First, an admission:
I’m probably the last guy on planet Earth to ask about VSL’s because I don’t really use them. And the reason I don’t use them has absolutely nothing to do with me thinking they don’t work or whatever. They obvious can work and do for many businesses. However, I also have found them to be completely overhyped since the very first sales letter I ever saw selling VSL software that was literally written as a text sales page — which was beyond amusing & ironic then, and is even more amusing & ironic to think about now.
So-called “AI” hype today has the same vibes.
How many are using AI to write the ads, tweets, social media posts to promote it?
I doubt it’s very many.
That said:
VSL’s are a perfectly fine marketing media if it works for you.
But I don’t use them because:
1. I despise video, video is not my game, and in fact I wish the whole internet would go back to plain text, minimal or no graphics, old school bulletin board-style — when the internet was a lot more fun, scared away the low IQ types who need a bouncing ball to follow a subject & object, and where substance mattered a lot more over style, imo
2. I’m a warm leads kinda guy, not a cold leads guy — not that I am against cold leads, it’s just not my game and the older I get, the more I prefer to play the marketing game on easy mode anyway
3. In my experience, selling in multiple markets (consumer and biz) I have never seen a test on said warm leads where video did better than text or vice versa when I’ve used daily emails the way I do them
Example:
Back in 2011-2012 I co-owned an info publishing biz selling eBooks to overweight females. And one of the other partners in that venture was the late, great traffic maestro Jim Yaghi who put together a video version of my sales letter for the main offer, and ran some cold traffic to test it against the text sales letter.
He also tested my warm daily emails pitting the video vs the text sales letter.
The winner?
Neither, in both cases.
One would always barely beat the other and vice versa, every time.
No statistically relevant difference in any of the tests, whether to cold or warm leads.
The reason?
Presumably, because the emails, relationship created, the quality of the info products, the market place positioning, and/or (to cold leads) the appeal of the main offer itself especially did most of the heavy lifting. Plus maybe a thousand other variables, I don’t even know, it’s been a while — but probably not whether it was video or text or whatever.
Another, more dramatic, example:
In 2007 I was hired to rewrite the wildly popular Magnetic Sponsoring offer sales letter by the boys at Magnetic Sponsoring. So I wrote a long form, text sales letter and it handily won. And it not only won, but whenever I spoke at events where there were a lot of affiliates for that offer hanging around, it was not unusual for them to come up to me and practically kiss my hand because that ad helped them make so much money as affiliates.
And it was just a “plain vanilla” sales letter.
It was also mostly text (minimal graphics, basic stuff).
i.e., nothing fancy or sexy about it, one way or the other.
Now, “fast forward” 7 or 8 years later:
I was speaking at another event where one of the co-owners of the above company told me they tried like hell to beat my text sales letter — including testing video/VSL’s against it. But he said my ugly little plain text sales letter with minimal design won every time. One of the other co-owners (Tim Erway) even recorded a video for me as a testimonial saying how that one sales letter brought in “millions of dollars and probably tens of millions of dollars in backend sales” (his exact words). So if VSLs were this magical “they always out convert everything!” unicorn format that always wins, then that should not have happened. Especially since, from what I remember of those guys, they did not test things lightly, and took their tracking quite seriously.
Those are both anecdotal obviously.
And I just list them as examples.
This is NOT to say plain text is better or that VSLs are inferior.
I also know of many other tests where VSLs kicked the crap out of plain text sales letters. And I have seen many other tests where a combo of both worked better than one or the other. I also know of tests where plain #10 envelopes beat the hell out of magalogs, too, so that’s another thing.
Which brings me to the point:
VSLs, text, audio, online, offline, even fapGPT (to whatever extent it actually works for this — and I don’t believe a single word anyone shilling it says about it right now)…. all are just marketing medias or tools. i.e., they are options to use, test, and get hog nasty rich from in whatever way you see fit. But no matter what media you use, what’s most important is the message to market match which is just basic, Marketing 101 fundamentals. To obsess over video vs text or using one media over another without getting that right first is majoring in the minors at its most gruesomest.
Finally:
4. I simply prefer text over video
And I prefer text over video for many reasons besides the fact above about how I hate diddling around with videos, shooting videos, editing videos, storing videos, writing slides for videos, or anything else with videos. Text is quick, easy to edit/update, no coding is needed, no video software is required, no outsourcing is necessary, and it’s probably not going to make any gigantic difference in my response either way, with my level of traffic, that is all warm traffic.
It’s also more appealing to the people I prefer selling to:
Readers.
“Leaders are readers” ain’t just a trope from what I’ve seen.
And in my business, targeting and selling to leaders has always been a lot more fun than selling to proles & newbies or those who hate reading, prefer watching videos, and prefer getting all their education from podcasts.
All right so that’s my take on VSL’s.
None of this is to say someone should or shouldn’t use them. Text is just my preference. If you like VSLs, if you make a lot of money with them, or if you just prefer them then use them. Frankly, you’d be foolish not to if that is truly the case.
If not, then don’t.
But anyone saying VSLs always win or are “better” is out of their mind. And probably selling you some kind of VSL service or software or something. There is no “always” in marketing. There’s just now and what works for you. The rest is just social media fapping and living in a false economy.
Kinda like this email is, probably…
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Ben Settle
