Steven Lewis's Blog, page 14

Want to stand out? Prove it.

Do you want a surefire copywriting secret for writing a persuasive website? If you do, support every claim you make with PROOF.

Maybe you really are the “leading” provider in your industry. But that’s meaningless if every competitor also claims to be the leading provider.

What you need is a way to PROVE your pre-eminence.

With proof of your claims, your credibility soars.

Proof comes in dozens of forms.

Taleist has a list of more than 40 different types of proof we go through with clients as part of our research. The types of proof we look at include things like:

Test results

Accreditations

Trust seals

High-profile clients

Media mentions

Awards…

And several different types of social proof.

The list goes on and on.

Often the client will say “No, No…” as we work through the list. Then we’ll hit gold. We hit something guaranteed to make the client shine brighter than the competition.

But it’s something the client has never thought to mention before.

Now they’re not just making claims: They’re proving their claims so their credibility goes up.

And when your credibility goes up, so does your conversion rate.

This is just one of seven tips for things ANYONE can do to increase their conversion rate without any technical skills. You can get all seven conversion rate optimisation tips here.

The post Want to stand out? Prove it. appeared first on Taleist Agency.

Did you forget to tell your website visitors the most important thing?

Do you want visitors to your website to contact you? If you do, there’s one thing you must do before anything else.

You need to tell your visitors what you do.

It’s crazy how many companies don’t.

How many times have you arrived at a website and thought to yourself… I’m not sure these guys do what I need.

Try this… The next 10 websites you look at, ask yourself if they say clearly above the fold what they do. If they leave any room for doubt, they could improve their conversion rate by spelling it out.

What about your website? Do you leave potential customers in the slightest doubt about what you do?

If you’re clear about what you do, your potential customers will have more confidence they’re in the right place. And the more confidence they have that you do what they want, the more likely they are to contact you.

Saying what you do above the fold is one of 7 things anyone can do to improve their conversion rate overnight.

Download all 7 conversion rate optimisation tips .

The post Did you forget to tell your website visitors the most important thing? appeared first on Taleist Agency.

13 reasons your landing page copywriting is too short (whatever your designer says)

Your landing page copywriting has a job to do, and you need enough copy on the landing page to do that job.

The more you want that copywriting to do, the longer the copy on your landing page is going to need to be.

If you’re spending money on running traffic to a landing page, and you want a conversion rate that delivers a return on your ad spend (ROAS), you need to do more than invest wisely in SEO or search engine marketing (SEM) like Google Ads.

That will get you the right traffic, but if you want that traffic to convert…

… You need to think about long form copywriting. Yes, long-form copywriting even in this age of (allegedly) short attention spans. Really?

Bear with me and you’ll be convinced…

What the Mad Men knew about landing pages even if they hadn’t been invented yet

Whatever you think about today’s attention spans and the internet generation, nothing has changed since at least 1962, the year legendary ad man Victor Schwab wrote How to Write a Good Advertisement.

Even back in 1962, the Mad Men were being told that nobody read anything anymore. And time and again, they proved those naysayers wrong with long-form advertising.

What follows is a list of arguments for long-form copy on a landing page. These arguments are teased from chapter 6 of Schwab’s book, which he called “How Long Should Copy Be?”

He called the chapter “How Long Should Copy Be?” because there’s absolutely nothing new about the argument for short copy.

Even so, I get it. You’re thinking, What the hell would an ad man from the 60s know about pay-per-click advertising, SEO and landing pages when none of those things was even invented in his lifetime?

That’s true, but Victor Schwab was writing about everybody’s favourite term — “conversion rates” — back when Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web, was just 7 years old.

Schwab knew a thing or two about what you’re facing today because not everything is new, especially not the psychology of spending money…

1. The greater your aspirations, the more copywriting you’ll need to get you there

If you just want to get a prospect’s attention, you can do it in the headline of your landing page — “$10,000 free to the first 100 readers of this headline”.

If you want your prospect to sign up for surgery, you’re going to need more copy to get you there.

As a rule of thumb, you’ll need as many words to persuade someone in writing as you would need to persuade them in person.

Want to give someone a free test drive of a Ferrari, you won’t need many words. Want someone to buy one and you’d better start writing — and make sure it’s tight and full of benefits.

(Hat tip for that rule of thumb to Making Websites Win.)

Our experience is that no one runs traffic to a landing page to grab attention. They always want the reader to take action.

2. People are varied

However tightly you’ve narrowed the avatar for your landing page, it’s going to include people of varied backgrounds, brainpower and levels of concentration

Some of them will be easy to convince; some hard. Some will be inclined to act quickly; some will be tougher to move to action.

And you might be asking some of your prospects to do something counter to their existing habits or prejudices, which is going to take some convincing.

3. Interest pays off

Some of your prospects might be hyper interested in what you’re offering. Others have a passing interest that you’re trying to catch on the fly, amplify and turn into action.

Maybe your readers will be “very easy” to sell to right now because they’re:

“in the market” at this instant
not primarily concerned about price
not already in love with a competitor

But that will be very few of your readers. Most of your readers will be casual, price shopping, already into a competitor or slow to act.

That’s why…

“The LONGER your copy can hold the interest of the greatest number of readers, the likelier you are to induce more of them to act… And the more interesting your copy is, the longer you will hold them.” — Victor Schwab

If you hand too little copy to reader who aren’t ready for it and the best you can hope for is that they’ll leave nodding their heads, agreeing what you’re offering is good.

Sure, that’s an achievement, but it’s not what you really want. What you want is to move them to act now.

And short copy rarely gets that immediate action. You need to build desire and that takes time, which in this case is more words.

4. What do people most like to read about?

Your reader will never lose interest in themselves. They’ll stay interested in your copy for a long time if it’s all about them and what you can do for them.

Find all the advantages to the reader and lay them all out.

Again, if your copy is short, you’ve probably not given the reader enough information about how you’ll fit into their lives to persuade them to get off the fence.

5. Readers — not paying attention since 1932

You hear it all the time today — website visitors have one eye on your website, one eye on the TV… And if they had a third eye, it would be on something else.

But inattention isn’t a new thing.

“People are thinking about other things when they see your ad. Your ad does not get their full attention or intelligence… So you have to make your ads simple.” — John Caples, copywriter — writing in 1932

“Simple” in this context means the copywriting on your landing page might need room for repetition of important points, spelling things out, leading the reader by the nose.

That’s hard to do in 75 words. You need time and space on the page.

It doesn’t matter how big and juicy you make the contact form if they’re not ready to contact you.

On that note…

6. Design isn’t going to do it for you

We work with some fantastic designers but even they sometimes suck their breath through their teeth when we hand them a 4,000-word landing page to design.

Designers who don’t specialise in conversion rate optimisation (CRO) have pretty much all been schooled in this “new” insight into the supposed  attention deficit disorder running through the human population. There’s just one problem with that…

… There’s no deficit of attention in things that interest us. There never has been.

“Do not lose faith in the eternal effectiveness of advertising copy. Nothing can take the place of copy for persuasion, for downright selling. Fashions in advertising may come and go, but they never lessen the power of the printed word.” — copywriter G. Lynn Summer, quoted in How to Write a Good Advertisement (1962)

I’d argue that the current fashion in design for giant images and tweet-sized bites of text is just that, a fashion.

Your audience can be attracted, diverted and entertained by colour and movement, but they won’t be persuaded by it.

7. “Delay is the enemy of sale”

Schwab’s axiom about delay being the enemy of sale applies just as much today as it did in 1962.

Every reader you don’t persuade to act NOW could be lost forever.

It’s fine to tickle and tease — to make “brand aware” — but there’s no substitute for a sale, and to make a sale you need enough copy to convince someone to act now.

Remarketing is great, but why not sell now if you can?

8. Tell once, repeat twice

You’ve probably been told the presentation secret that you’ll best embed your messages if you tell your audience what you’re going to tell them, tell them then tell them what you’ve told them.

It certainly does help a presentation but it’s actually a maxim from direct response copywriting.

No one needs to slam messages harder into a distracted brain more than the copywriter who has sent an unsolicited offer in the post. Who is more likely to be paying minimal attention than the person walking between their mailbox and the hall table?

So direct mail copywriters have known for a long time about the rule of telling once and repeating twice to make sure their message gets through.

But you can guess what I’m going to say…

You need more words to do that.

