Not so long ago 3 masters of copywriting got together to discuss the power of rhythm and cadence in copy. All three charge above average copywriting fees. The result was a copywriters training like you’ve never ever experienced. It’s not often such a brain-trust of copywriting intelligence would find themselves in an environment so conducive to the topic but such was the case on June 15^th of this year

The truth is rhythm and cadence is used by most, if not all, of the best copywriters –There’s just not many that actually teach it. Keep in mind that John Carlton, Michel Fortin and Shaune Clarke who charge high copywriting fees, also have strong musical backgrounds. When Shaune speaks from the stage he notes his deep love for music calling himself a wanna-be-rockstar.

In Shaune’s copywriting program he explains the power of rhythm and cadence like this…

You don’t want the rhythm of your copy to be to perfect – then it gets to ‘poetic.’ It’s more like a Shakespearean play – where there is a flow and rhythm but just enough ‘interruption’ that it doesn’t get boring.

It’s exactly what we want with our sales copy. We want the reader to be enjoying the read – not working to read it. By adding rhythm and cadence we do just that. It just needs to be well done.

Let me give another example of how the same rhythm with interruption has power…

In a recent copywriters training a Jazz musician who was taking the program noted how Jazz musicians use the same theme 50% of the time and a different theme the other 50%.

So this idea of “flow with interruption” is used in many fields to engage and maintain attention – For certain — it works for sales copy as well.

In fact, one guy who has talked about rhythm in copywriting is Perry Marshall who once saw the click-thru-rate of an Adwords ad nearly double simply by changing one word.

Listen to this…

It didn’t change the meaning of the ad – just the rhythm of it. That’s powerful!

The idea here is that by increasing the ‘smoothness’ of the copywriting — by improving the rhythm and cadence we make it easier for the reader to read through the copy.

In other words…

We can increase “The Speed Of The Read” – make it easier for our readers to take in our message — and thereby increase conversion rates.

There’s also a sense that by making it ‘easy to read’ — the tension around sales resistance (something that is automatic today) begins to dissolve.

In today’s era of very short attention spans and exaggerated sales resistance we need to use every element we can to improve the potential that our copy will actually get read and the resistance to it is minimized. Rhythm and Cadence is another weapon in the copywriters tool chest.