This question was posed in my community. So, here’s the factors I personally look at when deciding how “in-depth” my copy needs to be for any given offer…

First I consider how much does the price point impacts my target audience.

A pair of shoes at $40 (in general) will likely need less convincing to purchase then a pair of, say, $400 shoes.

A $200,000 crane to a mega-construction company would not have as large an impact to its budget then, say, a $2,000 course to an average individual, so the “depth” of the copy & persuasion needed will differ… even though the crane costs 100x as much. The price doesn’t matter as much as the impact does.

Another factor is “familiarity” of your audience with what you’re selling.

How much the target audience understands about your offer already should also be heavily considered. The more informed they are, the less depth you may need to go into to persuade them to purchase. For the informed lead you would want to spend more time in your copy building trust and seperating yourself from the competition as opposed to educating them on the product itself. If they are uninformed you’ll want to shift back to educating them on the product/service and its benefits to them, this education process in itself, when done well, will build all trust you need to make the sale!

Their familiarity will also influence how much “jargon” you can get away with in your copy, in general it’s a bad idea to use jargon at all – but if you know your target audience is very familiar with what you’re selling you can use it sparingly to get to the point quicker… thus requiring less ‘depth’ to your general copy pieces. For example, shoes marketed to professional athletes can use terms without explanation that shoes marketed to the general public would want to either avoid or use with explanation provided.

It’s worth repeating, however, that jargon should be used with caution, when in doubt leave jargon out, or at least translate that jargon in the copy itself somewhere.

Another important factor that determines the depth of your writing is whether you’re marketing to someone already looking for what you’re selling, or someone who looking for what you’re selling… e.g. “search ads” vs. “banner ads”.

For instance, the sales page for my book is LONG for a book page because I’m targeting a broad audience with banner campaigns… if I were to do a campaign directly to a more niche audience, say copywriters, then I could likely skip the part of the page that’s designed to persuade a broad audience of the importance of copywriting, therefore requiring a lot less depth in my writing.

Put simply, if you’re targeting a broad audience with a high impact price point there’s a lot more nurturing/persuasion that will need to be done then a more informed audience one with less impact.

To put it together balancing the following factors is the key to determining the depth your copy will need…

1. Audience familiarity with what you’re selling
2. The impact the price will have on their bottom line now & in the future.
3. Whether the person is actively searching for your type of product or not.

Of course, there are many more factors determining what kind of copy you should use within your marketing itself, for a more detailed write up on the subject check out my 7 Figure Marketing Copy Guide here.

Any other factors you think should determine the length of the messaging you use? Sound off here in the Facebook group discussion… if you bring something to light that I missed I’ll be sure to add it to this post.