9. It takes emotion and facts

If you want to get action from as many different types of people as possible, you’re going to need copy that appeals to emotion and you’re going to need facts. And laying out both things takes…

You guessed it…

Length.

10. If ain’t there, it can’t persuade

“No reader can be influenced by good sales angles which don’t appear in the advertisement at all.” — Victor Schwab

The angles you include in your copywriting have a chance to convince all your readers. The angles you leave out of your landing page don’t have a chance to convince anyone.

You might leave a sales angle in but choke it off so it doesn’t have room to do it’s job. Not giving an idea enough space can also undermine the efficacy of your copy.

Making sure you’ve captured and detailed all possible sales angles in your landing page is a strong argument for research. When we interview our clients’ customers about why they buy from our clients, we often find they have reasons our clients didn’t know about.

11. Your product isn’t cheap or an impulse buy

You don’t need many words to sell something that’s cheap or that’s bought on  impulse. But the more expensive your product or service, the more words you’re going to need to persuade someone to part with the money.

12. Your product is complicated

We’ve been copywriting landing pages for an Australian company that supplies solar panels and batteries. These are complicated products requiring a substantial investment that won’t pay off in less than 10 years.

Understandably, readers have question and we’ve made it our business to work out what they are and to answer them.

You’re not going to brutalise your potential customer into choosing you by refusing to answer their questions unless they call your 1800 number.

Your prospect is going to keep searching until they find the information they need to make them comfortable enough to speak to you.

You can build trust by answering their questions (and objections) right there on your landing page.

13. Your competition is stiff

You can be as economical with your copywriting as you like if your product is essential and your competition is limited.

But if you’ve got competition, you need to put your shoulder to the wheel of persuasion.

Just reminding the public that your product exists is probably inadequate when your competition are wooing them with better information and offers.

Who cares how long your landing page is?

If you’re spending money on sending traffic to a webpage, copy length is something you should care about enormously.

Your ad people might tell you that “no one reads any more”.

Your designer might roll their eyes that the persuasion can all be done with bright images, well-chosen fonts and a couple of hundred choice words.

But they would be wrong.

In test after test, longform copywriting outperforms short copy every time. Longer landing pages simply work better because they work for more prospective customers.

If you’re spending money on getting the eyeballs, you want to douse them in as much persuasion as you can.

To invest in quality traffic without investing in the copywriting that will convert that traffic to sales makes as much sense as going running with your shoelaces tied together… You’ll get some movement, but it’s going to be a lot harder than it needs to be.

If you’d like help copywriting your landing page, please contact us to talk to a senior copywriter.

The post 13 reasons your landing page copywriting is too short (whatever your designer says) appeared first on Taleist Agency.

13 reasons your landing page copywriting is too short

Your landing page copywriting has a job to do, and you need enough copy on the landing page to do that job.

The more you want that copywriting to do, the longer that copy is going to need to be to get the job done.

If you’re spending money on running traffic to a landing page, and you want a conversion rate that delivers a return on your ad spend (ROAS), you don’t just need to invest wisely in SEO or search engine marketing (SEM) like Google Ads.

You need to think about long form copywriting. Yes, long form copywriting even in this age of (allegedly) short attention spans. Bear with me and you’ll be convinced…

What the Mad Men knew about landing pages

Whatever you think about today’s attention spans, nothing has changed since at least 1962, the year legendary ad man Victor Schwab wrote How to Write a Good Advertisement.

Even the Mad Men back then were being told that nobody read anything anymore. And time and again, their long copy proved those naysayers wrong.

What follows is a list of arguments for long-form copy on a landing page teased from chapter 6 of Schwab’s book, “How Long Should Copy Be?”

I get it… You’re thinking, What the hell would an ad man from the 60s know about PPC and landing pages?

But Victor Schwab was writing about “conversion rates” in How to Write a Good Advertisement when Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web, was 7 years old.

Not everything is new, especially not the psychology of spending money…

1. The greater your aspirations, the more copywriting you’ll need to get you there

If you just want to get a prospect’s attention, you can do it in a headline — “$10,000 free to the first 100 readers of this headline”.

If you want your prospect to sign up for surgery, you’re going to need more copy to get you there.

As a rule of thumb, you’ll need as many words to persuade someone in writing as you would need to persuade them in person.

Want to give someone a free test drive of a Ferrari, you won’t need many words. Want someone to buy one and you’d better start writing — and make sure it’s tight and full of benefits.

(Hat tip for that rule of thumb to Making Websites Win.)

Our experience is that no one runs traffic to a landing page to grab attention. They always want the reader to take action.

2. People are varied

However tightly you’ve narrowed the avatar for your landing page, it’s going to include people of varied backgrounds, brainpower and levels of concentration

Some of them will be easy to convince; some hard. Some will be inclined to act quickly; some will be tougher to move to action.

And you might be asking some of your prospects to do something counter to their existing habits or prejudices, which is going to take some convincing.

3. Interest pays off

Some of your prospects might be hyper interested in what you’re offering. Others have a passing interest that you’re trying to catch on the fly, amplify and turn into action.

Maybe your readers will be “very easy” to sell to right now because they’re:

“in the market” at this instant
not primarily concerned about price
not already in love with a competitor

But that will be very few of your readers. Most of your readers will be casual, price shopping, already into a competitor or slow to act.

That’s why…

“The LONGER your copy can hold the interest of the greatest number of readers, the likelier you are to induce more of them to act… And the more interesting your copy is, the longer you will hold them.” — Victor Schwab

If you hand too little copy to reader who aren’t ready for it and the best you can hope for is that they’ll leave nodding their heads, agreeing what you’re offering is good.

Sure, that’s an achievement, but it’s not what you really want. What you want is to move them to act now.

And short copy rarely gets that immediate action. You need to build desire and that takes time, which in this case is more words.

4. What do people most like to read about?

Your reader will never lose interest in themselves. They’ll stay interested in your copy for a long time if it’s all about them and what you can do for them.

Find all the advantages to the reader and lay them all out.

Again, if your copy is short, you’ve probably not given the reader enough information about how you’ll fit into their lives to persuade them to get off the fence.

5. Readers — not paying attention since 1932

You hear it all the time today — website visitors have one eye on your website, one eye on the TV… And if they had a third eye, it would be on something else.

But inattention isn’t a new thing.

“People are thinking about other things when they see your ad. Your ad does not get their full attention or intelligence… So you have to make your ads simple.” — John Caples, copywriter — writing in 1932

“Simple” in this context means the copywriting on your landing page might need room for repetition of important points, spelling things out, leading the reader by the nose.

That’s hard to do in 75 words. You need time and space on the page.

It doesn’t matter how big and juicy you make the contact form if they’re not ready to contact you.

On that note…

6. Design isn’t going to do it for you

We work with some fantastic designers but even they sometimes suck their breath through their teeth when we hand them a 4,000-word landing page to design.

Designers who don’t specialise in conversion rate optimisation (CRO) have pretty much all been schooled in this “new” insight into the supposed  attention deficit disorder running through the human population. There’s just one problem with that…

… There’s no deficit of attention in things that interest us. There never has been.

“Do not lose faith in the eternal effectiveness of advertising copy. Nothing can take the place of copy for persuasion, for downright selling. Fashions in advertising may come and go, but they never lessen the power of the printed word.” — copywriter G. Lynn Summer, quoted in How to Write a Good Advertisement (1962)

I’d argue that the current fashion in design for giant images and tweet-sized bites of text is just that, a fashion.

Your audience can be attracted, diverted and entertained by colour and movement, but they won’t be persuaded by it.

7. “Delay is the enemy of sale”

Schwab’s axiom about delay being the enemy of sale applies just as much today as it did in 1962.

Every reader you don’t persuade to act NOW could be lost forever.

It’s fine to tickle and tease — to make “brand aware” — but there’s no substitute for a sale, and to make a sale you need enough copy to convince someone to act now.

Remarketing is great, but why not sell now if you can?

8. Tell once, repeat twice

You’ve probably been told the presentation secret that you’ll best embed your messages if you tell your audience what you’re going to tell them, tell them then tell them what you’ve told them.

It certainly does help a presentation but it’s actually a maxim from direct response copywriting.

No one needs to slam messages harder into a distracted brain more than the copywriter who has sent an unsolicited offer in the post. Who is more likely to be paying minimal attention than the person walking between their mailbox and the hall table?

