Tam Nguyen - Post 2 - Summary of Copywriting course - Momoko Price
Overview
A great course, and definitely a great teacher, Momoko Price. She creates a reproducible framework to take actions easily using templates. The data driven and standardized approach is brilliant. This also makes it easy for beginners like me, never writing any copy before, to be able to start copy teardowns and write based on persuasion principles.
Before I used to think copywriters need skills but also unique talent, like coming up with words that are trendy. Books can be one approach but it’s not comprehensive. Also I never thought of the customer focused approach to copywriting until this course. Understanding customers’ psychology can be a great asset in copywriting.
I don’t think many copywriters are equipped with these arsenals letting alone having formal training in this. In the previous company I worked for the copywriter there knows a lot of languages and they assumed having lots of knowledge in languages is enough to become a copywriter. I can imagine with this structured approach a lot of improvements could be made. That also means opportunities are available for those who are well equipped with tools and the willingness to practice.
Notes
Conduct copy teardowns
Ask domain expert is not a good option - each gives their own advice, somewhat contradictory: So a better way to use tear downs is to try to make sure that you’re always basing them on proven persuasion principles
Talk to customers or prospect: to know if this message converts better than other messages. That this message is going to convert better than this other message.That’s never going to happen.The only way that you can get that information is if you talk to your customers and your prospects. The people who are visiting your sales page. So it’s better to use them as a gap analysis tool, right? There are critical components of persuasive argument, or a convention sequence that any page needs to have, any funnel needs to have, to help someone actually decide yes, I would like to buy this product or I would like to submit my email. And you know, they’re fairly fundamental and they’re fairly universal. So a big thing you can do with a tear down is just go over your copy and say, am I actually including those elements.
Use conversion heuristic formula
Hopskins’s Rules
- Be specific
- Offer service
- Tell the full story
- Be a saleswoman
Having the right mindset: make your customers’ life easier. If you can craft your messaging around offering service, like I am here out of the goodness of my heart to give you this amazing offer that’s going to make your life so much better, and you craft your messaging around that core principle, you’re going to have a better time trying to convince people to buy from you or to convert because they can see that like, oh man,you’re making my life so much better,you’re doing me this huge favor,this is great, yes, I will buy from you. Much better than trying to say, give me money.
Introduction to Message Mining,or How to Eavesdrop on the Internet and Steal Killer Copy
Concept of message mining: Message-mining is essentially the process of scouring the internet or other sources for instances of your target customer voicing what they care about most when it comes to your product or solution. And it might be about a competitor product, or other solutions within your space if you are sort of new to the market. It’s also just a very handy, quick and dirty way to listen to target customers when you don’t have any customers to listen to yet, or if you’re just a social introvert,and you really don’t want to do these voice of customer interviews.
Stealing customers opinions to write copy: Joanna Wiebe, the Original Conversion Copywriter, she once said it best, instead of writing your message on a blank page, just steal it. Steal it directly from the mouths of your prospects. Because the reality is, most of the time, your customer is way more effective at recognizing and explaining what the value of your product or solution is than you are.
We think too much about features and ignore the every day benefit: a problem that we tend to have as marketers when we write copy,is that we get way to inward,we’re thinking way too much about the specifics of our product in terms of its features, how it compares to competitors,and we neglect to talk about what the value is,what the big overarching day-to-day benefit is of using the product.
For example, It’s that it makes things like,for example, with this Roomba, you might think it’s just a cool new gadget,and a way to just like,vacuum up a bunch of stuff in a different way,but in reality, for a certain target market,it is a great way to reduce pain, right? Like it is a great way to make their lives easier because they don’t have to like get on their hands and knees and clean up, right?So those are those types of benefits that you might not even think about because you’re not the customer
Think about value proposition: Value proposition messages come back to explaining what are those unique benefits and advantages about your product, right?So, I like to think of them as unique benefits and advantages,delightful features and attributes,those are those kinds of things that they aren’t make or break reasons for using your product,but they are those, just like unique attributes that your product has that others don’t that just makes them feel good about it.
