You can easily spot the US marketing info e-book websites. They normally consist of one or two pages but mostly just one very long scrolling page. These are constructed in the form of a long sales letter. Much like you might see in a full spread newspaper advert. But these are done in a much more scientific way.

First of all the headline is carefully selected and then comes the first paragraph followed by further carefully constructed sales copy.

Reading one of these long single page sales letters can be very instructive to anyone who wants to sell their service or products on line.

But if you are a UK company then you can’t do it in the same style. It does not work as well in the UK. The reasons may go back a long way in both the US and UKs history. But in essence what this difference means is that US customers are more open to being sold to where as UK customers are a lot more suspicious and will just glance at a long sales letters and won’t even bother to read the headline at all. They will often assume its a scam or some such nonsense.

Which is a pity because much of these sales letters can be read and understood easily. And for the most part its simple to see if they are genuine or not. Most Americans understand that and will read on. But not us over here.

So the UK customer needs much more gentle treatment.

A later blog I will explain why these marketing styles for historic reasons are so different but for now here is the most important point.

Find the best US sales letter website (often called mini-sites) and emulate them but soften it and cut away 50% of the copy.

But at the same time run an American style version of it anyway (just in case)

So you’ll get both sets of people, the few UK people who are more accepting of strong sales letters plus with the toned down version you will also grab more of the conservative and more careful UK shoppers.

Its a little like comparing US viewers reactions to comedy on TV with UK viewers reactions to the same shows. Often we (collectively on average as a whole society) don’t laugh at same things.

Some of our TV shows work better in the US than others and often it can never be guessed which ones will work. Its the same with marketing styles. Because you are pitching to the same groups of people. It is well understood that US and UK shoppers are as different as US and UK TV viewers.

So the long and loud sales letter is often a sure winner in the US. But don’t expect it to have same effect on a UK shopper. Build two versions one for the US and one for the UK and test them as independant sites for the lifetime of the product or service.