So direct mail copywriters have known for a long time about the rule of telling once and repeating twice to make sure their message gets through.

But you can guess what I’m going to say…

You need more words to do that.

9. It takes emotion and facts

If you want to get action from as many different types of people as possible, you’re going to need copy that appeals to emotion and you’re going to need facts. And laying out both things takes…

You guessed it…

Length.

10. If ain’t there, it can’t persuade

“No reader can be influenced by good sales angles which don’t appear in the advertisement at all.” — Victor Schwab

The angles you include in your copywriting have a chance to convince all your readers. The angles you leave out of your landing page don’t have a chance to convince anyone.

You might leave a sales angle in but choke it off so it doesn’t have room to do it’s job. Not giving an idea enough space can also undermine the efficacy of your copy.

Making sure you’ve captured and detailed all possible sales angles in your landing page is a strong argument for research. When we interview our clients’ customers about why they buy from our clients, we often find they have reasons our clients didn’t know about.

11. Your product isn’t cheap or an impulse buy

You don’t need many words to sell something that’s cheap or that’s bought on  impulse. But the more expensive your product or service, the more words you’re going to need to persuade someone to part with the money.

12. Your product is complicated

We’ve been copywriting landing pages for an Australian company that supplies solar panels and batteries. These are complicated products requiring a substantial investment that won’t pay off in less than 10 years.

Understandably, readers have question and we’ve made it our business to work out what they are and to answer them.

You’re not going to brutalise your potential customer into choosing you by refusing to answer their questions unless they call your 1800 number.

Your prospect is going to keep searching until they find the information they need to make them comfortable enough to speak to you.

You can build trust by answering their questions (and objections) right there on your landing page.

13. Your competition is stiff

You can be as economical with your copywriting as you like if your product is essential and your competition is limited.

But if you’ve got competition, you need to put your shoulder to the wheel of persuasion.

Just reminding the public that your product exists is probably inadequate when your competition are wooing them with better information and offers.

Who cares how long your landing page is?

If you’re spending money on sending traffic to a webpage, copy length is something you should care about enormously.

Your ad people might tell you that “no one reads any more”.

Your designer might roll their eyes that the persuasion can all be done with bright images, well-chosen fonts and a couple of hundred choice words.

But they would be wrong.

In test after test, longform copywriting outperforms short copy every time. Longer landing pages simply work better because they work for more prospective customers.

If you’re spending money on getting the eyeballs, you want to douse them in as much persuasion as you can.

To invest in quality traffic without investing in the copywriting that will convert that traffic to sales makes as much sense as going running with your shoelaces tied together… You’ll get some movement, but it’s going to be a lot harder than it needs to be.

If you’d like help copywriting your landing page, please contact us to talk to a senior copywriter.

The post 13 reasons your landing page copywriting is too short appeared first on Taleist Agency.

The great About Us page lie

The second most visited page on your website is a lie. Why? Because you’ve called it “About Us” and it’s not supposed to be about you at all. Change that in your copywriting and your conversion rate will go up. The reason is simple.

Your website visitors are looking for someone to solve a problem. The other pages on your website might have convinced them that you can indeed solve their problems. But we’re not just looking for someone who CAN solve our problem.

We’re looking for someone we TRUST to solve our problem.

That’s why your About Us page is likely the second most visited page on your website. Your visitors go there when they’re interested enough in your product and service to want to know who is going to be providing it. And why they should trust you to do that.

Read our post on copywriting a perfect About Us page for your website .

So yes, your About Us page is about you. But it’s really about them… It’s about their problems and building their trust that you’re the right person to solve it.

Building that trust effectively is going to improve your conversion rate.

There’s more about how to do that in our guide to 7 things anyone can do to improve their conversion rate overnight. Download the guide for free here.

The post The great About Us page lie appeared first on Taleist Agency.

How copywriting can make your competitors irrelevant

Would you like to make your competitors irrelevant? With the right information, you can.

There are three things your clients can’t tell you themselves, which is a shame. Why? Because if you knew what those things were, it would make the competition disappear.

Fortunately, you can discover that information for yourself (as long as you know where to look) and use it to devastating effect (if you know what to do with it).

Copywriting insights you’ll discover in this video



Why you must find out before your competitors what your clients can’t (but really want to) tell youHow to discover that information for yourselfHow to use what you uncover to take your marketing to another level




3 things your clients can’t tell you that would make your competitors irrelevant


Email Address




Website










Video transcript

Copywriting has the power to make your competitors irrelevant if you know what you’re doing, so the first thing that you need to know is that copywriting and writing are not the same thing.

You can fill a webpage from top to bottom with words that sound great, that your English teacher would’ve loved, but it’s not copywriting.

Copywriting takes insights into human behaviour, into what your clients want, and then uses writing skills to persuade them to do whatever it is that you want them to do, normally to buy or to pick up the phone and give you a call.

I’ll give you an example of what I mean by that. I’ve taken an old ad here for a reason that will make sense in a minute. This is an ad obviously for soap. We all use soap, we all want to get clean, soap is soap, so from a copywriting point of view you have to tap into something different from just the feature of the product. This way they’ve gone for keeping your skin soft and smooth. That’s one more way to tap into the feature of the product, but a good copywriter will ask themselves what is something that somebody really wants from this product?

Now, bearing in mind this was the 1950s, this is what the copywriter came up with, “I love my husband far too much to risk getting dry, lifeless, middle-aged skin.” In 2019, that is a repugnant statement, okay? We don’t like that, we find it repulsive, and therefore, it jumps out at us. The copywriting in this instance jumps out at us because what sounded good presumably in 1953 does not sound great in 2019 and therefore, the layer is removed and you can see the copywriting at work. But normally copywriting is not that obvious. Normally when you’re reading something that you find persuasive, you think to yourself well yeah, of course that’s just the way it is and yeah, that’s right, of course they would say that.

But a good copywriter is saying those things deliberately because they have chosen things that to you, the ideal client, will sound right and will sound persuasive, so how do you get to the level of understanding what it is that’s going on a little bit deeper with your clients? There are three things that you need to know but that your clients can’t tell you themselves even though they’d really quite like to. Those three things are what they truly desire in life, the group they want to belong to, and the results they really hope for.

Putting that in context, let’s take a very expensive Mercedes. This is a car that would cost you over $100,000 to buy. Now if you just want to go to the shop, so you want to go to work or you want to take a trip at the weekend, you can do all of that in a $7,000 second-hand tiny car. If you want a bit more legroom, a bit more comfort, few more safety features, you could spend $30,000 on a car. But the leap from spending $30,000 on a car to more than $100,000 on a car has nothing to do with transportation, it has to do with what that car says about what you desire in life, what group you want to belong to, and the results that you’re really hoping for from the product.

Let’s take an example and I’ll show you how as a copywriter we make those things work. This is a company called Westbourne College, they’re an Australian organization. They teach people diploma level skills. Their target market are people coming out of uniform who need formal qualifications that are recognized in the civilian world.

Where as a copywriter do you start trying to work out what’s important to this group of people? It does start with a lot of research. Copywriting is 80% research, 20% writing.

In this instance, the first thing we did was talk to the client because he actually came out of the police himself so he has a real insight into this target market and he explained to me that there’s nothing more ex than being ex-military or ex-police.

How he explained that to me was let’s say you’re in the Navy, you come out of the Navy, your ship sets sail, they’re gone for three months. You literally cannot have a drink with these guys. You literally cannot hang out with them. They are somewhere else.

But even if you were in the police and everyone had stayed in the same place, when they go out to drink in the evening they want to talk about work and they can’t talk to you about work anymore because you’re not in, you’re not in the police, you’re out. There’s a real sense of suddenly losing your group.

Other things that we saw were this comment online said we went to forums and places where military and ex-military people are talking to each other.

They didn’t get the way the modern office is. The modern office is very different apparently from the office if you’re military or police. They said the stuff I experienced, all these pen pushers can only fantasize about. Many civilians have no common sense, civvies have no idea about being on time for appointments and meetings. I don’t interview very well but I’m smart and I’m fit. A 20-something HR person is getting in the way of me getting a job because they don’t understand my life and what I’ve done.

If we take that layer of the three things these clients can’t tell you themselves, we get to what do they truly desire in life? They want respect for their accomplishments. What’s the group they want to belong to? People in gainful, stable employment. And what do they really hope for? They want to feel wanted and useful again. Those are the three things we know in a sense we’re really selling when we sell Westbourne College and the formal education that they can provide.

