The slippery slide (term coined by Joe Sugarman (read his books)) is a simple concept. Imagine that your ad is a slide. On top you can see your prospects waiting for their turn to slide down. At the bottom, they either buy or not. Your job is make them slide down as quickly as possible without harming them. The aim is to make the slide very slippery.
If the slide is not slippery, what happens? They don't slide down. Thus, they never reach the buy or don't buy point. They may get stuck and just jump out of the slide. We don't want that!
The slippery slide:
Prospects
-
|
-
| ...The slide...
-
|
-
|
The buying decision.
If people don't make it down the slippery slide, then they will not get a chance to buy your product. The aim for reading rhythm is to create this slippery slide in your copy.
Let me show you an example. One ad without a slippery slide, one ad with a slippery slide.
##Ad Without Slippery slide.
Most of our clients experienced positive gains from using our product.
The $product_name is aimed at businesses that need to have better understanding of where their income is coming through. Our product allows you to keep track of what is important. Metrics are displayed in real-time view using our own Javascript API, written by our core development group. If your business needs to have a better understanding of how your income comes through, then look no further. $product_name will deliver the results you want.
Was it hard to read that? Good. It was hard to write. But orange, there is no way someone would write an ad like that!
LOL.
Just go to Hacker News and go to the landing page of almost every startup mentioned there. Their copy is sometimes as bad as that one. Most of the time its worse. I'm not talking abou two-man operations either. Some are top YC startups. I won't mention names, but its just mind blowing.
Ok, enough of that. I'm going to re-write the ad above.
##Ad with slippery slide.
7 out of 10 clients were able to better understand where their income was coming in. Our simple to use program makes it easy. Find out how.
Your income. You need to know where it comes from at every moment. It is vital to know what makes you money. And what makes you lose money. Either way, you need to know.
$product_name simplifies income tracking.
You will no longer need to wait for reports to come in. $product name just plugs into your system, and provides real-time income reports.
Created by leading experts.
Our development team spent months perfecting this system. It was tested on all major platforms. If you are using any of these, you will be able to benefit from $product name.
$product_name is a plug and play solution.
No need to pay expensive programmers. Just download and install. Our program takes care of the rest.
24 hour support.
If you face any issues installing $product_name don't panic. We are here for you. Our support team is on standby 24 hours a day. Just call, or email. We will solve your issues right away.
90 day free trial.
For a limited time. Get the product. Use it for 90 days. If you are not convinced we will not charge you a cent.
Download it now from www.web-address.com
Go to www.webaddress.com. Click the green button that says DOWNLOAD. The quick download will start. When done, double click on the file named $product_name. That's all you need to start enjoying the benefits of $product_name.
Don't stay in the dark. Know where your income is at all times.
More data about your business means better decisions. Don't make costly decisions based on blind input. Know at all times where your income is coming from. Download $product_name from www.web-address.com. Make better business decisions.
PS. Don't forget our 90 day free trial. Go to www.web-address.com and download $product_name. No purchase necessary. Disponible en Espanol.
Whew!
Ok. The difference is outstanding. Which one do you think people will read? Exactly. The slippery slide in the second ad is very obvious. It starts with the headline.
7 out of 10 clients were able to better understand where their income was coming in. Our simple to use program makes it easy. Find out how.
It instantly disqualifies anyone who is not a business owner. And business owners who don't have the problem $product_name aims to solve. It also set the pace for the ad. It starts out long, but finishes with a three word sentence.
Then the paragraphs use a simple short/long sentence pattern. You feel like stop and go traffic. But you never stop moving. Your eyes keep reading down the page. Thats the point!
The subheadlines are also interesting. If you only read them, and don't read the actual copy, you can still see that I'm closing the sale. In the sub-headlines. This is specially important, because people are lazy.
But I will not tell you more about it. Print a copy and study it. See how it works. Reverse-engineer the ad.
Warning: the ads above have not been tested. Do not replicate with hopes of either one working.
They were only written to teach you about the slippery slide.