Today, we're going to be dissecting Ali Abdaal's PTYA VSL

This is going to be an excerpt of the Full Dissection of Ali Abdaal's PTYA VSL that will come pretty soon

I hope you enjoy

General Dissection

No Uniqueness

This is the biggest problem with Ali Abdaal’s PTYA VSL. The fundamental structure of a good VSL has an intro, an offer, case studies, unique features and a CTA.

He has everything else, but this will leave customers thinking “why you and not some other course?”

Now of course, you could make the argument that the unique part of it is the quality, or the strong Ali Abdaal brand behind it. But that heavily relies on the customer knowing who Ali is in the first place

This really restricts potential leads to Ali’s fanbase (which is huge, I won’t doubt that), and not many other people who might not know Ali.

Too many case studies

Hear me out.

Case studies are important, yes they are. But they aren’t something you can just throw in mindlessly into a VSL

You need enough case studies to prove that the course works (and the individuals weren’t just a fluke), but also not so many that it gets repetitive.

Ali has 3 beginner testimonials, 3 intermediate testimonials, and 2 advanced testimonials. That’s way too many.

Having 1 for each, actually 2 for beginner because that’s the core audience of the course, and that’s it.

You cut the runtime down 30%, you keep the VSL going and you make room for more narrative.

And having less case studies has another benefit, they’re more convincing if you write them well.

With less testimonials, you get to delve deeper into their characters. The YouTubers in the VSL don’t seem real to us, if that makes sense.

Since we don’t know a lot about them, or their character as a whole, they feel more fictional than real, which won’t help in selling the course.

Advertising or marketing is basically storytelling with some tweaks, and without good characters you can’t have a good story.

Bland Case Studies

This is different from the point I just made above.

Bland case studies are a problem because now you have too many characters that are the same…

It’s like he just repeated the same story over and over again.

I can tell he just sent out a questionnaire to the case studies which went along the lines of:

Hi I’m writing a VSL for PTYA, can you answer the following questions

And everybody just types out generic answers

Offer is too detailed

This is a bit similar to the case studies part, but instead of characters it’s the offer

What I mean by the the offer being too long is that it gets boring after a bit

I know Ali is used to making YouTube videos, so that’s a good explanation as to why he delved into so much detail about the course

The difference between a VSL and a YouTube video is that the YouTube video itself should bring value to the viewer, not a VSL

Yes, you need to bring some type of value in a VSL, which is the course.

What I’m trying to say is that you need to give enough information to the viewer that the viewer realises they have a problem, and that the solution to the problem is your course

He talks about multiple points in the offer, and I would just rewrite it to only include a few

CTA isn’t strong enough

CTA, the part that everybody raves about

Its importance is honestly a bit overrated, but it’s still by far the most important part of a VSL

The CTA feels like a choice. You can choose to buy it or not.

It feels more like a recommendation than a diagnosis.

In marketing, things should feel like a diagnosis. Just like a doctor, I identify a problem with your life, I will prescribe you medicine, and you go pay for that medicine.

The only problem is that you pay for the medicine, not the treatment (at least most times), and I am both the doctor and the pharmacy.

Anyways, with that logic, you wouldn’t trust a doctor when he says, “I recommend you take these medicines, it should be a good option.”

You want a doctor to tell you, “Here are the medicines you need to take, 3 hours after each meal, 3 times a day. You’ll be better in a week or so.”

Ali sounds like the first doctor. He sounds nicer, yes, but marketing isn’t about how nice you are, it’s about how trustable you seem.

What about the Intro?

Ali does intros quite well, probably because a VSL intro is pretty similar to that of a YouTube video.

You just need to introduce who you are, and give the viewer a small taste of what the meat of the video/VSL will be about.

Ali does that perfectly, well maybe takes a bit too long since he’s used to 20 minute YouTube videos instead of 7-8 minute VSLs (that’s how long a VSL should be)

VSL takes too long

And riding off of that last point, the whole VSL is 15 minutes long. With shrinking attention spans, it’s just not going to cut it. Especially with all the repetition with the offer and the case studies

After cutting some unnecessary case studies and shrinking the offer, the VSL should be a bit under 7 minutes long. That’s fine, but after you cut the intro to its core and add some unique features about the product, you should get a perfect VSL.

Of course, this VSL should fall around 9ish minutes, since there is way more content with PTYA compared to other courses. But it’s worth it, because those extra minutes are used to develop character and build realism instead of another case study