How do you translate that in copying? You can’t just come out and say, “Hey, do you want to feel respected and useful again?” What you have to do is hint at it, to make somebody feel the way that you need them to feel before they’re going to give you a call. In this case we came up with a tagline, “Rewarding the courage to learn. Became an [inaudible 00:06:19], in demand candidate with the formal qualifications to tackle your next adventure.”

Those words were not chosen at random just because they sound nice, they were deliberately picked, courage, tackle, adventure. These are people who’ve chosen previously to join the military or the police, they are adventure seeking, courageous people. These are qualities that they’re going to respond to, they’re going to feel understood, even if they can’t put their finger on it when they look at the website. In demand, we identified that the group that these guys want to belong to is those in gainful employment. What they most desire from the product is to be wanted again, so in demand is a very carefully chosen phrase.

If you go to the copy on the site, you’ll see that the copy speaks in the language of the audience. Many of our students have lived a life, they’ve excelled at important work, they’ve led men and women in challenging circumstances, they’ve won against odds that their future colleagues won’t be able to imagine. With speaking their language, we’re saying you are part of a group and we are part of that group as well. We understand you. You’ve found a new group.

The bits in gold that are underlined there that you will see are pulled directly from the research. “They’ve won against odds that their future colleagues won’t be able to imagine.” There was that quotation that we found in the forums from somebody saying these pen pushers will never understand what I’ve done. They’re coming up against first line employment screeners who don’t understand the lives they’ve led or what they’ve achieved. Again, pulled directly from the research, “I’m being denied opportunities by a 20-year old HR first line screener who doesn’t get my career.” And what they’ve achieved, we know that they want respect for their achievements. These are people who have achieved something, just because it’s not understood in civilian life doesn’t mean it’s not a massive achievement.

This is the Westbourne College About Us page. I won’t read the whole thing out there but some things that I’ll pull out. The language that we’ve used, “Our team shares your ethos. Our instructors have served.” We are identifying ourselves very clearly as part of the same group because everybody who instructs at Westbourne College has served in uniform so they understand where you are now and they got to the other side, they speak your language, they’ll respect you enough to give it to you straight. We use words like rigorous, robust, power, unlock.

These are action-taking people that we’re talking to so we use action-focused language. The promise is that we will mentor you into a successful private sector career because that’s exactly what these instructors have done. They’ve been in, then they came out, and they’ve made a success of themselves in civilian life so you’re going to get someone who understands you, respects your accomplishments, and can move you into the same group as them, the one you want to be part of, successfully employed.

The way to make your competitors irrelevant is to tap into what your customers desire, the group they want to be part of and the result they really want because they will buy from the supplier who is selling those things even when everything else appears to be identical because you’re selling what they really want. You don’t just want the soap that gets you clean because all soap gets you clean. You want the soap that gives you the thing that you desire most.

I’m Steven Lewis and I own and operate Taleist, which is a copywriting agency here in Sydney. If you are looking for a high converting website, so you already are investing in getting traffic to your website but you are finding that your conversion rate is not what you want it to be, there is an excellent chance if you already have the right traffic that you don’t have the right message. The reason you don’t have the right message is that you haven’t gone deep enough into what your clients really, truly want from your product or service.

If you are not watching this video at our website, it’s Taleist.agency and if you go to Taleist.agency you can download video, you can download the transcript, and you can get the slides that went into making this presentation.

That’s Taleist.agency and I’m Steven Lewis. It’s my agency and if you have any questions, you’re welcome to give us a call.

The post How copywriting can make your competitors irrelevant appeared first on Taleist Agency.

The business book rant that went around the world

How my rant about PR (disguised as a how-to book) went around the world and ended up in Russian

The press release emailed to me was pitch perfect.

The subject line grabbed my attention by including the title of a book I’d written — How to Write Perfect Press Releases.

The first paragraph raced to the point: Synesis, a Belarusian IT company, had translated the book into Russian. This met the first rule of press releases: it was definitely news to me.

Being a perfect press release, the important parts of the story were all there. 100 million people worldwide use Synesis’s software, so there’s always plenty going on. However, the company’s three-person PR team can’t be everywhere. Just like journalists, they need story pitches to come to them. How could they make that happen?

Alexander Shatrov, the company’s founder, had the idea for team leaders and project managers to send internal press releases.

And Shatrov had found just the book to teach them…

Mine, it turned out.

23 Synesis employees had crowd-translated How to Write Perfect Press Releases from English into Russian. They were co-ordinated by a professional translator, Julia Taribo. The resulting translation became the basis for training employees to write press releases for their colleagues.

Now, said the press release in my inbox, Synesis would like to publish their translation with my permission.

Landing in Belarus was not bad for a book I wrote in Sydney in 2012 as a disguised rant about shoddy PR.

A business book born from a rant

Hot Silver – Riding the Indian Pacific, a rant about the iconic but overrated rail trip from Sydney to Perth.

My motivations for writing books have generally fallen into two categories:

Rants after a bad experience (like my book about riding the Indian Pacific)

Teaching (various how-to books)

How to Write Perfect Press Releases falls into both categories. It teaches but it was born of frustration with how badly I’d seen public relations done — all at the cost of clients who didn’t know it was being done badly.

As a journalist, I’d seen innumerable people and businesses conned by bad PR agencies. The agencies I had in mind were the ones charging thousands for writing and “distributing” press releases that had no chance of sparking media interest.

So I wrote a book aimed at ordinary people and businesses who wanted a bit of coverage. My goal was saving them the thousands of dollars they might waste on shiny advice.

The book is called How to Write Perfect Press Releases, which is a stupid title because the book is about the whole process of getting in the media. (Writing a press release is one potential output of that process but it’s not essential to the process at all.)

If you’re interested, Taleist has an infographic on how to write a press release (or just get in the media).

I put the book on Amazon for $9.99 and didn’t think much more about it. The aim was to get it all off my chest and do my bit to cut down on the bullshit.

I wasn’t looking for anything more, but it happened anyway.

The PR book finds an audience

The book started to travel fairly quickly. I was contacted out of the blue by trade publications that thought their readers could benefit from knowing how to do their own public relations.

One interview I remember was with Professional Artist Magazine. Artists are exactly the sort of group that needs PR but doesn’t have the money to pay for expensive advice, especially if the money is going to be wasted. If my book could help some artists get a bit of attention for $9.99, I would be very happy.

The book goes to Sydney University

Not long after publication, I got a call from the University of Sydney. A lecturer wanted to include the book as compulsory reading for students in Sydney University’s masters in PR course. So it was that I found myself delivering boxes of this slim self-published book to the Co-op bookshop on the main campus.

Sadly, it lived in the backroom waiting for students to pick it up, so I never got to see myself sandwiched between any real authors, but finding myself on the Sydney University reading list was an incredible surprise. I’d only ever seen one PR textbook. It was on a coffee table in the reception area of the Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA). My book will slip in your pocket; this textbook looked ready to flatten the coffee table.

From Sydney to Belarus

The Russian cover of How to Write Perfect Press Releases

Through my emails with Julia in Belarus, I learned that team leads and project managers at Synesis now write internal press releases weekly thanks to the training from the book. This throws a wide net in which the PR team catches stories they can promote externally. In addition, the releases are posted on Club23, an internal blog available to all employees.

Julia tells me press releases have proven more fun for team leads and project managers to write than bureaucratic reports. The most enthusiastic give their releases witty titles and choose their own images to accompany them.

Even though I wrote a book notionally about press releases and I used to work in internal communications, the use of press releases for internal communications had never occurred to me.

The fun of writing a business book

New ideas — like that connection between press releases and internal communications — have been part of the fun of writing the book.

I’ve met interesting people; I’ve seen my ideas used for things that had never occurred to me, and now I have a book that can be read by 166 million Russian speakers. It probably won’t be read by many, but the last seven years have told me that something will happen and that I’ll be glad it did.

Help writing a business book

If you would like help writing your own business book and seeing where it takes you, we’d love to talk.

The post The business book rant that went around the world appeared first on Taleist Agency.

Copywriting a perfect About Us page for your website

About Us page copywriting secrets that will have clients queuing for your services

Great website copywriting is all about building trust, especially on your About Us page. It would seem, therefore, that lying to the people who visit your website would be a recipe for disaster.

