the prerequisite skill required to generate a healthy passive income. People don't usually flock to garbage. In the best cases, you’re looking at 2-3 years of building your expertise before you can make the kind of product that people are willing to pay for en masse.

But this newsletter isn’t about passive income. It’s about dogma in the business world. And there’s plenty of dogma to go around. As a copywriter, I see it all the time: write in a conversational tone, don’t use jargon, don’t use too many charts, graphs, stats, etc.?

Generally good advice but not always true. If you’re writing to an audience of engineers, you better include enough charts, graphs, and stats to back up everything you say. Otherwise, your copy is going straight to the trash can.?

Another popular tip in copywriting circles is to break up your writing into short paragraphs. Again, generally true. It’s mainly for eye relief but there’s another important reason. Most people consume the majority of content on their phones. And most copywriters write on their computers.

Reasonable blocks of text on a computer screen often take up more than half the screen on a cell phone.?It's no mystery how intimidating this is for many readers. So intimidating they click away. Bad news!

However, if you’re writing for a print publication, you should use more traditional text blocks. The typesetting and formatting allows for it and perhaps even demands it. The point is this: what works for most may not work for you in a specific situation. And that’s okay. But it’s why dogma is dangerous.

A hot example right now is newsletters. Everyone and their dog is jumping into the newsletter game to save their marketing. It seems to be turning into a dogma that if you want your marketing to be worth a damn, you need a newsletter.?

Don't get me wrong. Newsletters are great. They give you more touches with your customers. And when I get Dan Kennedy’s mini letters in my email, it’s a nice break from the chorus of 20% off emails I usually see (that’s not email marketing, by the way).

If you can send me immanently useful information, I’m all about it. But this is rarely the case. And it’s also why I would NOT recommend that most freelancers and businesses start frantically pushing out a newsletter.?What's worse is that I've seen multiple companies simply rebrand their standard promotional emails as a newsletter. That's a big no-no.

Writing useful, actionable, interesting, and entertaining information is hard. This newsletter is the 7th one I've written and I’m already starting to feel the pressure of the monthly cycle. I knew from the outset that I wouldn’t want to publish weekly because the content would be low quality.?

I’m sure many would call it low-tier now. But I’m doing this for my own education as much as anything. Humans learn through doing and you’ll always suck when you first start doing something. So if you want to start a newsletter as a way to learn the skill, go for it. That's what I did. But know what you’re getting into.?

Most newsletters are boring and stale. They don’t generate any revenue for the company. Some of them are even lighted edited generic pre-written articles (that anyone can buy on the internet). This is one of the worst things you can do.

If you publish a newsletter, be prepared to write and edit 1k-2k words every month (or 500-800 if you choose bi-weekly). And this is on top of coming up with ideas that make for compelling newsletters.

Another problem with marketing dogma is the false sense of security it gives. “If I just follow the rules, everything will work out, right?” It might. But what happens when it doesn’t? As it turns out, dogmas aren't good diagnostic tools. What I mean is that it’s almost impossible to think outside the box once you’ve accepted certain ideas as dogma.?

Let’s say you follow all the copywriting rules and your copy still bombs. Then what? You have no mechanism in place to correct this. You read a few dozen copywriting books and followed them as closely as you could, but still didn’t write winning copy. What happened?

It’s going to be easy to start playing the blame game. But the real problem was that you took the sound principles in those books and installed them as inviolable truths in your brain.?

All of the copywriting strategies you read in books, articles, newsletters, etc. are tools. Sometimes you need a hammer. Other times you need a screwdriver. And ocassionally you need a different tool altogether.

At the end of the day, dogmas only do two things for us. They help us dodge accountability. And they often mask the real reason something works. No one enjoys taking full responsibility for their failed marketing (or diet), so dogmas make a great scapegoat. And when the dogma does work, we use that as our excuse to turn off our critical thinking.??

All the best,

Sean Ryan

P.S. Share this with someone you think would find it helpful. You can also subscribe to my newsletter on LinkedIn or my website seanryanwrites.com.?

P.P.S. If you’re interested in starting your own newsletter but want to outsource the writing, you can reach me at [email protected].???