Figure out how to write about about product and the benefit from customer POV: Swiping memorable copy is all about looking at those reviews online and reading what customers have to say and then identifying those little turns of phrase in there that makes you think, like oh, that’s perfect,like yes, this is the perfect way to describe my product or the benefit that my product provides,I need to include that
Mining Messages From Your Visitors and Your Customers
Survey customers to understand them. Goals of survey: you design a survey poorly,you’re going to get poor results.It’s garbage in, garbage out.So there’s three key components that you need to be thinking about.You have your questions, you have your invitation to actually engage with the survey and then you have the targeting that you’re going to be using.So the goal for your questions is to extract key messages.So you want to be including strategic questions that will actually help you get to the bottom of what should I be saying on my page.
Try not to waste customer time
You need to be thinking carefully about you targeting. You want to engage a specific audience at the right time without pissing them off.
Great survey questions
Crafting Effective Unique Value Propositions
Motivation is what we can’t control, but for value proposition we can: When you look at this formula,the biggest, most influential element in the conversion heuristic formula is your motivation. What is going on in your prospect’s mind when they hit the page? What are their expectations? What are they looking for? As important as motivation is to our probability of conversion, it’s not something that we can control. There’s nothing we can do about why they showed up to our page. It is something that you can try to influence in your ad copy, but that is not something we’re talking about.Understanding that by the time they get to your page,you can’t change their motivation,then what’s the next biggest element that you can control? The clarity and power of your value proposition,so that comes up a lot. Marketing experiments is all about value propositions
Design messages so that strangers can love your product: when you’re trying to answer the question of like, hmm, what’s in it for my customer and why should my customer choose our product over other options. You want to be thinking about Ron Swanson, like you want the skeptical dude who’s just like,he doesn’t want to change, and if you can come up with a compelling value proposition that gets Ron Swanson excited about using your product,then you’re really getting somewhere. Then you’re really drilling down to a value proposition that your customers will have a hard time saying no to. So, to get into that state of mind,like the Ron Swanson prospect, who’s unwilling to change and you need to convince them, when you come up with your value proposition and you try to answer the question, what’s in it for them, why should they choose me, keep,just drilling into the same two questions. Okay, so what? So what? So what? Why is that such a great thing?
Big mistake - only think about what’s unique about the product: And the big risk about how other conventional approaches to value propositions work,like one of the reasons that they can fail is because people focus entirely on what’s unique about your product, they don’t think about like what does your, what do your customers actually want.So they end up with a differentiator that means nothing to anybody.
Focus on eliminating the negatives first: the focus is on eliminating the problem, focus is on the negative, eliminating the negative as opposed to achieving the positive. As a default I like to go with achieving the positive first, and then you can test negative angles as well. So achieves specific desire with the only, or largest, or most, some kind of adjective product type that does valuable thing
Writing first drafts
Always start with a messaging flow and value proposition as a baseline: Of course you may need to adjust it,as I mentioned in the previous lesson,according to your customer’s awareness level.But by and large these are the components that you want to be thinking about when you put together your sales page.So your value proposition and quick summary is basically a desirable outcome or result that your customer wants coupled with some kind of unique related quality or attribute of your product.Motivation really comes back to, again,pain points and problems, desirable outcomes and drivers, purchase prompts and triggers.Your value messages come back, again,to flushing out all the awesome about your product,the unique benefits and advantages,how it works if need be,sometimes that can be really important.Ah-ha moments and delightful perks,and deal breaker needs and requirements. And of course your anxiety section, address uncertainties, objectives and perceived risk.Of course don’t forget to include a call to action.
Avoid the blank page using data driven strategy - with message mining
Structure of a messaging flow
Editing copy
7 simple rules to edit by
5 paint brushes