Except this once…

Titling a page “About Us” suggests the page is going to be all about you. But it isn’t going to be about you. Not really. Secretly, you’re writing all about them, your customers and potential customers. Specifically, you’re writing about their problems and how you’re the right business to solve them.

Home and About Us: the two most important pages of your website

The most visited page of your website will be:

Your homepage because that’s the page people see when they go to yourcompanyname.com. However, the homepage might not be your most important page when it comes to converting visitors into customers.
About Us, which will (most likely) be the second most visited page of your website. You should never underestimate the influence that the copywriting on your About Us page can have to your eventual conversions.

Why the About Us page is so popular

Your About Us page attracts so much interest because:

Your website copywriting makes claims. When deciding whether to believe those claims, your prospect will want to weigh the credentials of the people making the claim.
Your About Us page should be a good way to check quickly whether your business does what the reader is looking for. (I see a lot of taps on your website, but does that mean you just sell them or do you install them too?)
The About Us page should put the whole site in context. It gives the prospect a filter through which to read everything else. Are you big? Small? Working for global giants or servicing small businesses? What sort of people work for you? Knowing those things helps the reader to digest the rest of the site.

Homepage or About Us: which is more important?

If I had to choose at gunpoint between getting rid of my homepage or my About Us page, I’d get rid of the homepage. The homepage is our shop window, but the About Us page is the salesman. About Us is building more rapport with the client than the homepage.

The About Us page is a crucial convincer, if it’s done right.

Examples of About Us pages that work
About Us page example #1 —Security Tactics

The About Us page for Brisbane-based Security Tactics

Taleist’s client Security Tactics sweeps offices, homes and cars for hidden microphones, cameras and tracking devices.

Their About Us page is aimed squarely at their target client. Every line above the fold is, yes, about Security Tactics but it’s carefully chosen — it’s information that’s highly relevant to how they solve the client’s problems.

What makes Security Tactics a better choice? They’re police trained.
A reminder of what the company does — increasing the reader’s certainty they’re in the right place for what they’re looking for.
What do you get from working with Security Tactics? Total confidence. (Plus another reminder of what they do: sweep.)
Spelling out what the company does in plain English. The jargon (“TSCM”) lets corporate security managers know that Security Tactics is an industry insider. However, not all their clients are security professionals, so they spell out what TSCM is.
A reader outside Queensland might have been referred and be wondering if they can be serviced. If this were a virtual business, the location wouldn’t need to be so prominent.

What’s missing from this About Us page?

You might read that and think it’s all obvious. In that case, it helps to think about the things we could have written but left out — things we might have included in a different industry with difference clients.

For example:

Security Tactics is a family business, something we often highlight for clients, but that’s not a competitive factor in the TSCM industry.
The owners have another well-established and successful business, but that business isn’t relevant to the work of Security Tactics.

About Us page example #2 —Taleist: Genuinely compelling copywriting

We try to practise what we preach at Taleist.

This is the opening of the Taleist’s About Us page (which you can see in full here)

The copywriting on our About Us page meets the surface-level About Us brief — it’s definitely all about us — but it’s not there only for colour or self-indulgence.

Our About Us page focuses on giving context about how we solve the reader’s problem. We solve their problems by understanding their clients well enough to sell a product or service to them with copywriting.

We chose to lead with that because anyone with a keyboard can claim to be a copywriter. Copywriting is a popular choice as a work-from-home business because all you need is a laptop and confidence that you write nicely.

Copywriters who choose to take it up a notch with study. Many aspiring copywriters hand copy ads written by the greats. Some of the all-time but now gone greats have left behind books, including Claude Hopkins, Eugene Schwartz, David Ogilvy and Gary Halbert.

Many of the living legends run online courses in addition to writing books, like John Carlton’s Simple Writing System. Copywriters can also swap ideas and war stories online in copywriting communities, like Kevin Rogers’s Copy Chief.

And if you’re looking for a copywriter, it’s always a good idea to ask them what they do study. But even if they do study, they’ll still be limited if they’ve not lived a wide enough life to be able to get into the heads of many different types of buyer.

That’s why we write about our life experiences on Taleist’s About Us page. Sophisticated clients know that copywriting success is all about understanding the buyer, so this information is for them.

What’s missing from Taleist’s About Us page?

As with the Security Tactics example, you can shine a light on the tactics behind the copywriting here by looking at what we choose not to talk about.

For example:

We could have focused on high-profile clients like Microsoft, AMP, Intel and others. It would give us credibility but it could send a message that we’re not for clients who aren’t listed companies or multinationals. However, we actually write for the widest possible range of clients so we don’t want to put off any ambitious business looking for copywriters.
We could have led with our 25 years in the business. It’s relevant, but longevity doesn’t always mean quality, especially not in the age of disruptors, so we don’t lead with it.
We could have led with our background in journalism, which we believe makes us different in our approach — we ask more and better questions. However, journalism and copywriting are different and this is a page about copywriters.

Words to avoid on an About Us page

Close your eyes and listen. What can you hear that you didn’t hear before? Cars going past outside the window? The hum of a piece of equipment, perhaps the fan on your computer?

That noise was there before but you filtered it out because it wasn’t important. That’s exactly what your readers will do with cliches and meaningless language. Your cliched phrases will waft right past the reader.

By contrast, original writing sticks in the mind.

Your About Us page is a chance to make an impression Don’t lose that chance because your website visitor has read the same phrase a dozen times already — you’re “passionate about your customer journey”.

Your About Us page should stop your reader in their tracks with something fresh. Being fresh doesn’t mean you have to be cute. It means you need to be clear and rising above things anyone else could say.

Exhausted phrases

Capturing the attention of the reader is why you won’t find any claim to be the “leading”, “fastest growing” or anything like that in the two About Us page examples above.

Readers hear these claims so often that all meaning is gone. You might genuinely be the biggest, the most profitable or the most-awarded, but that doesn’t matter if the reader has just come from three other websites making the same claims.

Not only has the claim to be “leading” (or similar) become meaningless, it’s lazy writing because it’s not necessarily desirable to the potential client…

Copywriter Paula Green made history when she branded Avis with the line “We try harder”. That tagline pointed out to customers that going with the leading brand wasn’t always in their best interests. After all, the leading business might also be the most expensive or resting on its laurels. (It was a strong enough point that Avis used the line from 1962 to 2012.)

If you’re, truly the leading business in your field (and that benefits the client), show your client how you’re leading, don’t just tell them.

What facts are you relying on to claim to be the leading provider? Your page will be more convincing if you lead with those supporting facts instead of just making the claim.

Is there something extraordinary you did for a client? Do your customers get amazing results? Tell me those facts and the reader will conclude you’re leading for themselves — which is much stronger psychologically.

But if you’re claiming to the leading business in your industry just because you think it sounds nice, walk away from the claim right now and try another tack.

There is something that makes you different, and a good copywriter can help you find it.

Opposites detract

As a rule of thumb, don’t say something on your About Us page when you wouldn’t say the opposite.

Who would say they didn’t care about customers? So why say you’re “passionate about customer service”. If you really think you give a different and better customer experience, prove it, don’t just claim it. “You’ll be met at the door by a liveried butler…”

Would any company say:

We put things together as quickly and cheaply as we can
We couldn’t care less about our customers
We’re lazy

So why talk about:

“High-quality service” (rather than the specifics of how you provide quality)
“Exceptional customer experience” (without breaking down how your service is different)
How hard you work without spelling out what you mean by hard work — we don’t make mistakes, we get it done faster…

Stock images

The only lie you’re allowed to tell on your About Us page is that it’s about you when it’s really about your customers. There is no place on your About Us page for stock images of a racially diverse group of people you’ve never met gathered around a laptop you don’t own.

You might be all about people and relationships, but that’s not more believable because you have a photo of two men shaking hands in an airport.

We know the people in the photograph don’t work for you, so what are they doing on the page where we’ve come to learn who you are and what you can do to help us?

Stock images feel like a lie, which hurts your attempts to build rapport on your About Us page.

Look at your competitors’ About Us pages

Look at the About Us pages of your three biggest competitors. Chances are that the client who arrives at your website has already been to at least one of your competitors’ sites.

You don’t want to look like you’re all the same because you all make the same unsubstantiated claims.

Where to start with writing your About Us page

Put this phrase in your head: So what?

Better yet, write it on a Post-It and stick it on your computer monitor while you think about your About Us page. Although, there’s another easy way to keep it front of mind…

Imagine your best potential client is like a spoilt nine-year-old. Every time you tell them something, they say, “So what?”

The nine-year-old will swallow nothing at face value. That nine-year-old wants to know what’s in it for them. They don’t care that you went to Oxford or have a big office with a beautiful view… unless you can show them how that is going to help them in some way. (And they’re not going to connect the dots for themselves: you have to draw the connections from features to benefits for your clients.)

Think about your client

What does your client want from you? What is their problem and how are you the best answer? Start here and you won’t go wrong on your About Us page.

In Taleist’s case, for instance, our ideal client is struggling to stand out in the blizzard of information their audiences are receiving. They have a dozen or more competitors their clients could easily choose.

Our clients want someone who can approach communicating differently. That’s why Taleist’s About Us page leads with what makes us unusual — the life experience we bring to understanding what will make your clients tick.

About Us page example #3: CGA

Central Glass and Aluminium (CGA) is a client of ours. It’s a family-owned business that makes doors and windows. It sounds like a widget business. On the face of it, you’d think it would be impossible to slide a razor blade between suppliers. After all, surely one pane of glass is exactly like another?

Glass might well be homogeneous, but not every glass fabricator is the same, which is why we wrote this:

We could just have written that the team at CGA cares deeply about customer satisfaction. Anyone who has spoken to Heather, the owner, and her customers, as we have, would know that.

However, as above, you shouldn’t write something where no competitor would say the opposite. None of CGA’s competitors would tell you they didn’t care about customer satisfaction. So we proved it by adding a supporting example: the customer who’d been sent packing by 15 (seriously) other companies before she found CGA.

We didn’t just tell the reader something, we showed them.

Before you write your About Us page, ask yourself these questions

For copywriting that makes a big difference to your conversion rate, answer these questions before you start writing your About Us page:

What makes you different from the competition? You’ll want to get that across on the page.
Who are your ideal customers?
What sort of questions might they have about you? Think about your own experience searching the web. What do you like to know about the companies you might do business with? What sort of things do potential customers ask you on the phone? Some basic ideas might be:



How long you’ve been in business
Where you’re located and what areas you serve
What your qualifications and experience are
Who is on the team

You’ll boost your conversion rate by answering the questions that ideal clients are likely to have about how you can help them.

Don’t forget to think about the tone of your About Us page, too

Every business has to talk to its clients. How you speak to them on your About Us page will be how they think you’ll talk to them in person.

Where you fall on the spectrum of tone — from addressing the Governor General to joking with a mate — will probably be determined by what you do for a living.

Even if you do service the viceroy, you still want to be conversational; it’ll just be in an Admiralty House sort of tone.

Three proven formulas for writing the perfect About Us page

Try one of these formulas as the cornerstone to copywriting the perfect About Us page.

You might offer many products or services, but the About Us page is there to give context to the whole business. Look for a common thread and use the formula to give you a starting point from which the whole page will flow.

1. We description of your product or service, which is interesting because…

This is the formula we followed on our own About Us page (here). We are copywriters who have studied widely, traveled widely and worked in many different industries. And that’s interesting to our ideal clients because it means we’ll understand their business and their clients.

2. Our product/service enables description of customer to experience this value

When copywriting for a course teaching marketing consultants how to add PR as a service for their clients, we wrote along these lines:

Our PR course enables marketing consultants to experience more revenue from their existing clients, potentially on a retainer, which will give them more stability in their business.

3. Our product/service helps niche who want to get this done by removing what pain and achieving what gain

If we’d followed this formula for the PR course, we would have approached the About Us page along these lines:

Our PR course helps marketing consultants who want to make more money by not having to look for so many clients and make more money from existing clients by learning a skill they can use again and again.

What next?

Your About Us page is crucial to the success of your website, but it’s still part of a whole. It needs to fit with your entire website.

If you need expert eyes to give you an in-depth opinion about where you could be making more conversions, we review website copywriting and design.

And of course, if you’d like a professional copywriter to identify your point of difference, define your story and write your About Us page for you, you should…

The post Copywriting a perfect About Us page for your website appeared first on Taleist Agency.

How to write YouTube ads that work (using insights the big brands are missing)

In Viewability: Harness the Power of YouTube Ads and Be There for Your Customer — When It Really Counts, Tom Breeze has written a copywriting book disguised as a book about YouTube advertising. That’s a double win for readers:

You get a guide to writing better copy to advertise your business. You get advice from an expert on how to distribute your copywriting using the world’s second biggest search engine, YouTube.

What follows is a summary of and my notes on Viewability.

Benefits of YouTube advertising



SEO: As the rules of technical SEO keep changing, you’re safest investing in quality content because any changes Google makes will be to favour quality content. So producers of quality content will always be ahead of any slaps Google gives to sites relying on technical SEO.Facebook: Facebook, Breeze suggests, is like a town with a single main street — its crowded newsfeed. Having everyone concentrated in only one street makes Facebook ever harder and more expensive to penetrate with ads. YouTube, on the other hand, is expanding like a city — an always increasing number of main streets to advertise in. Breeze does a great job here of keeping the reader’s focus where he wants it to be. (Hat tip perhaps to Cialdini’s Pre-Suasion?) Of course, if you didn’t want to keep everyone’s focus on YouTube, you could just as easily argue that having everyone in one main street makes advertising easier (if more expensive).AdWords: Google Ads is much more costly than YouTube.



Writing YouTube ads for the moments that matter

Breeze divides the book into seven sections, each building on the one before, and most centred on the concept of matching YouTube ads to “moments” in your client’s decision making:

The Moments We Live In: Missed Opportunities from the Audience’s PerspectiveThe Moments of Truth: Converting Viewers into CustomersMapping Your Customer’s Moments: How to Find Those OpportunitiesThe Message for the Moment: How to Define ItMeeting the Moment: The Logistics of Making It HappenMastering the Moment: Bringing It All TogetherMomentum: The Adventure Starts Now

Moments makes for a good conceit. The idea of moments pulls you through the book, and all the steps Breeze says you must understand to know who to target your videos to, as well as how and when.

How even the biggest brands are missing their target audience on YouTube

Breeze tells a compelling story about how he fell into training for a marathon at the last minute. As he searched desperately for videos on how to squeeze 25 or more weeks of training into the 16 weeks he had, he writes that he was open to all sorts of products and service. He would have entertained advertising for shoes, gels, physiotherapists and hotels near the start line. Even though he would have been wide open, none of those things was advertised to him at this point in his research.

At this point in the book, your mind will doubtless turn to your own clients. What are they searching for in the weeks or months before they will, more than likely, need you?

This is fertile ground. Breeze quotes Google saying that brands miss the moments when their customers are searching for them nine times out of 10.

If Nike isn’t clued in enough to offer shoes to an aspiring marathon runner, imagine the gaps that exist in your industry.

Finding your target audience with YouTube video advertising

For every product or service, some people are ready to buy now, those who are doing research, and those who are slightly interested. These three different types of customers require three different approaches. — Tom Breeze

Breeze segments customers into only three audiences:

Window shoppers — mildly interested in your product or service; might buy in the future. Window shoppers need your YouTube video to grab their attention and highlight features and benefits so they’ll become…Researchers — they want what you’re selling, and they’re looking for more information or the best deal. They want advice and demonstrations.Buy now — customers who are at the checkout; they might just need a little reassurance they’ve made the right choice before they pull the trigger.

Three types of customers means a need for three types of message, argues Breeze. Again, most advertisers go for one, so there’s a world of opportunity for the advertiser who will segment.

How to turn YouTube ad cost into profit: start with the user

Breeze is clear throughout the book that a good user experience will translate into sales. And segmentation is key to that experience. Window shoppers won’t respond to the same ad as checkout customers — or not as well, anyway.

The cascading YouTube ads campaign

Breeze and his team have something they call the cascading campaign: as a soon as a viewer has seen an ad without responding, they see a new one. If they still don’t respond, they get a third video ad.

Breeze says not seeing the same ad twice is a better user experience than smashing them with the same ad until they do something or hate you.

Also, when your audience sees three ads, you have more options with the narrative — each ad can hit a different potential trigger or the sequence can form a whole picture.

“Be human” in your advertising

Breeze recommends that you focus more on being helpful and less on “clicking links and signing up”. That high-pressure hustle taught by online marketing gurus isn’t about good user experience.

Copywriting for YouTube ads

Write your video script as if you’re talking to one person, advises Breeze. It’s at this point in the book that it becomes apparent just how much this is a copywriting book with a YouTube overlay.

YouTube is the distribution channel, but what you’re distributing is copywriting. (It’s striking how little Breeze talks about anything visual in the book — it’s all about tone, avatars and approach.)

YouTube video ad copywriting advice from an expert

Breeze gives some more useful copywriting tips for would-be YouTube ad writers:

Make sure each video you create is not trying to deliver more than one message. Delete anything extraneous.Violating schemas makes for a catchy opening — basically, if you can give your audience something they’re not expecting, you’ll arouse their curiosity and grease the chute (keep them watching). Breeze gives a brilliant example — not coincidentally from a copywriter, Frank Kern — about being thrown out of a strip club in the afternoon, which is not an opener you expect from a respected expert.If you can’t think of a clever schema variation, ask the viewer a question.Try to draw the viewer in by opening a loop (intriguing them in a way that they have to know how it ends, so they keep watching).Using the CEO or someone high up adds credibility and personality.Tailor the format to the message — products need demonstrating, for instance.But wait, there’s more — make it clear you’re not giving away the farm in your YouTube ad. The viewer has to do something, go somewhere to get more.Link benefits to features — whenever you tell the viewer what you can do, make sure you give them the benefit at the same time. “We do this so you can do that”. “It goes this fast so you can arrive in record time…”“Because” works wonders. The mere use of the word “because” makes it sound like you know what you’re talking about. Sounds crazy? Check your Cialdini.Test — don’t spend $20,000 shooting a fancy video that might not work. Test and learn. See what works first.Do use a professional videographer. If your video looks like shit, people will draw the same conclusion about your company. Yes, it’s horses for courses — no one expects their business coach’s videos to look like Qantas ads, but you get the drift.



Does anyone need a copywriter for a YouTube video?

“With the ADUCATE… principles, combined with your knowledge of your customers and their moments, you’re more qualified to write the script for your YouTube videos than any copywriter you could commission. Contractors might be able to write a good script for TV or Facebook, but it won’t work for what’s unique about YouTube and how viewers interact with the platform.” — Tom Breeze

Respectfully, because I enjoyed the book, this is bullshit.

For an author who has basically written a beginners’ guide to copywriting through the lens of YouTube, Breeze turns out to value the craft of copywriting at nothing. You think your business owner client could out pull John Carlton because Carlton is a “contractor”? Good luck with that.

ADUCATE is a great formula. The tip about writing for a single viewer is excellent. But these two things, some borrowings from Eugene Schwartz and a couple of lines summarising a fraction of Cialdini’s work on influence aren’t going to turn the ordinary business owner into a copywriter.

If those things were enough, no business owner would need a copywriter for any medium, whatever Breeze argues about the uniqueness of YouTube from a messaging point of view.

And every page of Viewability screams that being a great copywriter is what you need to be to write great YouTube ads.

Getting conversions with YouTube ads

Chapter two of Viewability is about positioning your product or service in the best way through YouTube ads.

Breeze breaks down four moments of truth for your clients:

Search: Will customers find you?Purchase: Will customers buy from you?Reflection: Will customers think fondly of you?Influence: Will customers recommend you?

Those questions, Breeze argues, are dependent on how well you structure your offer in your YouTube ad. Does it have:

Perceived value? (Will your customers see it as useful and valuable?)Meaningful business reflection? (Does your offer reflect your business and what you stand for?)Desirability with ease? (Is your offer something your clients actually want and have you made it easy for them to get?)

Offers that tick all three boxes, Breeze says, are:

WebinarsHow-to videosDocumentariesOnline toolsBooks



The ASK Method for YouTube advertising

Breeze is a fan of The ASK Method, which is about surveying clients to find out what they want, segmenting them into “buckets” accordingly then tailoring content for each bucket.

The ASK Method “lets you play the role of an examining doctor instead of a pushy salesman”, says Breeze.

Mapping Your Customer’s Moments: How to Find Those Opportunities

Chapter three invites you to put yourself in your client’s shoes as they go through each moment. This creation of an avatar and visualisation of their personality, situation and needs is pure copywriting methodology of course.

Bringing the copywriting technique back to YouTube advertising, Breeze points out that people are on YouTube to:

Be inspired. (53% of them, according to Google, he says.)LearnBuyBe entertained

There is, in short, a trigger that brought them there. Understand the trigger and you can start to write your message to match.

You don’t want to show an educational video to a prospect who is out of the research phase and is ready to buy. That person just wants some reassurance about the features of the product.

However, you might want to run an educational video about a different product or service to someone who is ready to buy something else. Breeze, for instance, didn’t know when buying his running shoes that he should also have been booking his hotel at the marathon starting line. His time of purchase of shoes would have been a good time for an educational video from a hotel.

What else are your clients searching for?

This is an exciting time in the book because ideas are likely to be coming hard and fast. What else are your clients searching for? Breeze gives an example of a physiotherapist who could advertise against searches for back pain. However, the physio also knows that they see many older gardeners who have done their backs in when gardening. Instead of bidding against every physio in town for “back pain” keywords, they could advertise against gardening videos (and limit display to people in a certain age range).

What’s more, this doesn’t need to look like advertising. You’re being useful when you show up in the right place at the right time.

Mapping customer moments for YouTube advertising

Breeze gives some tips for mapping your clients’ moments, including offering a “Title Grabber” to give you the top 100 videos for any search. Those titles will give you some ideas about your customers’ journeys and where, perhaps, you could meet them on the way. (But at the time of writing, even though the book had been out two months, the book’s advertised resources section on the Viewability website was under construction. You might have more luck now. It’s supposed to be here.

Breeze breaks the mapping process into three steps:

Thinking about your customer and mapping out all the moments before they come to you, e.g. a business coach’s clients who might be searching “how to grow my business”.Choose a single moment in that journey. Who is having that moment? What is life like for them? How are they feeling? This is pure avatar creation; something you should be doing in any piece of copywriting.Take the picture you’ve painted and think about how you can help that client in a way that’s congruent with what you offer.



The ADUCATE formula for copywriting YouTube ads

Breeze and the Viewability team have developed a model for writing their YouTube ads that they call the ADUCATE formula. It comes up in chapter four, “The Message for the Moment: How to Define It”.

And, demonstrating again how much Viewability is a copywriting book disguised as a YouTube advertising book, the ADUCATE formula is inspired by legendary copywriter David Ogilivy.

ADUCATE

A: Aim. (Tap into your audience’s innermost desires — a tip that could be straight from Breakthrough Advertising by another copywriting great, Eugene Schwartz.)

D: Difficulty. (Address the difficulty that brought the viewer to YouTube in the first place.)

U: Understanding. (Show you understand the way your viewer is feeling.)

C: Credibility. (Demonstrate your authority in this area. Another tip that could have been from Cialdini, who isn’t a copywriter but who is compulsory reading for anyone who wants to be.)

A: Action plan. (Show the viewer you know exactly the steps they can take to get out of their difficulty.)

T: Teach. (Prove you know what you’re talking about by teaching them something that will help.)

E: Exit. (Restate what it is you can do; future pace what will happen if the viewer takes action with you.)

An interview with Tom Breeze, author of Viewability

A guide to the different types of YouTube ads



1. In-stream ads

These pre-roll ads show before a video — these are the ones you can press “skip ad” on.

2. Discovery ads (formerly “in-display” or “in-search”)

These ads show up in the search results, just like paid Google Ads show up at the top of search results in Google. They get less traction than in-stream ads.

3. Bumper ads

Six-second pre-roll ads that were new at the time of writing Viewability.

Different types of targeting for YouTube advertising



Demographics

You can overlay demographics on any type of YouTube ads campaign — age, sex, parental status, location…

Video-placements

You can choose specific videos to advertise against (assuming the creator accepts advertising).

Breeze recommends starting with video-placement ads because of the granular data you’ll get on your ad’s performance.

Channel placement videos

You can choose to advertise on all the videos in a particular channel, e.g. if you’re selling baby products, you can target a YouTube creator’s new-parent channel because you know all those videos are aimed at your target audience.

Topic targeting

YouTube has lists of topics you can advertise against, e.g. “Parenting” or “babies and toddlers”.’

The audience here is most likely to be people who are researching before buying, says Breeze.

Keywords

Breeze explains that keyword targeting doesn’t just mean the keywords your prospect has typed into Google to find the video they’re watching. “Keywords” here means the user’s recent browsing history (possibly up to the last forty minutes) — including on Google as well as on YouTube.

Breeze says this is his favourite way to find viewers who are at the research stage of a buying journey.

However, he says, this can be expensive to scale even after you overlay a demographic filter. The answer is to add a topic filter.

Website remarketing

Show videos to people who have visited your website.

Video remarketing

Show ads to people who have watched a video on your YouTube channel.

Google customer rematch

Upload your mailing list and have YouTube show ads to your subscribers.

Similar audiences

Google’s artificial intelligence will find people who behave similarly to others on your list in the hopes their similarities extend to an interest in your product or service.

Affinity audience targeting

Google knows all, including what your prospects are interested in. You can advertise to people who’ve shown an affinity for (interest in) certain topics, like buying a house or taking photographs.

Custom affinity audiences

Don’t like Google’s own affinity audience categories? Make your own based on Google’s data — a Frankenstein audience you put together based on sites they’ve visited or keywords they’ve searched.

In-market audiences

Another thing Google knows is what you might be interested in buying. You can show your ads to people Google knows are shown recent interested in buying a holiday or one of dozens of other things.

How to choose what type of YouTube targeting to use in your advertising

“With all these different options, it’s not easy to translate the targeting choice to the customer’s psychology or where they are in the buying cycle.” — Tom Breeze, Viewability

Breeze gives a handy guide to how to match YouTube ad targeting to where buyers are in the funnel:

Window shopper



Affinity audience targetingSimilar audience targetingChannel placements



Researching



Video placementsKeywordsTopics



Ready to buy



Website remarketingVideo remarketingIn-market audiences



How often should you show a YouTube ad to a prospect?

Breeze argues that once is enough. A well-targeted YouTube ad is “responsive” to the target prospect. A repetitive (even if well-targeted ad) is a “nuisance”.

Measuring the results of YouTube advertising

Breeze has some tips here:

Hypothesise before you launch your YouTube campaign: What results do you think you’ll get? Start by measuring results against this hypothesis and looking for holes in the hypothesis once you have the data.Don’t look too soon: It takes a while for the data to become meaningful. Hitting refresh on your results in less than about 48 hours will give you RSI, not data. (After 48 to 72 hours, you should be hitting pause on what isn’t working and optimising what is.)Split test: Nothing beats running a few videos against each other to see what does better. “It’s not uncommon to see on ad outperform another by a large margin,” says Breeze.



Final thoughts

Viewability is worth every penny (and three times as much). It’s readable, useful and a great primer. It’ll give you a solid start on YouTube advertising, and something slightly less than that in terms of a beginning point for copywriting. (For that, you’d be better off with some of the other books mentioned above, especially Breakthrough Advertising.)

To me, the most valuable part of the book was the inspiration to think about where else you can intersect with your prospects — i.e. rather than just advertising against keywords specific to what you sell.

The post How to write YouTube ads that work (using insights the big brands are missing) appeared first on Taleist Agency.

5 books that will lift your copywriting game in 2019 (even though they aren’t about copywriting)

There’s no shortage of brilliant books about copywriting, but it’s nice to read around your subject, especially as you take a break over a hot Sydney summer.

These five books aren’t about copywriting, but they’ll offer a new perspective for copywriters looking to raise their copywriting game in 2019.

1. Making Websites Win: Apply the Customer-Centric Methodology That Has Doubled the Sales of Many Leading Websites

Approachable insights and practical tips to increase the conversion rate of your clients’ websites. All based on hard data.

Copywriters should read the book because

“The words are what win A/B tests.” — Karl Blanks and Ben Jesson

Authors Karl Blanks and Ben Jesson have plenty of data to back up their assertions that conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is built on copywriting. And in music to a copywriter’s ears, they use data to put to bed the claims:

That no one reads anymore
That long copy is dead

Copywriters’ rule of thumb according to Blanks and Jesson

Using writing to persuade a prospect to do something will take the same number of words as you’d have to use persuading them orally.

So if it would take you a minute of talking to get an email address, you’ll need about 170 words of copy to do the same.

If it would take you an hour to talk a prospect into paying $1,000, you’ll need about 10,000 words of sales copy. (Which is why the next part is so important…)

10,000 words is a lot, so you probably don’t want to try to persuade someone to spend the $1,000. You probably want to persuade them to do something smaller, like give you a call.

Making Websites Win is on Amazon

2. The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you

Rob Fitzpatrick says Mum is the worst person in the world to ask about your brilliant idea. In this metaphor, Mum is also a stand-in for friends, colleagues and basically anyone who’d rather not hurt your feelings.

The book is relevant to copywriting because: research

From Fitzpatrick:

“The Mom Test

Talk about their life instead of your idea

Ask about specifics in the past instead of generics or opinions about the future

Talk less and listen more”

Opinions about what a potential customer might do are a waste of time. What you need is concrete data — faced with a problem like the one you’re trying to solve, what have potential customers actually done in the past?

You’ve got an idea for an app — say, a 14-week exercise program. Your friends tell you it’s brilliant and you should most definitely hire that developer. But faced with advice to get active, have your friends turned to apps before? No? So why do they think your idea is brilliant?

It’s easy to adapt this advice to copywriting in terms of interviewing the prospects of your client: stick to what they’ve done in the past, not to what they think they might do.

The Mom Test is on Amazon

3. Deep Work — Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

Author Cal Newport says you can get more done and be happier if you set aside time for work, maintain focus in that time and refuse to let that time bleed into the rest of your life.

Why copywriters should read this book

As an academic, Newport has more latitude than most to stick his finger up at emails he doesn’t want to answer and meetings he doesn’t have to have. However, his lines in the sand make for great aspirations for the rest of us.

We rethought our diaries (when we’re available for meetings, blocking off time for writing) and the tools we use. (Hello, Focus, Vitamin R, Hocus Focus and Do Not Disturb on the iPhone.)

You can get Deep Work in Australia from Booktopia.

4. Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

There are few authors in the world more pleased with themselves than Nassim Nicholas Taleb, but he’s a compelling thinker if you can get past that.

In this book, his thinking is that you can’t trust someone who doesn’t have something to lose if they get it wrong. For instance, why take advice from a lawyer who wins (gets paid) regardless of whether their advice works out for you or not?

Why this book matters for copywriters

Trust is the cornerstone of persuasive copywriting. If the reader doesn’t trust you, they’re never going to buy from you.

Learning the many ways that people can have skin in the game gives you an extra perspective on how to build trust.

It’s one reason, for instance, that we chose to guarantee our website copywriting. A guarantee of the copy gives us skin in the game. If we don’t get the writing right, we don’t get paid.

Sydney’s Booktopia has Skin in the Game online

5. Draft No. 4 — On the Writing Process

Elegant, sophisticated writing from an author (John McPhee) who has done it all, seen it all and committed his life to the craft of writing about it.

Why every copywriter should dip into this frequently

You spend your day copywriting email marketing, reviewing websites, writing landing pages. And you probably don’t do it with the love of words in mind; you do it thinking about conversions, the business of writing — the deadlines, the metrics, the clients.

That makes it easy to lose sight (at least for a moment) of the love of language that brought you to copywriting in the first place.

McPhee’s essays in this book are reminders of the power of the well-chosen word, the music of structure and that you’re not alone in caring as deeply about every comma as you do.

What’s more, McPhee, for all his accomplishments, is one of us. Here he is on first drafts:

“For me, the hardest part comes first, getting something—anything—out in front of me. Sometimes in a nervous frenzy I just fling words as if I were flinging mud at a wall. Blurt out, heave out, babble out something—anything—as a first draft.”

Draft No. 4 is available from Booktopia as well.

What’s your favourite (non-)copywriting book

These are five of the books I read this year with lessons I applied immediately to my copywriting even though they’re not about copywriting. What non-copywriting books would you recommend to a copywriter? Email me. I’d love to add them to my reading list for my Sydney staycation.

The post 5 books that will lift your copywriting game in 2019 (even though they aren’t about copywriting) appeared first on Taleist Agency.